their medicine, possess herself of
the trifles upon their persons. She had sent six souls to their account
in this way; but, discovered in the seventh attempt, all the other cases
leaked out. She was condemned, of course, and on the Sunday evening
previous to the execution, as I was returning from Spurgeon's
Tabernacle, the omnibus upon which I sat passed through the Old Bailey.
There were the carpenters joining the timbers of the scaffold, and
building black barricades across the street. A murmuring crowd stood
around in the solemn night, and the funereal walls of old Newgate
glowered like a horrible vault upon the dimly-lit street. The public
houses across the way were filled up with guests. All the front parlors
and front bedrooms had been let at fat prices, and suppers were spread
in them for the edification of their tenants. Do you remember the
thrilling chapter of "The Jew's last night alive," in "Oliver Twist?"
Well, this was the scene! These were the same beams and uprights. There,
huge, massive, and blackened with smoky years, rose the cold, impervious
stones; and yonder, casting its sharp pinnacles into the sky, is the
tower of St. Sepulchre's Church, where the bell hangs muffled for the
morrow's tolling away of a sinner's life. Old Fagin heard it, though it
was no new sound to him; for Field Lane, where he kept his "fence," lies
a very little way off,--little more than a stone's throw, and when, in
the morning, I dressed at an early hour and hurried to the place of
execution, I saw Charley Bates, and the Dodger, and Nancy, and Toby
Crackit, and the rest, shying men's hats in the air, and looking out for
the "wipes" and the "tickers." All the streets leading to Newgate were
like great conduits, where human currents babbled along, emptying
themselves into the Old Bailey. Mothers by the dozen were out with their
infants, holding them aloft tenderly, to show them the noose and the
cross-beam. Fathers came with their sons, and explained very carefully
to them the method of strangulation. Little girls, on their way to
workshops, had turned aside to see the playful affair, and traders in
fancy soap and shoe-blacking, pea-nuts and shrimps, Banbury cakes, and
Chelsea buns, and Yarmouth bloaters, were making the morning hilarious
with their odd cries and speeches. Along the chimney-pots of Green
Arbour Court, where Goldsmith penned the "Vicar of Wakefield," lads and
maidens were climbing, that they might have commanding