List Of Executions at Newgate Prison 1606 – 1895 www.genealogyebooks.com www.genealogyebooks.com In The reign of Henry VIII. (38 Years) It is said that no less a number than 72,000 criminals were executed. In the ten years between 1820 and 1830, there were 797 criminals executed in England alone. The place of execution in London (formerly generally at Tyburn) was in front of Newgate from 1783 to 1868, when an act was passed directing executions to take place within the walls of the prisons. The dissection of the bodies of the executed persons was abolished in 1832. It is not possible to determine when Newgate first became a prison or when exactly the new gatehouse itself was originally built. Newgate was to be London's 5th gate into the city. There are reliable records going back to 1218 of it being used to house criminals. It was finally demolished in 1904 having been rebuilt at least twice along the way. www.genealogyebooks.com A new prison at Newgate was begun in 1770 and proceeded slowly. Before it could be finished, the building was badly damaged by fire during the Gordon riots of 1780 and it was not finally completed until 1785. This building was then used in that form until 1856 when it was remodeled internally to reflect the new perceptions of what a prison should be like. London's Millbank and Pentonville prisons had been designed to be the first modern prison and to practice the new "penitentiary system." This rebuild was very short lived as the building was very badly damaged, again by fire in 1877, and had to be largely rebuilt. As a result of the Prisons Act of 1877, Newgate ceased to be an ordinary prison in 1882 and was used only for those awaiting trial and prisoners sentenced to death awaiting execution. Newgate had the great advantage, from the authorities' point of view at least, of being next door to the Central Criminal Court (Old Bailey) which was the trial venue for all of London's most serious criminals. It saved the cost and security risk of transporting prisoners by horse drawn van from other prisons for their trial. The Central Criminal Court Act of 1856 permitted prisoners from anywhere in the country accused of a very serious offence to be tried at the Old Bailey. The Act was passed to allow for poisoner, William Palmer (from Rugeley in Staffordshire), to get a fair trial free from local prejudice. The advent of an efficient railway system had made it possible to transport prisoners over considerable distances. Palmer was returned to Stafford prison for his execution. Similarly, Maria and Frederick Manning and Kate Webster were kept at Newgate during their trials and then returned to the Surrey county gaol at Horsemonger Lane for execution. Up to 1877, in its several incarnations, Newgate was the principal prison for London and Middlesex and housed all manner of prisoners of both sexes, including those remanded in custody and prisoners awaiting transportation or execution and those imprisoned for debt. Conditions in Newgate in the early part of the 19th century were appalling and led to great efforts by early prison reformers such as John Howard and Elizabeth Fry to improve things. Elizabeth Fry was deeply shocked by the conditions that women were detained under, in the Female Quarter as the women's area was known, when she visited the prison in 1816. She found the place crowded with half naked women and their children. The women were typically waiting for transfer to the prison ships that would take them to the Colonies. Women were brought to Newgate from county prisons in the south of England to await transportation and kept there for weeks or months until a ship was available. Many of the ordinary women prisoners were www.genealogyebooks.com drunk, due to the availability of cheap gin, and some were clearly deranged. They were kept in leg irons if they could not afford to pay the Keeper of Newgate for "easement." Fry formed an "Association for the improvement of the female prisoners in Newgate" and as part of that, set up a school within the prison for the younger children in 1817. The following year, she gave evidence to Parliamentary Committee on her findings. She was able to get a proper Matron appointed to look after the women in 1817 and conditions slowly improved. Prisoners under sentence of death were kept shackled and apart from other prisoners and in the case of murderers, fed on bread and water for the final 2-3 days of their miserablewww.genealogyebooks.com lives before meeting the hangman. Their only permitted visitors were prison staff and the Ordinary (prison chaplain). Conditions improved after 1834, condemned prisoners spending around 2-3 weeks awaiting execution after the law was changed to allow three clear Sundays to pass before they were hanged. They were no longer kept in irons and were given better food than the ordinary prisoners. They were also permitted visits by their families and friends. As London was the crime capital of England, so it was that Newgate was the execution capital and between 1783 and 1902, a total of 1,169 people were put to death there or nearby (12 or 13 hangings being carried out at other locations prior to 1834). The total comprised 1,120 men and 49 women. The last remnants of the "Bloody Code" as it was known remained in force up to 1836. Over 200 felonies were punishable by death in 1800, although in practice people were only executed for about 20 of them. Those convicted of the more minor ones, although sentenced to death, typically had their punishment reduced to transportation. The concept of imprisonment as a punishment only really came in after 1840. Transportation ended around 1888. Public executions were carried outside Newgate in the lane known as the Old Bailey from the 9th of December 1783 (following the ending of hangings at Tyburn). It is unclear where the gallows was erected before 1809 - contemporary reports talking of “outside Newgate” and “in the Old Bailey.” After 1809, almost all hangings took place on the portable gallows in front of the Debtors’ Door and continued here up to the 25th of May 1868, when Michael Barrett became the last to hang for the Clerkenwell bomb outrage that killed seven people Three women were burned at the stake in the Old Bailey, for the crime of coining which was deemed to be high treason. They were Phoebe Harris, Margaret Sullivan and Catherine Murphy. In all three cases, they were first hanged until they were dead and then their bodies burnt. Similarly, the Cato Street conspirators who had also been convicted of high treason were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered there (the male punishment for high treason), but in fact were hanged and then beheaded. There were to be 567 public hangings, including those of 25 women, between January 1800 and May 1868. These drew huge crowds, especially if one of the prisoners was notorious. From 1752 to 1832, the bodies of those executed for murder were taken to Surgeon's Hall in the Old Bailey where they were publicly anatomised. Up to 1834, the bodies of persons executed for crimes other than murder could be returned to relatives for a fee. There were only two confirmed www.genealogyebooks.com executions at Newgate in the years 1834-1836, those of John Smith and James Pratt, who were hanged for buggery on the 27th of November 1835. After 1836, only murderers were to be hanged at Newgate and their bodies were buried in unmarked graves within the walls. Ninety nine men and eight women were to suffer for this crime between 1837 and 1902. Of this total, 58 men and five women were executed in private between the 8th of September 1868 and the 6th of May 1902 when George Wolfe became the last person to be executed here. There were four double hangings, a treble and a quadruple hanging during this period. Executions and executioners at Newgate From aroundwww.genealogyebooks.com 1771 to September 1786, when he died, Edward Dennis was the official executioner and carried out 201 hangings and the three burnings at Newgate. He had previously officiated at Tyburn from 1771. On Tuesday, the 9th of December 1783, he and William Brunskill hanged nine men and one woman (Frances Warren) side by side on the "New Drop" at Newgate’s first execution. Note that they all have white nightcaps drawn over their heads. Sessions, as trials at the Old Bailey were known at that time, were held eight times a year by then and it was normal to sentence those found guilty of crimes other than murder in groups at the end of the trial day. Murderers were sentenced at the end of their individual trials. Those sentenced to death for felony and not “respited” (commuted to transportation) were also hanged in groups - men and women together. Multiple executions were the norm at this time and took place normally around six weeks after the Sessions finished and the Recorder of the Old Bailey had prepared and presented his report indicating which prisoners were recommended for reprieve and which were to be executed. From July 1752 onwards, murderers had to be hanged within two days of their sentence, unless this would have been a Sunday, which meant that they were typically hanged on a Monday and therefore usually separately from ordinary felons, this day continuing to be used at Newgate for murderers up to 1880.