as inscribed the appropriate motto, "_Venio sicut fur_."
The Gate, which crossed Newgate Street, had a wide arch for carriages,
and a postern, on the north side, for foot-passengers. Its architecture
was richly ornamental, and resembled the style of a triumphal entrance
to a capital, rather than a dungeon having battlements and hexagonal
towers, and being adorned on the western side with a triple range of
pilasters of the Tuscan order, amid the intercolumniations of which were
niches embellished with statues. The chief of these was a figure of
Liberty, with a cat at her feet, in allusion to the supposed origin of
the fortunes of its former founder, Sir Richard Whittington. On the
right of the postern against the wall was affixed a small grating,
sustaining the debtor's box; and any pleasure which the passer-by might
derive from contemplating the splendid structure above described was
damped at beholding the pale faces and squalid figures of the captives
across the bars of its strongly-grated windows. Some years after the
date of this history, an immense ventilator was placed at the top of the
Gate, with the view of purifying the prison, which, owing to its
insufficient space and constantly-crowded state, was never free from
that dreadful and contagious disorder, now happily unknown, the
jail-fever. So frightful, indeed, were the ravages of this malady, to
which debtors and felons were alike exposed, that its miserable victims
were frequently carried out by cart-loads, and thrown into a pit in the
burial-ground of Christ-church, without ceremony.

Old Newgate was divided into three separate prisons,--the Master's Side,
the Common Side, and the Press Yard. The first of these, situated a the
south of the building, with the exception of one ward over the gateway,
was allotted to the better class of debtors, whose funds enabled them to
defray their chamber-rent, fees, and garnish. The second, comprising the
bulk of the jail, and by many degrees worse in point of accommodation,
having several dismal and noisome wards under ground, was common both to
debtors and malefactors,--an association little favourable to the morals
or comforts of the former, who, if they were brought there with any
notions of honesty, seldom left with untainted principles. The last,--in
all respects the best and airiest of the three, standing, as has been
before observed, in Phoenix Court, at the rear of the main fabric,--was
reserved for state-offenders