Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 1 From the twelfth to the eighteenth century

Transcriber's Notes: Words in italics in the original are surrounded
with _underscores_. Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been
left as in the original. Ellipses match the original. A complete list
of corrections follows the text.




                            The History and
                              Romance of
                                 Crime

                        FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
                          TO THE PRESENT DAY


                          THE GROLIER SOCIETY

                                LONDON


[Illustration: _Elizabeth Fry Reading to the Women Prisoners in
Newgate_

     The sympathies of the Quaker lady, Elizabeth Fry, were
     aroused by the sadly neglected condition of the women's
     quarters in Newgate in 1813. She formed the Ladies' Committee
     which secured many important reforms from Parliament. She was
     a constant visitor to the old prison, where she brought hope
     and comfort, and wrought great changes.]




                         Chronicles of Newgate

                          FROM THE TWELFTH TO
                            THE EIGHTEENTH
                                CENTURY

                                 _by_

                        MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS

             _Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain_

                              _Author of
                  "The Mysteries of Police and Crime"
                "Fifty Years of Public Service," etc._

                            In Two Volumes

                               Volume 1

                          THE GROLIER SOCIETY




                           EDITION NATIONALE

         Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets.

                              NUMBER 307.




GENERAL INTRODUCTION


The combat with crime is as old as civilization. Unceasing warfare is
and ever has been waged between the law-maker and the law-breaker.
The punishments inflicted upon criminals have been as various as the
nations devising them, and have reflected with singular fidelity their
temperaments or development. This is true of the death penalty which in
many ages was the only recognized punishment for crimes either great
or small. Each nation has had its own special method of inflicting it.
One was satisfied simply to destroy life; another sought to intensify
the natural fear of death by the added horrors of starvation or the
withholding of fluid, by drowning, stoning, impaling or by exposing the
wretched victims to the stings of insects or snakes. Burning at the
stake was the favourite method of religious fanaticism. This flourished
under the Inquisition everywhere, but notably in Spain where hecatombs
perished by the _autos-da-fé_ or "trials of faith" conducted with great
ceremony often in the presence of the sovereign himself. Indeed, so
terrible are the records of the ages that one turns with relief to the
more humane methods of slowly advancing civilization,—the electric
chair, the rope, the garotte, and even to that sanguinary "daughter of
the Revolution," "la guillotine," the timely and merciful invention of
Dr. Guillotin which substituted its swift and certain action for the
barbarous hacking of blunt swords in the hands of brutal or unskilful
executioners.

Savage instinct, however, could not find full satisfaction even in
cruel and violent death, but perforce must glut itself in preliminary
tortures. Mankind has exhausted its fiendish ingenuity in the invention
of hideous instruments for prolonging the sufferings of its victims.
When we read to-day of the cold-blooded Chinese who condemns his
criminal to be buried to the chin and left to be teased to death by
flies; of the lust for blood of the Russian soldier who in brutal glee
impales on his bayonet the writhing forms of captive children; of the
recently revealed torture-chambers of the Yildiz Kiosk where Abdul
Hamid wreaked his vengeance or squeezed millions of treasure from
luckless foes; or of the Congo slave wounded and maimed to satisfy the
greed for gold of an unscrupulous monarch;—we are inclined to think of
them as savage survivals in "Darkest Africa" or in countries yet beyond
the pale of western civilization. Yet it was only a few centuries ago
that Spain "did to death" by unspeakable cruelties the gentle races of
Mexico and Peru, and sapped her own splendid vitality in the woeful
chambers of the Inquisition. Even as late as the end of the eighteenth
century enlightened France was filling with the noblest and best of her
land those _oubliettes_ of which the very names are epitomes of woe:
La Fin d'Aise, "The End of Ease;" La Boucherie, "The Shambles;" and La
Fosse, "The Pit" or "Grave;" in the foul depths of which the victim
stood waist deep in water unable to rest or sleep without drowning.
Buoyed up by hope of release, some endured this torture of "La Fosse"
for fifteen days; but that was nature's limit.