The Chronicles of Newgate (Vol. 1&2). Griffiths Arthur
whom this protest comes) consider to be very unfit for such a trust. For redress, the sheriffs by all fair means have applied themselves divers times to the Lord Mayor and court of aldermen, who refuse to restore the said Wollaston. The sheriffs conceive that the trust and keeping of the said gaol, both by law and reason, ought to be in their disposition, and that it is inseparable, incident to, and of common right belonging to their office, they being liable to punishments for any escapes, and amerciaments for non-appearance of prisoners in Her Majesty’s courts of justice, with many other such like damages and fears.”
How the case was finally settled does not appear. But the matter was one in which the king (Charles I.) would probably claim to have a voice. The appointment might be in the gift and actually made by the Corporation, but the city authorities were often invited by the Court to put in some royal nominee, a request which might easily be interpreted into a command. Thus in April 1594, the Lords of the Council addressed the mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs, soliciting them to appoint Richard Hutchman, one of Her Majesty’s sergeants-at-arms, keeper of Newgate, vice Dios, deceased. In June the Corporation reply that they regret they cannot appoint Hutchman. The Lords’ Council now issue a peremptory order to place him in office, which was done, but the Corporation was not to be beaten. Next year a fresh representation is made to the Lords in Council, stating the reasons why the city authorities had dismissed Mr. Hutchman from his place.
Another State paper, dated 1633, gives a draft of a letter recommending one A. B. for the appointment of keeper, vacant by the “nomination of one not deemed to have been legally put in.” Some seventy years later, according to another authority, the question was definitely settled. In this (dated 1708) it is set forth that “the keeper of the prison holds that place of great trust under the queen (Anne), giving about £8000 security, and the prison is turned over to each of the new sheriffs when sworn in by delivering them a key. The place is in the gift of the Lord Mayor and aldermen.”
Let us return to Mediæval Newgate. Whatever the authority, whether royal or civic, the condition of the inmates must have been wretched in the extreme, as the few brief references to them in the various records will sufficiently prove. The place was full of horrors; the gaolers rapacious and cruel. In 1334 an official inquiry was made into the state of the gaol, and some of the atrocities practised were brought to light. Prisoners detained on minor charges were cast into deep dungeons, and there associated with the worst criminals. All were alike threatened, nay tortured, till they yielded to the keepers’ extortions, or consented to turn approvers and swear away the lives of innocent men. These poor prisoners were dependent upon the charity and good-will of the benevolent for food and raiment. As far back as 1237 it is stated that Sir John Pulteney gave four marks by the year to the relief of prisoners in Newgate. In the year 1385 William Walworth, the stalwart mayor whose name is well remembered in connection with Wat Tyler’s rebellion, gave “somewhat” with the same good object. “So have many others since,” says the record. The water supply of the prison, Stowe tells, was also a charitable gift. “Thomas Knowles, grocer, sometime Mayor of London, by license of Reynold, prior of St. Bartholomew’s in Smithfield, and also of John Wakering, master of the hospital of St. Bartholomew, and his brethren, conveyed the waste of water at the cistern near unto the common fountain and Chapel of St. Nicholas (situate by the said hospital) to the gaols of Ludgate and Newgate, for the relief of the prisoners.”
In 1451, by the will of Phillip Malpas, who had been a sheriff some twelve years previous, the sum of £125 was bequeathed to “the relief of poor prisoners.” This Malpas, it may be mentioned here, was a courageous official, ready to act promptly in defence of city rights. In 1439 a prisoner under escort from Newgate to Guildhall was rescued from the officer’s hands by five companions, after which all took sanctuary at the college of St. Martin’s-le-Grand.[23] “But Phillip Malpas and Robert Marshal, the sheriffs of London, were no sooner acquainted with the violence offered to their officer and the rescue of their prisoner, than they, at the head of a great number citizens, repaired to the said college, and forcibly took from thence the criminal and his rescuers, whom they carried in fetters to the Compter, and thence, chained by the necks, to Newgate.”
For food the prisoners were dependent upon alms or upon articles declared forfeit by the law. Thus some bread of light weight, seized on the 10th August 1298, was ordered to be given to the prisoners in Newgate. Again, the halfpenny loaf of light bread of Agnes Foting of Stratford was found wanting 7 shillings (or 4⅕ oz.) in weight; therefore it was adjudged that her bread should be forfeited, and it also was sent unto the gaol. All food sold contrary to the statutes of the various guilds was similarly forfeited to the prisoners. The practice of giving food was continued through succeeding years, and to a very recent date. A long list of charitable donations and bequests might be made out, bestowed either in money or in kind. A customary present was a number of stones of beef. Some gave penny loaves, some oatmeal, some coals. Without this benevolence it would have gone hard with the poor population of the Gatehouse gaol. It was not strange that the prison should be wasted by epidemics, as when in 1414 “the gaoler died and prisoners to the number of sixty-four;” or that the inmates should at times exhibit a desperate turbulence, taking up arms and giving constituted authority much trouble to subdue them, as in 1457 when they broke out of their several wards in Newgate, and got upon the leads, where they defended themselves with great obstinacy against the sheriffs and their officers, insomuch that they, the sheriffs, were obliged to call the citizens to their assistance, whereby the prisoners were soon reduced to their former state.
The evil effects of incarceration in Newgate may be further judged by the fate which overtook the city debtors who were temporarily removed thither from Ludgate. An effort had been made in 1419 to put pressure upon them as a class. An ordinance was issued by Henry V. closing the Ludgate prison for debtors. It had been found that “many false men of bad disposition and purpose have been more willing to take up their abode there, so as to waste and spend their goods upon the ease and license that there is within, than pay their debts.” Wherefore it was ordained that “all prisoners therein shall be removed and safely carried to Newgate, there to remain each in such keeping as his own deserts shall demand.” The order was, however, very speedily rescinded. A later ordinance in the same year sets forth that “whereas, through the abolition and doing away with the prison of Ludgate, which was formerly ordained for the good and comfort of citizens and other reputable persons, and also by reason of the fœtid and corrupt atmosphere that is in the hateful gaol of Newgate, many persons who lately were in the said prison of Ludgate, who in the time of William Sevenoke, late mayor, for divers great offences which they had there compassed were committed to the said gaol (of Newgate), are now dead, who might have been living, it is said, if they had
The Gaoler
remained at Ludgate abiding in peace there; and seeing that every person is sovereignly bound to support and be tender to the lives of men, the which God hath bought so dearly with His precious blood; therefore Richard Whittington, now mayor (1419), and the aldermen, on Saturday the 2nd November, have ordained and established that the gaol of Ludgate shall be a prison from henceforth to keep therein all citizens and other reputable persons whom the mayor, aldermen, sheriffs, or chamberlain of the city shall think proper to commit and send to the same, provided always that the warder shall be a good and loyal man, giving sufficient surety,” &c. Ten or twelve years later a similar exodus from Ludgate to Newgate and back again took place. “On the Tuesday next after Palm Sunday 1431, all the prisoners of Ludgate were conveyed into Newgate by Walter Chartsey and Robert Large, sheriffs of London, and on the 13th April the same sheriffs (through the false suggestion of John Kingesell, gaoler of Newgate) did fetch from thence eighteen persons, freemen, and these were led to the Counters pinioned as if they had been felons. But on the 16th June Ludgate was again appointed for freemen, prisoners for debt, and the same day the same freemen entered by ordinance of the mayor, aldermen, and commons; and by them Henry Deane, tailor, was made keeper of Ludgate.”
One other charitable bequest must be referred to here, as proving that the moral no less than the physical well-being of the prisoners was occasionally an object of solicitude. In the reign of Richard II. a prayer-book was specially bequeathed to Newgate in the following terms:—
“Be it remembered that