![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Marlowe, Nashe and Ben Jonson spent bleak times in the prison Dr Johnson and Dickens wrote about it. Inside its squalid labyrinths over the centuries all manner of men awaited the noose or the flames - from Catholic martyrs to Captain Kidd and Jack Sheppard, highwaymen and murderers. Despite its near-windowless walls, you could smell its deep stink as you walked past outside. Newgate was an awesome phenomenon, and it did loom over London's imagination as well as its heartland for centuries. Publishers' belief in the market for them is unflagging. Start with the Newgate Calendars of the 18th century, and it's clear that Kelly Grovier's book is the latest in a long line of such products. In the past decade, some dozen romping anecdotal compendia have been published about the poor wretches imprisoned in Newgate and hanged at Tyburn, where Marble Arch is now. Yet the rage of "going to Newgate" in effect continues. ![]() We remain incredulous about hanging people for what would now be thought small offences, and the casual brutality of the execution crowds who watched them in past centuries still shocks. "Y ou can't conceive the ridiculous rage there is of going to Newgate," Horace Walpole wrote in 1750, as he marvelled at the well-heeled voyeurs of both sexes who flocked to the prison to gawp at the highwayman Maclaine before he was hanged. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |