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 pounds 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