Free Newgate: London's Prototype of Hell by Stephen Halliday

Tyburn (for highway robbery) and a month later, on 9 December, nine men and women were hanged on the ‘New Drop’ outside Newgate’s Debtors Door in the Old Bailey. Not everyone welcomed the change. Dr Samuel Johnson was prominent among those who objected to the loss of the Tyburn processions, writing:
     
Executions are intended to draw spectators. If they do not draw spectators they don’t answer their purpose. The old method was most satisfactory to all parties; the public was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away? 14
     
    The doctor would no doubt have been consoled by the fact that the removal of the place of execution would do little to diminish either the size of the crowds that attended the executions or the unseemliness of their behaviour. Indeed, the coming of the railways in the following century ensured larger crowds than ever for executions outside Newgate, some railway companies advertising excursions for the purpose of viewing this gruesome entertainment. 15 The executions were carried out in public until May 1868, after which they took place within the prison walls. Altogether 1,167 people were executed at Newgate either outside or within the prison walls. The public executions at Newgate were compared by some writers with the gladiatorial spectacles of ancient Rome. Hepworth Dixon, who published a study of the London prisons in 1850 described the ritual whereby the scaffold would be erected at Newgate on a Sunday evening ready for the executions on Monday. He observed that ‘an execution is as good as a Lord Mayor’s show for the race of pickpockets’ thirty or more of whom could be arrested in a single morning, and he proceeded to make such a comparison which was echoed in the works of writers such as Dickens, Thackeray and Hardy:
     
This is in truth our circus, our gladiatorial arena. We Christians, who talk of Rome with measureless pity and contempt here prepare our feasts of blood. The scenes enacted in front of Newgate disgrace us in the eyes of Christendom. 16
     
    The seemliness of the executions gained nothing from a widespread belief that the ‘death sweat’ of the hanged would remove warts and other disfigurements if applied to the human body, leading to a stampede to touch the dead or expiring body. 17
    In 1840 two young writers attended the hanging at Newgate of a Swiss valet called François Courvoisier, who had been sentenced to death for killing his master, Lord William Russell. The assembled crowd was larger than usual because of the novelty of the spectacle of a servant who had murdered an aristocrat. Among them was Charles Dickens, who had rented a nearby balcony to be sure of a good view of the hanging, and the other writer, whom Dickens observed in the crowd from his vantage point, was William Thackeray. Dickens was there as a journalist while Thackeray had been persuaded to attend by his friend Richard Monkton Milnes, who hoped thereby to recruit the famous writer to the abolitionist cause. The event made a strong impression on both writers. Thackeray arrived at 4 a.m., four hours before the time appointed for the execution itself, to find a large crowd already gathered and discussing knowledgeably the finer points of this and similar occasions: ‘Which executions have you attended lately? Do you think he has the rope on yet? Will he be hanged facing the crowd or facing the wall?’ By 6 a.m. the space in front of the prison was full and the ‘ticket-holders’ like Charles Dickens, about 600 in number, were occupying their seats at windows and balconies. Ten pounds could be charged for a really good spot on the occasion of an especially notorious execution.
    There were many young people in the crowd along with family parties who had arrived well victualled as for a day out at the seaside in later years. Many were drunk, some were engaged in debauchery and others were busily spotting celebrities among the crowd, such as