Newgate Prison

It began.

So Newgate Prison, which shows up in True Weird Stuff a lot, that's where the Ogress of Reading was hanged.

That's where the woman in the Jack the Ripper case was hanged.

So the Newgate Prison began publishing a monthly pamphlet about executions.

And that was very popular.

And so other publishers in England at the time stole the idea and began putting out these little short books about notorious criminals, including Sawney Bean.

Now, friend of the pod, why is this church important to us?

So very close to Newgate Prison.

And these are the last bells that you hear if you're condemned.

And they will chime the night before, but then they'll chime the day as well.

Newgate,

squeezing his way past the Newgate prison execution bell mounted on a pillar in the south aisle, trying hard not to look at it.

He would likely have preferred to be anywhere else, but he wanted organ lessons, and his father sang in the choir.

So, there he was.

They didn't leave London until November.

And during that time, Elizabeth was going to Newgate Jail, meeting with the ladies committee of the group that Elizabeth Fry was running.

And John Falloon, her husband, actually says in a letter to Lord Bathurst, chasing that money because they hadn't been paid, he says, my wife, my lord, is meeting with Mrs Fry, who is showing her how to manage the female prisoners.

which tells us that Elizabeth Fry was involved at that point, but also tells us that Elizabeth Falloon at that point probably knew nothing about how to run a prison or how to manage female prisoners.

So basically, a man called William Addis comes onto the scene.

William Addis was in jail in Newgate Prison in the 1780s.

And while he's in his cell, he's cleaning his teeth with a rag or a cloth or something like that.

And, you know, you can imagine he's glancing around the cell and he sees a broom.

Does it reform the criminal? Well, in fact, there is a case to be made, but I'm not going to base anything on it, but there is a case to be made for the fact that that a person facing death rather than long-term imprisonment is much more likely to face up to the moral issues of what he's done.

And in fact, in Wesley's day, 18th century, when all the hanging was going on, he and his brother used to ride in the carts from Newgate Prison to Tyburn, pointing the prisoners in the cart to the Savior, and they led thousands upon thousands to the Lord.

Now that's not to justify the hanging, but I wonder if those prisoners would have been as ready to listen had they been sentenced to life imprisonment.

In fact, the evidence tends to show that a person sentenced to life imprisonment does not face up to the moral issues of his crime nearly so much as a man sentenced to death.

Amelia Dyer was sentenced to hang on June 10th, 1896.

In her cell at Newgate Prison, Amelia filled page after page with what she called her:

"My Last and True Confession."

On the night before her execution, the prison chaplain visited her in her cell, asking if she had anything she wished to confess before departing this world.

The distance to be traversed to the drop was only a few yards.

The female officials proceeded with the wretched woman as far as the door of the scaffold shed, and bidding her farewell, their gruesome duty ended.

Huge crowds had assembled outside Newgate Prison.

It was a festive atmosphere.

Some gentlemen well known to Mrs. Fry, having learnt of the miserable condition of the women in Newgate, then one of the chief prisons in London, asked her to visit them one winter to see if she could not do something to improve their condition.

It was a terrible scene that Mrs. Fry found when alone with one other lady she entered Newgate Prison in January 1813.

In four rooms were crowded nearly three hundred women and with them many children.

Those who had been tried and those who had not yet been tried were all herded together whether guilty of grave or trifling crimes.