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
Many, like Wainwright, were calm and imperturbable throughout their
trying ordeal. Catherine Wilson, the poisoner,[122] was reserved and
reticent to the last, expressing no contrition, but also no fear--a
tall, gaunt, repulsive-looking woman, who no more shrank from cowardly,
secret crimes than from the penalty they entailed. Kate Webster, who was
tried at the Central Criminal Court, and passed through Newgate,
although she suffered at Wandsworth, is remembered at the former prison
as a defiant, brutal creature who showed no remorse, but was subject to
fits of ungovernable passion, when she broke out into language the most
appalling. The man Marley[123] displayed fortitude of a less repulsive
kind. He acknowledged his guilt from the first. When the sheriff offered
him counsel for his defence, he declined, saying he wished to make
none--"the witnesses for the prosecution spoke the truth." During the
trial and after sentence he remained perfectly cool and collected. When
visited one day in the condemned cell, just as St. Sepulchre's clock was
striking, he looked up and said laughingly, "Go along, clock; come
along, gallows." He tripped up the chapel-stairs to hear the condemned
sermon, and came out with cheerful alacrity on the morning he was to
die.
Some condemned convicts converse but little with the warders who have
them unceasingly in charge. Others talk freely enough on various topics,
but principally upon their own cases. When vanity is strongly developed
there is the keen anxiety to hear what is being said about them outside.
One was vexed to think that his victims had a finer funeral than he
would have. The only subject another showed any interest in was the
theatres and the new pieces that were being produced. A third, Christian
Sattler, laughed and jested with the officers about "Jack Ketch," who,
through the postponement of the execution, would lose his Christmas
dinner. When they brought in the two watchers to relieve guard one
night, Sattler said, "Two fresh men! May I speak to them? Yes! I must
caution you," he went on to the warders, "not to go to sleep, or I shall
be off through that little hole," pointing to an aperture for
ventilating the cell. On the morning of execution he asked how far it
was to the gallows, and was told it was quite close. "Then I shall not
wear my coat," he cried; "Jack Ketch shall not have it," being under the
erroneous impression that the convict's clothes were still the
executioner's perquisite.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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