ER IX.

Old Newgate.

At the beginning of the twelfth century,--whether in the reign of Henry
the First, or Stephen is uncertain,--a fifth gate was added to the four
principal entrances of the city of London; then, it is almost needless
to say, surrounded by ramparts, moats, and other defences. This gate,
called _Newgate_, "as being latelier builded than the rest," continued,
for upwards of three hundred years, to be used as a place of
imprisonment for felons and trespassers; at the end of which time,
having grown old, ruinous, and "horribly loathsome," it was rebuilt and
enlarged by the executors of the renowned Sir Richard Whittington, the
Lord Mayor of London: whence it afterwards obtained amongst a certain
class of students, whose examinations were conducted with some
strictness at the Old Bailey, and their highest degrees taken at
Hyde-park-corner, the appellation of Whittington's College, or, more
briefly, the Whit. It may here be mentioned that this gate, destined to
bequeath its name--a name, which has since acquired a terrible
significance,--to every successive structure erected upon its site, was
granted, in 1400, by charter by Henry the Sixth to the citizens of
London, in return for their royal services, and thenceforth became the
common jail to that city and the county of Middlesex. Nothing material
occurred to Newgate, until the memorable year 1666, when it was utterly
destroyed by the Great Fire. It is with the building raised after this
direful calamity that our history has to deal.

Though by no means so extensive or commodious as the modern prison, Old
Newgate was a large and strongly-built pile. The body of the edifice
stood on the south side of Newgate Street, and projected at the western
extremity far into the area opposite Saint Sepulchre's Church. One small
wing lay at the north of the gate, where Giltspur Street Compter now
stands; and the Press Yard, which was detached from the main building,
was situated at the back of Phoenix Court. The south or principal front,
looking, _down_ the Old Bailey, and not _upon it_, as is the case of the
present structure, with its massive walls of roughened freestone,--in
some places darkened by the smoke, in others blanched, by exposure to
the weather,--its heavy projecting cornice, its unglazed doubly-grated
windows, its gloomy porch decorated with fetters, and defended by an
enormous iron door, had a stern and striking effect. Over the Lodge,
upon a dial w