CURIOSITIES OF NEWGATE.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 80, 13 December 1884, Page 5

CURIOSITIES OF NEWGATE.

To study the Bastile, and what passed within its walls, from the day its cells were first opened until an angry people stormed the building and set free the captives, is to get a glimpse of French statecraft and character surpassing in importance) and vividness anything the ordinary national documents covering the same period have to toll. The story of the Newgate of our own country has an even greater value. Newgate is much older than the Bastile. It is believed to have an history that goes back as far as the building of the Tower. It was a prison-house in the time of King John, and it is a prison-house to-day. Itjisnot, itistrue, the building it was when the Great Charter was drawn up ; but it has always been a place for offenders, real or imaginary, and the time is out of reckoning when the name suggested one of the entrances to the city, and not a place of doom. There is a good deal that is quaint about Newgate. The saddest thing of all about the Newgate of the past is that persons are known to have been detained in it as though on a life sentence, in thorough defiance of the constitutional rights of arraigument and

trial. There died in the prison in September, 1732, a man who had been forty years an inmate, who had never been convicted, and who is not supposed ts have been guilty of the. offence which was made the excuse for his detention. Macaulay mentions the case in his picturesque fashion as being that of a man whose long imprisonment at length shocked a generation which could not remember his crime. This unfortunate was a soldier. He fought under James 11. in Ireland, and had risen to the rank of major. As he had previously served in the Dutch army under the Prince of Orange, suspicion rested upon him in 1696, when arrests were made in connection -\\ ith the plots on the life of William 111. Eight persons A\ere duly tried, convicted, and executed for their share in the attempted assassination ; but against this officer — Major John Bernardi by name — and five others there was an absence of evidence. It was thought, however, that evidence would be forthcoming ; and to give time for this the Government of the day went to the extreme course of suspending the Habeas Corpus Act for nine months. When the nine months came to an end, and evidence to secure a conviction was still unattainable, the judges remanded the case for a foitnight, and in the interval an Act of Parliament was passed authorising the imprisonment of the men for another year. The injustice thus begun was perpetuated. A second measure of like purport was enacted, and eventually a third bill passed into law authorising the confinement of Bernardi and his companions during His Majesty's pleasure. "His Majesty's pleasure " was tantamount to asentence of imprisonment during the King's life, for it was not until the King died that these poor men were again heard from. This was in 1703. The prisoners then applied to be tried or to be admitted to bail. It was an unfortunate application. Parliament fell back upon precedent, and passed an Act to confine the prisoners during the pleasure of Queen Anne. Anne was more merciful than William. She released one of the six, but when she died Parliament repeated the injustice, and successive Acts condemned the unhappy men to remain in gaol during the pleasure of George I. and again of George 11. There came ©rders of release, however, against which all human schemes were powerless. When George 11. ascended the throne there were only Bernardi and two others alive ; and eventually Bernardi, now an octogenarian, was alone left to petition in the vain quest for justice. For him, as for the others, the only release was death. His long detention in Newgate, however, was not all gloom. Fortunately for him, prison discipline was much more lax then than it is now. Newgate became a roof-tree to the poor prisoner. He courted and married within the walls of the gaol ; and his wife, in every way a helpmeet to him, bore him ten children. Bernardi was entitled to all the liberty the prison officials could allow him, But there were some prisoners who were arrant rogues, to whom privileges were accorded that seem almost incredible in these days. In not a few instances, men convicted of capital offences were allowed to hold levees and to welcome any number of friends, A notable example of this class was the notorious Claude Duval. Duval was a handsome rascal, and being a Frenchman, he had a certain amount of politeness which rather helped than hindered him in his nefarious trade ; but in no sense was he the " honest rogue "of the Rob Roy type. He would rob men on Houhslow Heath to the last farthing ; but he was gallant in his way, and if a lady would so far forget her terror as to dance with him she was permitted t» pass on without further molestation, and with the greater par tof, if not all, her money. This did not prevent a price being put on JDuval's head, and his name is first on the list in an old proclamation against highwaymen. But it was not the era of detectives, and the old watchmen were a terror k> no one. Moreover, Claude Duval was quick at fence, and a sure and steady hand with a pistol. So long, therefore, as he attended strictly to his " business," he was safe. He was in danger only when in search of pleasure. And so it happened that the highwayman was caught one night when overcome with wine in a tavern. When he came to his senses he was in Newgate. There are accounts of his trial in the papers of the time. There was evidence enough against him to convict a dozen Duvals, and Judge Morton took care that the gallows should have its own. Nevertheless, it is a strange commentary on the times of Charles 11. that this monarch was approached by courtly dames with tears in their eyes, begging him to spare the life of this goodlooking felon. The King was on the point of granting a pardon, when the judge interfered with a threat of resignation if the law were not carried into effect. The best of a bad bargain was then made. The culprit held receptions in the prison ; and when Jack Ketch had done his grim function, the body was l'emoved with much display to a mortuary chamber in a tavern— the Tangier in St. Giles's — where there were mutes and escutchions and tapers, and other miserable paraphernalia. There lay the body in state until once again Judge Morton interf erred and put a stop to the disgusting exhibition. Some curious sentences were carried out in this historic prison-house, and this was particularly the case in regard to penalties for adulteration and cheating. There was the pillory for the merchant whose sample was of better quality than his consignment, and for the shopkeeper who sold unv/holesome meat. But there was more than the pillory for the taverner whose supplies would not stand the test of good quality. He was compelled, in addition, to take a bath in his own vile liquor. On one occasion a citizen accused the civic authorities of conspiracy, and for this offence he was condemned to appear in the pillory four times in the year, and to wear a chain round his neck, from which dangled a whetstone, with the inscription, " False liar." The whetstone was intended as a sort of satire. It was supposed to mean that an untruthful tongue

required sharpening, or that a man who was a liar must improve in his art, seeing that as he had been found out, no one was likely to believe him when he spoke the truth. Penalties of this nature seem generally to have been rigorously enforced. But frequently when the sentence involved more serious consequences the prisoner managed i with but little difficulty to secure pardon, It fared well with one William Dominie, who should have been hanged for stealing I*4, but " being an excellent drummer, fit to do the King service," he was reprieved .ii:d pardoned, another reason for his lucky escape being that it was his first offence. Often enough men" "fit to do the King service " had the doors opened to them, and occasionally culprits would obtain their liberty on consenting to go abroad. Men enough to form a company of soldiers, with a woman at their head to serve as a vivandiere, marched out of Newgate in 1629, " to the end that they be employed in the service of the King of Sweden " — the King of Sweden at that time being none other than Gustavus Vasa. Money and influence would generally help a man out of most scrapes in those old prison days. A Captain Campbell, brother of the Macallum More of the time, abducted in 1690 a girl of sixteen, who had a fortune of £50,000, and married the girl. The captain's family name was his pastport to liberty, but Sir John Johnson, who had helped to carry off the girl, was hanged for his share in the transaction . The marriage was declared void by Act of Parliament. There were many similar cases in the seventeenth century. A Clifford stopped a coach on Ilounslow Heath in the approved fashion of the period, and carried off the occupant, an heiress, to Calais, where the lady was forced to marry him. There was an outcry, and the lady was rescued. Clifford stood his trial, pleading guilty, but his excuse that "he saw no other wav of winning her " must have gone in mitigation of sentence, seeing that he got off with a fine of ±1,000 and a year's detention in Newgate. A more famous case of this description was the abduction of Lady Ogle by Count Konigsmark in 1652. Konigsmark was a Swede. The lady Mas but a child of thirteen. Nevertheless she was a widow.'for her " housen and lands " had caused her to be married early, and her beauty had brought about a second marriage, much against her will, with Thomas Thynne, who was as rich as his little wife. After the second marriage, the lady went abroad and saw Konigsmark, who did w hat he could to engage her affections. Young as she w as, the lady knew where her duty lay, and repulsed the count. Thereupon Konigsmark set to work to remove the obstacle in the ■« ay. He hired a party of assassins, ■« ho waylaid Thynne and killed him. The principal and his assistants were arrested, and the latter were hanged, but Konigsmark, who had money at his command, spent it freely in bribes, and succeeded in getting out of the country and cheating Tyburn. It is only within a century or so that the horrors of Newgate and other gaols of the country have ceased to exist. Much that was wrong in prison management has only been remedied in our own time. The good work began when John Howard started on his "circumnavigation of charity." The system in our day is to pay the governor of a prison as we pay any other public official, and the salary is high enough to command the services of men of honour and education. The old style was to give the governorship of a gaol to the highest bidder. Howard found many gaols in England where gaolers had paid large sums to secure the appointment. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the Governor of Newgate paid £1,000 for the place, and did not consider the price too much. He became head, as it were, of a penal boarding-house. The poverty-stricken offender got little or nothing to eat, and led worse than a dog's life in gaol. The man who had money at his command fared better, but it was at a heavy cost. There were " select " parts of Newgate, for admission to which a fee of twenty guineas was extracted, Beds had to be paid for in addition. Enormous sums were charged for specially-cooked meals. One governor is said to have cleared £1,000 a month from the office, and as every undergaoler exacted fees, it will be inferred that imprisonment after the old style in England not only deprived a man of his liberty, but was apt to reduce him to beggary. — "Tit Bits.