"It was perfectly notorious to the assemblage that the largest body, which comprehended about two-thirds of the whole, was designed for the attack on Newgate. It comprehended all the rioters who had been conspicuous in any of their former proceedings; all those whom they recommended as daring hands and fit for the work; all those whose companions had been taken in the riots; and a great number of people who were relatives or friends of the felons in the gaol. This last class included not only the most desperate and utterly abandoned villains in London, but some who were comparatively innocent. There was more than one woman there, disguised in man's attire, and bent on the rescue of a child or a brother. There were the two sons of a man who lay under the sentence of death, and who was to be executed, along with three others, the next day but one. There was a great party of boys, whose fellow pickpockets were in the prison; and, at the skirts of all, a score of miserable women, outcasts from the world, seeking to release some other fellow creature as miserable as themselves, or moved by general sympathy, perhaps, God knows, with all who were without hope and wretched. "Old swords, and pistols without ball or powder; sledge-hammers, knives, axes, saws, and weapons pillaged from the butcher shops; a forest of iron bars and wooden clubs; long ladders for scaling the walls, each carried on the shoulders of a dozen men; lighted torches, tow smeared with pitch, and tar, and brimstone; staves roughly plucked from a fence and paling; and even crutches taken from crippled beggars on the streets composed their arms. When all was ready, Hugh and Dennis, with Simon Tappertit between them, led the way. Roaring and chafing like an angry sea, the crowd pressed after them." They halt upon the way to drag Gabriel Varden from his shop, in order to compel him to pick the lock of the prison gate. They march him at the head of the mob to the jail. They find that their visit was not wholly unexpected, "for the governor's house, which fronted the street, was strongly barricaded, the wicket of the prison gate was closed up, and at no loophole or grating was any person to be seen." The governor, inspecting the mob from the roof of his house, is summoned to surrender his charge. He refuses. The rabble call on the locksmith to pick the locks. He defies them, and is dragged away barely in time to save his life by Joe Willets and Edward Chester, who are in the mob in disguise. Then the assault on the jail begins. "Hammers began to rattle on the walls, and every man strove to reach the prison and be among the foremost rank. Fighting their way through the press and struggle as desperately as if they were in the midst of the enemies rather than their own friends, the two men retreated with the blacksmith between them, and dragged him through the very heart of the concourse.