Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: London (14 page)

Modern art cells

Millbank Prison opened in 1821 with a capacity of over 1,000 inmates and became known as ‘The Fattening House’ because of its generous diet which was swiftly made less attractive following a press campaign. Its swampy site led to many deaths amongst prisoners and for this reason it was closed in 1890 to make way for the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) which incorporates some of Millbank’s materials in its fabric.

The largest of London’s gaols was at Coldbath Fields with a capacity of 1,200 inmates. It was demolished in 1889 to make way for the Royal Mail’s Mount Pleasant sorting office. Its regime was notoriously harsh and was celebrated in verse by Coleridge:

As he went through Coldbath Fields he saw A solitary cell, And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint For improving his prisons in Hell.

Both Millbank and Coldbath Fields adopted the ‘Silent and Solitary’ systems of imprisonment whereby prisoners were denied all contact with other inmates in the belief that they would thereby reflect on the error of their ways. Many went mad.

T
hose who were found guilty at the Old Bailey were often sentenced to death since in the 18th century over 300 offences carried the death penalty, including theft of goods worth more than five shillings and impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner. On the evening before the executions a sermon would be preached in the chapel at Newgate in the presence of the condemned, a coffin being prominently placed in the centre of the chapel to remind the prisoners of the fate which awaited them. Gaolers, ever anxious to supplement their incomes, admitted to the service curious members of the public who were prepared to pay for the privilege. The sermon would be preached by a clergyman appointed by the bishop called the Newgate ‘Ordinary’ who profited from the role by publishing accounts of confessions supposedly obtained from prisoners. At midnight the sexton of St Sepulchre’s Church opposite the Old Bailey would ring a bell outside the condemned cell and recite a verse beginning, ‘All you that in the condemned cell do lie, Repent you, for tomorrow you shall die.’

Newgate procession

St Sepulchre’s still contains mementoes of its association with Newgate. An ‘Ordinary’ called Villette prepared for sale a confession by a young condemned boy in the 1770s. Upon being told that another suspect had confessed to the crime and that a reprieve for the boy was on the way, Villette feared a loss on his carefully prepared ‘confession’ and urged the executioner to proceed, protesting that it was no time to be worrying about ‘details of this kind’! The boy was spared by more compassionate authorities.

On the morning of executions the ‘Newgate procession’ would set out for Tyburn, on the present site of Marble Arch, where the former scaffold is commemorated by a brass plaque. The prisoners would travel in carts along the present route of High Holborn, New Oxford Street and Oxford Street. They were led by the highwaymen who were the acknowledged aristocrats of the criminal fraternity, followed by murderers, rapists and thieves, with traitors drawn on hurdles bringing up the rear. The streets would be lined with spectators, often drunk, shouting encouragement or abuse to the occupants of the carts, throwing missiles and offering to buy drinks for them. The procession would indeed stop at numerous taverns on the route so that, with luck, the prisoners would themselves often be drunk before they reached Tyburn. This was fortunate since, until the introduction of the ‘Newgate Drop’ in 1760 which brought about instant death by breaking the neck, most prisoners died by strangulation, often taking 15 or 20 minutes to do so and urinating in the process; or, as the spectators called it, ‘pissing when you can’t whistle’. And the spectators were numerous. An enterprising lady erected stands called ‘Mother Proctor’s Pews’, charging as much as £10, a huge sum in the 18th century, for seats with the best view.

Once merciful death had arrived there would be a stampede towards the corpses, amongst which three rival groups could usually be discerned. First there were those suffering from warts who believed that the ‘death sweat’ of the prisoners would relieve this condition. They sought to collect the perspiration from the skins of the corpses. Secondly there were the beadles of the College of Surgeons and the London teaching hospitals who wanted the corpses for dissection. Finally there were the friends and relatives of the executed who wanted to spare them these and other such indignities. Fisticuffs were commonplace.

No hanging around

In 1783 executions were moved from Tyburn to a scaffold outside Newgate (now the site of the Old Bailey) because of public concern about the disorder arising from the Newgate processions. Not everyone was pleased. Dr Samuel Johnson complained that, ‘Executions are intended to draw spectators. If they do not draw spectators they don’t answer their purpose. The old method was most satisfactory to all parties; the public was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away?’ Charles Dickens and William Thackeray both witnessed executions outside Newgate and found them degrading. Dickens wrote of the ‘ribaldry, levity, drunkenness and flaunting vice’ of the crowd, the only decorum occurring with the cry of ‘Hats off’ as the moment of execution arrived. Thackeray, in his celebrated essay ‘On Going to see a Man Hanged’, wrote ‘I have been abetting an act of frightful wickedness and violence.’ In 1868, as a result of such criticisms, executions were moved to within the prison walls itself. One thousand, one hundred and six men and 49 women were hanged within Newgate between 1868 and the demolition of the prison in 1902 when the scaffold was moved to Pentonville where it remained in use until 1961, its victims including Dr Hawley Crippen (hanged 1910) and the Irish Nationalist Roger Casement (hanged 1916).

O
ne criminal who did not meet his end at the end of a hangman’s noose was the murderer who terrorised Whitechapel between August and November 1888 with five gruesome murders; the culprit has become known as Jack the Ripper. The name arose from a teasing letter sent to the press at the height of the frenzy, signed ‘Yours truly, Jack the Ripper’. It is unlikely that the letter was penned by the murderer himself but the name stuck to the mystery perpetrator because of his habit of subjecting his victims to horrific mutilations. The terror lasted longer than the three months of the five murders since other murders were committed in the lawless area of Whitechapel which were doubtfully attributed to ‘Jack’; but the so-called canonical five had sufficient similarities in method to be placed with some confidence at his door. A relatively short walk takes in all the murder scenes. Jack the Ripper was not the first London serial killer and certainly neither the last nor the most prolific but he is surely the most notorious.

The Whitechapel terror

All the women murdered were prostitutes plying their trade and all the murders occurred within little more than half a mile of one another. Many street names were later changed either because of the demolition of slums or to conceal the notoriety conferred by the Ripper murders. The first was that of Mary Ann Nicholas on 31st August 1888 at Buck’s Row, now Durward Street, north of the Whitechapel Road. The next victim, within eight days, was Anne Chapman on 8th September, in a yard behind 29, Hanbury Street, within 300 yards of the first. The murders were linked because of the mutilations inflicted on the victims. Just over three weeks later, on 30th September, Elizabeth Stride was murdered at 40, Berner Street (now Henriques Street) and the same night Catherine Eddowes met her end at Mitre Square, just within the City boundary about three-quarters of a mile to the west. All these murders were carried out in streets, in some haste. There was then an interval of nearly six weeks before the last and most horrific of the canonical murders. Mary Jane Kelly took her murderer back to her room at Miller’s Court behind Dorset Street (later Duval Street) where, in the privacy of her room, he had time to mutilate her to a greater extent than any of the previous victims. Duval Street no longer exists, its site occupied by a multi-storey car park south of Spitalfields Market close to White’s Row.

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So who was Jack the Ripper? A small and continuing industry has arisen devoted to identifying him, some of the suggestions involving a high level of imagination and the occasional forgery. Many candidates have been put forward, the most fanciful being the Duke of Clarence, eldest son of Edward VII, who died before he could inherit the throne which passed (together with his fiancée Mary of Teck) to his younger brother George V. Other imaginative suggestions have included the artist Walter Sickert, the mild and shy Lewis Carroll (author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), and a Liverpool cotton merchant called James Maybrick whose wife was later convicted of poisoning him. The person upon whom fell the suspicions of the police was a Jew of Polish origin called Aaron Kosminski who was later committed to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum by his family, the suggestion being that they did this to shield him from the law. He died shortly afterwards and was the suspect named with some confidence by Chief Inspector Donald Swanson (1848-1924) of the Metropolitan Police who supervised the investigation. According to this account Kosminski was not prosecuted because the only witness to the murders, Israel Schwartz, was himself a Jew who would not testify against a fellow Jew. There are serious doubts about this claim.

F
ew citizens realise that, as well as Britain’s largest police service, London also accommodates the smallest, the City Police. The Metropolitan Police took office in September 1829, created by the Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel whose name was immediately adopted by the public to describe the new constables (‘Bobbies’ or ‘Peelers’). They replaced the old system of local watchmen known as Charlies who had been established during the reign of Charles II and consisted mainly of elderly and feeble men. They gave us the expression ‘Proper Charlies’, signifying someone ineffective. The new constables were given a uniform (with a top hat) which was deliberately unmilitary in appearance since opponents of the new force feared that it would be used to oppress the population. They were paid three shillings a day, a poor wage even for 1829 and within four years fewer than 500 of the original 3,000 constables were still in the service. The headquarters of the new force was at 4, Whitehall Place, adjacent to a police station entered from Scotland Yard, a name quickly associated with the new force. In 1842 a detective department was established. In 1830 William IV became King and constables were issued with a wooden wand of office which signified their authority. Around the top of the wand was a copper band engraved W IV R (William IV Rex). William IV was commonly referred to as ‘Old Bill’ or ‘Silly Billy’; the constables became known as Coppers or the Old Bill, names which have stuck.