One of the most brutal prisons inside of London was Newgate Prison.
It was built in the 12th century around the year 1188, and was closed in the 20th century
in 1902.
Today the criminal courtrooms that were attached to the site make up the Old Bailey, the famous
criminal courts in London.
But in the late 1700s, there was a shift in the executions in London as public hangings
were moved from Tyburn and the triangular gallows there to Newgate Prison.
But what was live life inside of this prison?
Join us today as we look at the notorious prison that executed hundreds.
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The first part of Newgate Prison was built in the 12th century, but then in the following
decades steps were made to enlarge the prison, and these additions included new dungeons
and other buildings.
By the 1400s, Newgate was in need of more expansion and repair, and it was said that
the women’s quarters were too small and did not even have toilets, meaning that women
had to walk through the mens prison to find a toilet.
The building was also collapsing in places, and many prisoners who were house in Newgate
were actually dying from the conditions there.
There was a severe problem with overcrowding, and also disease as it ran rampant throughout
the unsanitary conditions.
22 prisoners in one year died from Jail fever, and the prison in 1419 was shut down because
of the dire conditions.
Renovations took place in 1422 with the gatehouse and the jail being rebuilt.
In this new prison there was a main hall for meal time, a new chapel and also more cells
and a few that had no light or ventilation for the most serious offenders.
There were three main wards, one for those who could pay for their own food and accommodation,
a common side for the poor people and another ward for special prisoners.
The rulers at the time would use Newgate as a place to house traitors, serious criminals,
heretics and also rebels, and it could hold around 300 prisoners.
But during the Great Fire of London in 1666, the prison caught fire and was destroyed and
it was then later rebuilt by Christopher Wren.
Parliament then in 1770 would enlarge the prison again and add a new court room, spending
almost in today’s money around 10 million pounds on Newgate.
Another fire gutted the building causing millions of pounds of repairs in 1780, before prison
reformers began to express more concern about the conditions there.
Elizabeth Fry in particular was distressed by the cells which were housing women and
also their children, and her call for reform did improve things before the prison closed
in 1902.
But as mentioned, Newgate held many different prisoners from those guilty of petty crime
to serious criminals who committed murder who would be held before their execution took
place.
When prisoners arrived at Newgate, they were chained and led to their dungeon, and those
who were sentenced to death were kept inside a cellar found beneath the Keeper’s house.
This was practically an open sewer which had chains and shackles lined along it where prisoners
were held.
The dungeons were so bad in these quarters that doctors would refuse to go in.
Some prisoners who could afford alcohol spent their time mostly drunk, and there was lice
everywhere which caused problems with disease.
Many people each year were killed by the conditions, and some jailers were bribed to give prisoners
more food, better bedding or even to be released from their shackles.
Also to earn more money, some jailers would torture prisoners.
It was not the most secure prison, as some people did escape.
Burglar Jack Sheppard escaped twice before he was executed at the gallows at Tyburn in
1724.
But Newgate Prison became the site of London’s gallows in 1783.
For centuries many people had been killed at the infamous triangular gallows at Tyburn,
but then the site of the gallows was changed to Newgate Prison.
The crowds would flock to Newgate to witness public hangings which occurred on platforms
outside of the prison walls.
It was London’s main prison and continued to attract large crowds for executions.
Some people could also visit the condemned in prison if they had a permit from the Lord
Mayor of London.
At the time of the shift, the condemned were kept in small and narrow cells separated by
a thick wall, and they only had dim light from an inner courtyard.
The gallows had been made outside a door in Newgate Street, and the platform here allowed
for thousands to see from a distance away.
Huge crowds of thousands of people would line the streets to see the executions, and the
crowds were so big at one execution in 1807, that there was a huge human crush and many
died from the crush.
As things shifted throughout England with regards to public executions, there was a
call to give some dignity to the condemned.
Because of this, from 1868, public executions were moved inside the walls of the prison
on a gallows inside of Newgate prison.
They used to begin with the same mobile gallows inside the Chapel Yard, and later were put
in a shed built closely inside the walls.
The gallows were found near a stone passageway referred to as Dead Mans Walk, and then condemned
criminals would be taken onto the gallows and executed, before they were buried beneath
the flagstones of the prison.
Their initials would be engraved on the stone wall above.
Many executioners were even trained at Newgate before they took the lives of other people
around England.
In total, 1169 people were executed at Newgate Prison during it’s time in operation, and
the last man to be hanged in public outside Newgate was Michael Barrett in May 1868, and
George Woolfe was the last hanged in Newgate’s shed on the 6th May 1902.
Throughout the centuries, there were many famous prisoners housed in Newgate Prison
including Oscar Wilde, William Penn, John Rogers and Catherine Murphy.
But it was one of the toughest and most brutal prisons inside of London, with the conditions
being very difficult inside of the prison.
Newgate became a site of mass execution, and the crowds would flock to the site to witness
executions even up until the day when the final one took place outside the prisons walls.
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