Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Introduction
- PART I IN THE BEGINNING, 600–1500
- PART II SQUALOR CARCERIS, 1500–1750
- 4 Bridewells, Counters and the Clink
- 5 Higher than the Stars
- 6 Treason in the Cheese
- 7 Plague, Pudding and Pie
- 8 A Newgate Pastoral
- 9 The Ordinary and Extra-Ordinary
- 10 Gaol Delivery
- PART III EXPERIMENTATION WITH IMPRISONMENT, 1750–1863
- PART IV PUNISH AND BE DAMNED, 1863–1895
- PART V THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, 1895–1965
- PART VI SAFE AND SECURE? 1965–2018
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - The Ordinary and Extra-Ordinary
from PART II - SQUALOR CARCERIS, 1500–1750
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Introduction
- PART I IN THE BEGINNING, 600–1500
- PART II SQUALOR CARCERIS, 1500–1750
- 4 Bridewells, Counters and the Clink
- 5 Higher than the Stars
- 6 Treason in the Cheese
- 7 Plague, Pudding and Pie
- 8 A Newgate Pastoral
- 9 The Ordinary and Extra-Ordinary
- 10 Gaol Delivery
- PART III EXPERIMENTATION WITH IMPRISONMENT, 1750–1863
- PART IV PUNISH AND BE DAMNED, 1863–1895
- PART V THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, 1895–1965
- PART VI SAFE AND SECURE? 1965–2018
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
There are six men to be hanged, one of whom has a wife near her confinement, also condemned, and several young children. Since the awful report has come down, he has become quite mad, from horror of mind. A strait waistcoat could not keep him within bounds – he had just bitten the turnkey, I saw the man come out with his hand bleeding, as I passed the cell.
Elizabeth FryThe law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who takes things that are yours and mine.
Seventeenth- or eighteenth-century balladAs the eighteenth century wore on, and as capital statutes proliferated, blossoming into what became known as the Bloody Code, more and more prisoners in Newgate would be awaiting trial for crimes for which the punishment was death, and more and more spent their last days in the condemned cell. Judges in black caps passed the death sentence; chaplains ministered to the doomed; hangmen duly dispatched them; governors kept busts of their more prominent executees as macabre trophies.
In the few days between sentence and execution the condemned were left to the tender care of the Newgate chaplain, the ‘ordinary’ or ‘the great bishop of the cells’ as he was called. The title ‘ordinary’ dates from 1544 when one of the four chaplains at St Bartholomew's Hospital was delegated to ‘visit all the poor and miserable captives … and minister unto them such ordinary service at time convenient, as is appointed by the King's majesty’. In 1620 the first resident ordinary was appointed. Newgate was unusual in this provision. It was not until an Act of 1773 that justices of the peace were permitted, but not compelled, to appoint chaplains to their prisons and to pay them from the local rates, and not until 1824 that they had to. Before that, county gaols and town lock-ups made do with such visitations as the local clergy cared to make. Of these, Dissenters were the most dedicated and diligent.
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- Shades of the Prison HouseA History of Incarceration in the British Isles, pp. 100 - 111Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2019