The prisoners were so crowded together in dark dungeons, that the air becoming corrupted by the stench, occasioned a disease called the "goal distemper," of which they died by dozens every day. Cartloads of dead bodies were carried out of the prison and thrown in a pit in the burying-ground of Christ's Church without ceremony. The effluvia in the year 1750 was so horrible that it made a pestilence in the whole district. Four judges who sat in the Session, a Lord Mayor, several aldermen, and other civic dignitaries were carried off by the distemper, together with a number of lawyers and jurors present at the trials of Newgate criminals. [Sidenote: GETTING WEAK IN THE BACK.] Then at last the prison was cleansed, and a system of ventilation introduced, which made some improvement in the condition of the prisoners. Still, Newgate was a disgrace to Christendom, and just one hundred years ago Parliament made a grant of £50,000 to construct a prison. Beckford, author of Vathek, and then Lord Mayor of London, laid the first stone. In 1780, Lord George Gordon, with his No-Popery rioters, burned down that part of the prison which had been constructed, and set at liberty three hundred of the prisoners confined there. £40,000 in addition had to be granted before the building was completed. On an average there are between two and three hundred prisoners held in durance in Newgate, and twelve sessions are held during the year at the adjoining Old Bailey Court for their trial. This is called the Central Criminal Court, and it is here, in this very court, that Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, Sixteen String Jack, Tom King, and all the other heroes of the yellow covered literature, were tried, condemned, taken in fetters to Newgate, and from thence to Tyburn Tree to hang by the neck until they were dead. The Judges of the Old Bailey Court are the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, Recorder, and Common Sergeant of London, and the Judges of the Courts at Westminster Hall, who sit here by rotation to assist, by their superior legal knowledge, the inferior local magistrates. The prison is divided into a male and female side, but beyond this there is little classification; the pickpocket, the swindler, the embezzler, the murderer, are all associated together; while the hardened offender and the one who is merely suspected of crime, but too often share the same cell, and feed at the same board. There are separate cells, so that every one averse to society may dwell alone if he or she chooses, but in conversation with the turnkeys, I learned that the privilege was rarely claimed.