The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 2/2Griffiths, Arthur
History
The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 2/2
Griffiths, Arthur
Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England); Prisons -- England; Punishment -- Great Britain
The change from Tyburn to the Old Bailey had worked no improvement as
regards the gathering together of the crowd or its demeanour. As many
spectators as ever thronged to see the dreadful show, and they were
packed into a more limited space, disporting themselves as heretofore by
brutal horse-play, coarse jests, and frantic yells. It was still the
custom to offer warm encouragement or bitter disapproval, according to
the character and antecedents of the sufferer. The highwayman, whose
exploits many in the crowd admired or emulated, was cheered and bidden
to die game; the man of better birth could hope for no sympathy,
whatever his crime. At the execution of Governor Wall, in 1802, the
furious hatred of the mob was plainly apparent in their appalling cries.
His appearance on the scaffold was the signal for three prolonged shouts
from an innumerable populace, "the brutal effusion of one common
sentiment." It was said that so large a crowd had never collected since
the execution of Mrs. Brownrigg, nor had the public indignation risen so
high. Pieman and ballad-monger did their usual roaring trade amidst the
dense throng. No sooner was the "job" finished than half-a-dozen
competitors appeared, each offering the identical rope for sale at a
shilling an inch. One was the "yeoman of the halter," a Newgate
official, the executioner's assistant, whom Mr. J. T. Smith,[91] who was
present at the execution, describes as "a most diabolical-looking little
wretch--Jack Ketch's head man." The yeoman was, however, under-sold by
his wife, "Rosy Emma," exuberant in talk and hissing hot from Pie
Corner, where she had taken her morning dose of gin-and-bitters.[92] A
little further off, says Mr. Smith, was "a lath of a fellow past
three-score years and ten, who had just arrived from the purlieus of
Black Boy Alley, woebegone as Romeo's apothecary, exclaiming, 'Here's
the identical rope at sixpence an inch.'"
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