dition of affairs. The governor of the day, one Mr. Cope, had his own notions of the management of prison. When Newgate was not quite so full as usual he shut up one side of it and crowded the prisoners into the other. As many as four slept on a rope mat under " dirty stable rugs, and those who took the trouble to wash did so at the tap in the yard." A convicted prisoner acted as the "wardsman" of a room, exacted what fees he could, monopolised the supply of provisions, and generally ruled the roost. The governor himself hardly ever saw his prisoners. A newsman brought in the newspapers, flash prints, and tobacco, and a potman from a neighbouring tavern fetched beer in unlimited quantities. Fights were frequent, an enthusiastic ring being formed around the combatants. Untried prisoners might see their friends three times a week, convicted prisoners once a week; and 66 women saw men if they merely pretended to be wives." Prisoners condemned to death, including those who were certain to suffer and those who had every hope of being reprieved, were jumbled up together, higgledy-piggledy, the old and the young. 66 Those who were to suffer made a gala morning for the town. When, in the late autumn of 1783, the Tyburn saturnalia ceased, the grisly festival was revived at Newgate. In 1817 George Cruikshank, passing one day through the Old Bailey, saw the bodies of several men and two women hanging from Newgate gallows. They had suffered, he was told, for the forging of onepound notes. Straightway he returned to his house in Dorset Street, Salisbury Square, and made the sketch of that wonderful "Bank Restriction Note" which, published by courageous William Hone, excited some measure of pity and of horror. Cruikshank himself tells us that when the "Note" appeared in Hone's shop windows "it created a great sensation, and the people gathered round his house in such numbers that the Lord Mayor had to send the City police (of that day) to disperse the crowd." He adds: "The Bank directors held a meeting immediately upon the subject, and after that they issued no more one-pound notes, and so there was no more hanging for passing forged one-pound notes; not only that, but ultimately no hanging even for forgery. After this Sir Robert Peel got a Bill passed in Parliament, for the Resumption of cash payments.' After this he revised the Penal Code, and after that there was not any more hanging or punishment of death for minor offences.' These exemplary activities did not all, perhaps, flow from the celebrated "Note "; but Cruikshank, a man of ideals, should reap his due. 66 Thirty-two years passed, and then came Dickens with his memorable letters to The Times. On the morning of November 13, 1849, Dickens saw the two Mannings, husband and wife, hanged in front of Horsemonger Lane Gaol for the murder (as gross a one as is recorded) of the moneylender O'Connor. "I believe,' "I believe," said Dickens, in The Times, that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at that execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and could be presented in no heathen land under the sun. The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks, and language of the assembled spectators. When I came upon the scene at midnight, the shrillness of the cries and howls that were raised from time to time, denoting that they came from a concourse of boys and girls already assembled in the best places, made my blood run cold. As the night went on, screeching and laughing, and yelling in strong chorus of parodies on negro melodies, with substitutions of 'Mrs. Manning' for Susannah,' and the like, were added to these. When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians, and vagabonds of every kind, flocked on to the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour. Fightings, faintings, whist |