Didst thou not share — hadst thou not fifteen pence?
Rashleigh, having heard Tyrrell’s story to an end, complimented him much upon his talents and good fortune in escaping so easily, shortly after which they were all locked up for the night. Parties of the ward inmates being formed, some sang songs, some gambled, some related their exploits to others, and all drank most plentifully, there being in those days no lack of either spirits, wine or porter to be found within the precincts of His Majesty’s Gaol, Newgate. Porter, indeed, was allowed by the regulations. and those who had money found no difficulty in obtaining all the rest.
The manner in which the prison days were spent being so much alike, it is needless to do more than say that every day they went to prayers, ate, drank, sang, gambled, and drank again. In fact, it would appear that all the knowing ones were quite as comfortable in gaol as anywhere else; and those who were not fully initiated into all the arts of thieving and villainy when first they went into prison were sure, at least, of being quite proficient by the time they came out of it. There was not the slightest attempt at classification, save that arising from the sale of superior accommodations to those who could pay for them. In all other respects the hoary thief, who had passed a long life in successful violation of the law, was here placed in the same apartment with the raw shop-boy, confined for robbing his master’s till. And the freedom from restraint and self-congratulation of manner with which these old practitioners in knavery boasted of their exploits, and the glowing pictures they frequently drew of the enjoyments derivable from a life of plunder, seldom failed in making confirmed and hardened villains of all those who listened to them.
In this manner the time sped until the week before the sessions arrived, that period which some wished for, others dreaded, and all prepared to meet. This was indeed a busy season with the inmates of the Smugglers’ Ward. They had counsel to fee, attorneys to instruct, witnesses to bribe and defences to draw up. Rashleigh, having once been in some sort a member of the legal profession, now found his services much in request, to write letters, prepare statements and adapt questions for the cross-examination of inflexible evidences. For all this he obtained a considerable sum of money, so that he was not only enabled to fee counsel for himself, but also to procure some decent apparel for his approaching trial. He, however, entertained very slight hopes of an acquittal, the evidence of his quondam associate being quite strong and conclusive. Besides, there was every prospect of strenuous endeavours being made on the part of the Crown to secure his conviction; as unless he were found guilty, the Israelite indicted for receiving the plate he had stolen was sure of an acquittal likewise. And it will be remembered that the thief catchers of the metropolis had long been endeavouring to suppress so noted a fence as the person in question was well known to be. Indeed, for several years they had been upon the alert, ardently longing for the opportunity, which now seemed to offer itself to them by chance. Under these circumstances Ralph saw no prospect save that of conviction before him; yet he was resolved not to omit anything that might tend to his escape from justice. With this view he prepared his defence with all the skill of which he was master, and thus occupied, the day fixed for the commencement of the sessions came upon him: those sessions which were fraught with the destinies of upwards of four hundred human beings of both sexes, all ages and conditions.
The inmates of Newgate were informed by the Calendar of the order in which the trials were to occur, and the arched gateway through which the prisoners returned from the Sessions House being close by the ward in which our adventurer now lived, he had ample opportunities for observing the features and deportment of the confines, both before and after they received their sentences. But in few cases indeed could he perceive either regret or compunction. Those who were condemned to any periods less than seven years’ transportation triumphed almost as much as if they had been acquitted. The boys particularly, who were very numerous, jested with the greatest sang froid at the idea of a flogging, which most of them had been sentenced to receive, and which they scoffingly termed a “teasing”. Those who had been doomed to seven years’ transportation called it a “small fine of eighty-four months”. Even those who had been sentenced for fourteen years or life to the same punishment had some joke to pass on the subject to their fellows in the yard as they went through to their several destinations. As for those sentenced to die, they endeavoured to eclipse all the others in the daring obscenity and gross brutality of their jests.
By some accident a number of housebreakers were ordered for trial on the same day, and Ralph’s blood ran cold on being informed by one that had just returned from the Court, that all had been found guilty, and all had been doomed to death, or as his informant expressed it, “that they were celling them like b —— y bullocks”, meaning, sending them to the condemned cells. The crime of burglary had been peculiarly prevalent in the metropolis during the previous winter, and it seemed as if the jurors were determined not to allow any of the accused to escape. It was therefore with a depressed mind that our adventurer obeyed the summons which placed him before his judge at the criminal bar. As usual in this well-known Court, there was an ample assemblage of spectators, most of them being of the lowest class. Some of these were gossiping, some cracking nuts, others jokes on various subjects. Upon the appearance of the prisoner, the lawyers began to handle their papers with a business-like air, and the solemn farce called a trial began.
Ralph Rashleigh was indicted by that name for having on a certain day and date, set forth in the arraignment, with force and arms feloniously broken into and entered the dwelling-house of Westley Shortland Esquire in the night-time, and for having therein stolen taken and carried away a large quantity of silver plate his property contrary to the statute and against the peace of Our Soverign Lord the King his crown and dignity, the indictment being interlarded with a vast number of other legal phrases. To this, of course, he pleaded “Not guilty”, and put himself upon his trial.
A jury was now empanelled, and the advocate for the prisoner having declined to challenge any of their number, the case proceeded. The learned counsel for the Crown, after an eloquent exordium, in which he dwelt at great length upon the many daring depredations recently committed under covert of the night upon the properties of the peaceful and well-disposed inhabitants of the town, proceeded to give a sketch of the case in question as he had been informed it would be proved in evidence; and he wound up by reverting to the skilful and adroit manner in which the robbery had been perpetrated, at the same time charitably requesting the jurymen to dismiss all prejudices from their minds and to try the case solely by the statement of the witnesses. Nevertheless, he kindly averred his private opinion to be that the prisoner at the bar was a scoundrel of the deepest dye, steeped in crime to the very lips.
The evidence of Mr Shortland’s butler was now taken. He swore that having obtained his master’s permission to pay a visit to a sick friend for a day or two, he had collected the whole of the plate under his care and safely locked the articles in the pantry on the night in question. A female servant next deposed to finding the pantry locked up but all its valuable contents missing on the following morning. The approver then completed the whole case by giving a clear and distinct detail of the manner in which the prisoner and himself had actually committed the crime in question. His evidence was sustained by that of the hackney coachman, who had also been admitted to give testimony on the part of the Crown. And though Rashleigh’s counsel most cunningly cross-questioned both these latter personages, and elicited from Jenkins in particular the admission that he had been a thief from his earliest youth and of his having been actively engaged in the commission of every species of crime during a period of twenty-five years, yet the damning fact of the want of any regular or honest mode of livelihood on the part of Rashleigh rendered all efforts abortive. After a brief pause, the jury, without retiring, found Ralph Rashleigh guilty of the crime of burglary.
A moment of thrilling suspense followed. The recorder, amid an awful silence, then addressed the convict, pointing out the enormity of his offence, dwelt at some length upon the villainous career of crime which it was evident he had passed through, and which he was now about to consummate by an ignominious end, and finally passed upon him the sentence of execution in the customary formula. Ralph scarcely saw his judge or heard a syllable of what he said, for notwithstanding this event had been in a great measure fully anticipated by him, yet at last the reality of the blow fell upon him with a force that was absolutely paralyzing. After having cast a hurried and furtive glance around the Court upon the spectators who thronged it, he stepped mechanically out of the dock. No eye appeared to pity or regard him. Most of the auditory were already occupied in speculations upon the probable fate of the next prisoner, who now excited their attention as he approached in his turn to take his trial.
The prisoner and his guide traversed the long and gloomy vaulted passage that separated the gaol from the Sessions Hall in silence, and at last reached the yard Ralph had so lately quitted for trial. Tyrrell stood there. He asked, “What luck?”
Ralph had not time to answer before the turnkey shouted out, “Cells!” to another officer who there awaited to receive the prisoners.
With a significant gesture Tyrrell shook Rashleigh by the hand, saying, “Keep up your heart, my boy. Never drop down,” and he slipped a small packet to his friend at the same time.
Rashleigh returned the pressure with a sickly smile as he was hurried off. They now passed through several yards and many passages, until at last they reached the condemned side and were ushered into a large room, the counterpart of that comfortless domicile in which our confine had spent his first night within these dreary walls.
Here, though it was as yet only the third day of the sessions, there were no less than forty-six men, most of them very young and all sentenced to die by the hangman’s hated noose. Yet with all this, there was not a single instance of gravity, far less of that gloom which might have reasonably been expected as a Concomitant to these circumstances. They hailed Ralph’s entrée with loud cries of “Fish-oh!”
Many of them crowded around him to ask his crime, to which briefly replying, “a crack,” (housebreaking) he was told that twenty-eight of those present were condemned for similar offences, and one fellow remarked that “the scragsman (hangman) would get a rare benefit that touch”. All present joined in a hearty peal of laughter at this sally, as if it had been some brilliant jest that called forth their admiration.
Ralph being now invited to dinner by a quondam companion from the Smugglers’ Ward, they sat down together, speculating during their meal upon the probable number that would actually suffer that sessions. It was pretty well known that not one-fourth of the men sentenced to die ever were hung at that time; but yet, as none could tell upon whom the lot would fall, every man, even the most criminal, enjoyed the illusions of hope. Indeed, whatever were the motives for extending mercy to any, they were sufficiently obscure to set the most astute calculators among even the officers of the prison at defiance, sometimes hardened old offenders, convicts of atrocious crimes, escaping, while the comparatively young thief suffered death as the penalty of his earliest essay.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent by the inmates of this den in various pastimes, some gambling, some telling stories of their old career, a few singing, and still fewer gloomily pacing the common room. At length the hour arrived when they were to separate for the night, and in divisions of three each they were marshalled to their dormitories; these were cells, about twelve feet by eight in size, provided with three rude bedsteads on each of which was a mattress of straw and two rugs. The evening was rapidly closing, and as they were unprovided with light, they lay down at once, one of them remarking that it might be called going to bed, but for his part he could see no bed to go to.
Now, for the first time since his sentence, Ralph had leisure to consider his position; and the ideas that rapidly careered through his brain almost drove him mad. At first he looked upon his fate as certain; and a thousand thoughts of self-destruction urged themselves upon him, each to be in turn dismissed or replaced by another. At length it suggested itself to him that he was no more sure to die than any of the rest, and should he be actually left for execution, it would be time enough then to anticipate the hangman. Anon the hope of breaking out of gaol crossed his mind, and many schemes for doing so presented themselves to him. Hour after hour pealed from a n............