However well meant and well directed were these efforts, it is to be feared that they were of little avail in stemming the torrent of crime which long continued to deluge the country, and which has far from abated even now. The character of offences perpetrated will best be understood by passing from the general to the particular, and briefly indicating the salient points of a certain number of typical cases, all of which were in some way or other connected with Newgate. Crime was confined to no one class; while the lowest robbed with brutal violence, members of the highest stabbed and murdered each other on flimsy pretences, or found funds for debauchery in systematic and cleverly contrived frauds. Life was held very cheap in those days. Every one with any pretensions carried a sword, and appealed to it on the slightest excuse or [Illustration] provocation. Murderous duels and affrays were of constant occurrence. So-called affairs of honour could only be washed out in blood. Sometimes it was a causeless quarrel in a club or coffee-house ending in a fatal encounter. Richard Savage the poet was tried for his life for a murder of this kind. In company with two friends, all three of them being the worse for drink, he forced his way into a private room in Robinson’s coffee-house, near Charing Cross, occupied by another party carousing. One of Savage’s friends kicked down the table without provocation. “What do you mean by that?” cried one side. “What do _you_ mean?” cried the other. Swords were drawn, and a fight ensued. Savage, who found himself in front of one Sinclair, made several thrusts at his opponent, and ran him through the body. Lights were put out, and Savage tried to escape, but was captured in a back court. He and his associates were committed first to the gatehouse and thence to Newgate. Three weeks later they were arraigned at the Old Bailey, found guilty of murder, and cast for death.[151] The king’s pardon was, however, obtained for Savage through the intercession of influential friends, but contrary, it is said, to the expressed wish of his mother. Savage was the illegitimate child of the Countess of Macclesfield, the fruit of a guilty intrigue with Captain Richard Savage, afterwards Earl Rivers. Lady Macclesfield was divorced, and subsequently married Lord Rivers; but she conceived a violent hatred for the child, and only consented to settle an annuity of £50 upon him when grown to man’s estate, under threat of exposure in the first publication of Savage’s poems. Savage, after his release from Newgate, retired into Wales, but he continued in very distressed circumstances, and being arrested for debt, lingered out the remainder of his days in Bristol Gaol.