The Night Side of London

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James Ewing Ritchie. The Night Side of London

INTRODUCTION

SEEING A MAN HANGED

CATHERINE-STREET

THE BAL MASQUE,

UP THE HAYMARKET

THE CANTERBURY HALL

RATCLIFFE-HIGHWAY

JUDGE AND JURY CLUBS

THE CAVE OF HARMONY

DISCUSSION CLUBS

THE CYDER CELLARS

LEICESTER-SQUARE

DR JOHNSON’S TAVERN

THE SPORTING PUBLIC-HOUSE

THE PUBLIC-HOUSE WITH A BILLIARD-ROOM

THE RESPECTABLE PUBLIC-HOUSE

NIGHT-HOUSES

HIGHBURY BARN

BOXING NIGHT

THE MOGUL,

CALDWELL’S

CREMORNE

THE COSTERMONGERS’ FREE-AND-EASY

THE POLICE-COURT

THE EAGLE TAVERN

THE LUNATIC ASYLUM

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I am not about to give an opinion as to the propriety or impropriety of capital punishments. On this point good men have differed, and will differ, I dare say, for some time to come. What I wish to impress upon the philanthropic or Christian reader is the horrible nature and atrocious effect of a public execution.

Let us take another stroll through this living mass. The workmen have put up the last barriers – the clock strikes three – a crowd, dense and eager, has planted itself by the Old Bailey. The yard is thrown open, and three strong horses, such as you see in brewers’ drays, drag along what seems to be an immense clumsy black box. It stops at the door of Newgate nearest to St Sepulchre’s. Women shriek as it rumbles over the stones, and you shudder, for instinctively you guess it is the gallows. By the dim gas-light you see workmen first fix securely a stout timber – then another – and then a beam across from which hangs a chain – and now the crowd becomes denser. Let us leave it and enter the house, at the top of which we have previously engaged a seat.

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Let us take another stroll through this living mass. The workmen have put up the last barriers – the clock strikes three – a crowd, dense and eager, has planted itself by the Old Bailey. The yard is thrown open, and three strong horses, such as you see in brewers’ drays, drag along what seems to be an immense clumsy black box. It stops at the door of Newgate nearest to St Sepulchre’s. Women shriek as it rumbles over the stones, and you shudder, for instinctively you guess it is the gallows. By the dim gas-light you see workmen first fix securely a stout timber – then another – and then a beam across from which hangs a chain – and now the crowd becomes denser. Let us leave it and enter the house, at the top of which we have previously engaged a seat.

We are some eight or nine in a very small room, and most of us are amateurs in hanging, and it seems to us a very pleasant show. Some of us have come a long way, and most of us have been up all night. We have seen every execution for the last ten years, and boast how on one day we saw one man hung at Newgate, and took a cab and got to Horsemonger-lane in time to see another. A rare feat that, and one of which we are justly proud. We talk of these things, and how we have seen criminals die, till some of us get very angry, and flatly contradict each other. Altogether there is somewhat too much mirth in the house, though we could not have had a better place had we paid £5 for it. The women are too exuberant and full of fun. It is true, as the girls say to each other, “they don’t hang a man every day,” but the gaiety is discordant. Over the way he is just waking up from his troubled sleep. A thin waif of smoke goes up from the dark dreary building opposite – are they boiling him his last cup of tea? See, there is a light in the press-room! Ah, what are they doing there? St Sepulchre’s strikes six. The door at the foot of the scaffold opens, and very stealthily, and so as to be seen by none but such as are high up like ourselves, a man throws sawdust on the scaffold, and disappears again; we see him this time with a chain or rope. All this while the hydra-headed mob beneath amuses itself in various ways. It sings songs, chiefly preferring those with a chorus – it hoots dogs – it tosses small boys about on its top. As we look from the window, we think we never saw such a mob before. Far as the eye can reach towards Ludgate-hill on one side, and Giltspur-street on the other, it is one mass of human heads; the very air is tainted with their odour – we smell it where we are. Our amateur friends are in excellent spirits; they have not seen so many people at an execution for some years. They are agreeably surprised; they all thought the man would not have been hung, and had backed their opinions by bets.

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