Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Knowledge -- Prisons; Prisons; Prisons -- England -- London; Prisons in literature
The entrance to Newgate is through the keeper's lodge, which, with the
house in which the keeper lives, occupies the centre of what has been
well called "this vast quarry of stone." It fronts on the Old Bailey.
The prisoner's quarters are in the wings, which extend from either side
of the keeper's quarters. In the gloomy office, men with that
indescribable prison air all such officials bear, lounge about, and come
and go on business. There is iron everywhere, from the huge bolts on the
outer doors, and the door inside of them, to the barred windows and
other doors beyond number, that open and shut with a sullen clangor that
goes echoing through the stone passages as if it would never die away.
The smell of the jail is as powerful in its way as these evidences of
its actual strength. It blows into your face in a strong breath when the
door opens for you, and you find it lingering about you hours after your
visit has been made. Some scientist ought to analyze this odor of the
prison. It is unique. A soldier's barracks, a hospital, a ship's
forecastle--all places, in short, where men live in close quarters--have
an odor that tells of their origin; but the scent of the jail is
different from all, and as horrible as the thing it recalls to you
whenever you breathe it, or fancy you do.
"What London pedestrian is there," writes Dickens, in chapter 24 in the
"Sketches by Boz," "who has not, at some time or other, cast a hurried
glance through the wicket at which the prisoners are admitted into this
gloomy mansion, and surveyed the few objects he could discern, with an
indescribable feeling of curiosity. The thick door, plated with iron,
and mounted with spikes just low enough to enable you to see leaning
over them an ill-looking fellow, in a broad-brimmed hat, Belcher
handkerchief and top-boots; with a brown coat, something between a
great-coat and a 'sporting' jacket, on his back, and an immense key in
his left hand. Perhaps you are lucky enough to pass just as the gate is
being opened; then, you see on the other side of the lodge another gate,
the image of its predecessor, and two or three more turnkeys, who look
like multiplications of the first one, seated around a fire, which just
lights up the white-washed apartment sufficiently to enable you to catch
a glimpse of these different objects." In the next paper of the same
series, he conducts us within the lodge. "One side is plentifully
garnished with a choice collection of heavy sets of irons, including
those worn by the redoubtable Jack Sheppard--genuine; and those said to
have been graced by the sturdy limbs of the no less celebrated Dick
Turpin--doubtful. From this lodge a heavy oaken gate, bound with iron,
studded with nails of the same material, and guarded by another turnkey,
opens on a few steps, if we remember right, which terminate in a narrow
and dismal stone passage, running parallel with the Old Bailey and
leading to the different yards, through a number of tortuous and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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