Strona 127 z 896

They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street outside

Newgate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that has since

attached to it. But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most

kinds of debauchery and villainy were practised, and where dire

diseases were bred, that came into court with the prisoners, and

sometimes rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief Justice

himself, and pulled him off the bench. It had more than once

happened, that the Judge in the black cap pronounced his own doom

as certainly as the prisoner's, and even died before him. For the

rest, the Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard,

from which pale travellers set out continually, in carts and

coaches, on a violent passage into the other world: traversing

some two miles and a half of public street and road, and shaming

few good citizens, if any. So powerful is use, and so desirable

to be good use in the beginning.