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THE case of this malefactor gives us an opportunity of bringing under the notice of the reader the occurrence of a calamity which has always attracted considerable attention—namely, the breaking out of the jail fever.

The offence of the prisoner was that of the murder of his wife, a crime which he perpetrated on Hounslow Heath, in a gig, within view of the gibbets which formerly stood there, by strangling her with the thong of his whip. He was apprehended upon suspicion of the crime, and was found guilty, and sentenced to death, but before the law could be executed upon him he died in Newgate, of the jail fever, on the 22d October, 1738. The following account of this malignant fever, shows the peculiar circumstances under which it first exhibited itself. It appears that it was always attended with a degree of malignity, in proportion to the closeness and stench of the place.

The assize held at Oxford in the year 1577, called the “Black Assize,” was a dreadful instance of the deadly effects of the jail fever. The judges, jury, witnesses, and in fact nearly every person except the prisoners, women, and children, in court, were killed by a foul air, which at first was thought to have arisen out of the bowels of the earth; but that great philosopher, Lord Bacon, proved it to have come from the prisoners, taken out of a noisome jail, and brought into court to take their trials; and they alone, being subject to the inhaling foul air, were not injured by it.

“Baker’s Chronicle,” a work of the highest authenticity, thus speaks of the Black Assize:—“The Court were surprised with a pestilent savour, whether arising from the noisome smell of the prisoners, or from the damp of the ground, is uncertain; but all that were present within forty hours died, except the prisoners, and the women and children; and the contagion went no farther. There died Robert Bell, Lord Chief Baron, Robert de Olie, Sir William Babington, the high sheriff of Oxfordshire, some of the most eminent lawyers, the jurors, and three hundred others, more or less.”

Some attributed the cause of the sudden mortality at Oxford to witchcraft, the people in those times being very superstitious. In “Webster’s Display of Witchcraft,” a work of some authenticity as to the relation of circumstances as they occurred, we find the following account of the Black Assize, which we insert as a matter of curiosity:—

“The 4th and 5th days of July, 1559, were holden the assizes at Oxford, where was arraigned and condemned one Rowland Jenkes, for his seditious tongue, at which time there arose such a damp, that almost all were smothered. Very few escaped that were not taken at that instant. The jurors died presently; shortly after died Sir Robert Bell, Lord Chief Baron, Sir Robert De Olie, Sir Wm. Babington, Mr. Weneman, Mr. De Olie, high sheriff, Mr. Davers, Mr. Harcourt, Mr. Kirle, Mr. Pheteplace, Mr. Greenwood, Mr. Foster, Sergeant Baram, Mr. Stevens, &c. There died in Oxford three hundred persons; and sickened there, but died in other places, two hundred and odd, from the 6th of July to the 12th of August, after which day died not one of that sickness, for one of them infected not another, nor any one woman or child died thereof. This is the punctual relation according to our English annals, which relate nothing of what should be the cause of the arising of such a damp just at the conjuncture of time when Jenkes was condemned, there being none before, and so it could not be a prison infection; for that would have manifested itself by smell, or operating sooner. But to take away all scruple, and to assign the true cause, it was thus: It fortuned that a manuscript fell into my hands, collected by an ancient gentleman of York, who was a great observer and gatherer of strange things and facts, who lived about the time of this accident happening at Oxford, wherein it is related thus:—

“That Rowland Jenkes, being imprisoned for treasonable words spoken against the queen, and being a popish recusant, had, notwithstanding, during the time of his restraint, liberty some time to walk abroad with the keeper; and that one day he came to an apothecary, and showed him a receipt which he desired him to make up; but the apothecary, upon viewing of it, told him that it was a strong and dangerous receipt, and required some time to prepare it; also asking to what use he would apply it. He answered, ‘To kill the rats, that since his imprisonment spoiled his books;’ so being satisfied, he promised to make it ready. After a certain time he cometh to know if it were ready, but the apothecary said the ingredients were so hard to procure that he had not done it, and so gave him the receipt again, of which he had taken a copy, which mine author had there precisely written down, but did seem so horribly poisonous, that I cut it forth, lest it might fall into the hands of wicked persons. But after, it seems, he had it prepared, and against the day of his trial had made a wick of it, (for so is the word—that is, so fitted it that like a candle, it might be fired,) which as soon as ever he was condemned he lighted, having provided himself with a tinder-box and steel to strike fire. And whosoever should know the ingredients of that wick or candle, and the manner of the composition, will easily be persuaded of the virulency and venomous effect of it.”

In the year 1730, the Lord Chief Baron Pengelly, with several of his officers and servants; Sir James Sheppard, sergeant-at-law; and John Pigot, Esq., high sheriff for Somersetshire, died at Blandford, on the Western Circuit of the Lent assize, from the infected stench brought with the prisoners from Ilchester jail to their trials at Taunton, in which town the infection afterwards spread, and carried off some hundred persons.

In 1754 and 1755 this distemper prevailed in Newgate to a degree which carried off more than one-fifth of the prisoners.