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The arrest of the Cato Street conspirators, who were hanged at Newgate |
Tough on crime – but was it effective?
The golden age of retributive justice has a lesson for those who clamour for its return, writes Illtyd Harrington. It simply didn’t solve the crime problem
Gaol: The Story of Newgate: London’s Most Notorious Prison.
By Kelly Grovier. John Murray £25 order this book
IN 1908 Winston Churchill, the then Home Secretary in a liberal government, made a remarkable speech; today it would be categorised as soft on crime and criminals and tough on the causes of crime.
He more or less said that society’s values would be judged on the condition of its prisons and the civilised treatment of the inmates.
Few remember how radical a statement that was from a political heavyweight of the Right. Today, like sharks on a feeding frenzy fed by a populist press, the raucous call is for more imprisonment and retributive justice; it will not be long before “an eye for an eye” will thunder from pulpits and platforms.
The unpalatable truth for these zealots is that since 1993 the prison population, then 40,000, has more than doubled to 82,000. In the 1990s 53 per cent of prisoners re-offended on release. Today it is 75 per cent who are recidivist.
A short sharp shock, which is neither short nor sharp, has little effect.
Newgate stood where the Old Bailey is today and was its predecessor of almost 1,000 years.It was the “tomb for the living”.
Cruelty, depravity, prostitution, alcoholism, corruption, even cannibalism was ignored by official cynicism and judicial indifference to miscarriages of justice. These were hallmarks in that terrifying, solid labyrinth.
Kelly Grovier, a young academic, has succeeded in capturing the horrors of this fearsome place.
That most famous of Lord Mayors, Dick Whittington, paid to have it rebuilt in the 15th century and thus it remained until the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed it.
Almost anticipating our time, it was rebuilt to have a capacity of 150 but it quickly grew to 500 inmates and their families. It fuelled the fires of Smithfield with Protestant and Catholic martyrs, innumerable public shows and Tyburn gallows. Incidentally, that was near Connaught Square where Tony Blair resides with his family.
Those sterne-face ranks who still believe in that form of punitive solution, might care to reflect that in 1666 there were 50 categories of capital charge. By 1776 there were 150 and they can even draw for their satisfaction that in 1810 there were 225 charges which could lead to you being hanged, including blacking your face and being in the streets at night. I believe that would be a punishment welcomed by those who want to destroy the hoodies. The penal code was more severe than Islamic law. Among Newgate’s short-term residents were Robin Hood, Captain John Kidd, the pirate, and Jack Shephard the highwayman who escaped from Newgate on four occasions. He even broke into Newgate. Inevitably, Dashing Jack, only 22, dangled at Tyburn on November 16, 1724. His progress there drew 200,000 citizens – one sixth of London’s population. He nearly escaped from his own boisterous funeral procession.
I am fascinated by the case of John Bellingham who assassinated Perceval Spencer, the young new prime minister on May 7, 1812. Spencer is the only prime minister in our history to be assassinated.
Bellingham was despatched to the after-life two weeks later on May 18 – a tragic man forced by ghastly bureaucratic circumstances to this appalling resolution of his life.
His end was witnessed by Lord Byron, the poet, and William Cobbett, the journalist, who was serving two years in Newgate for treasonous libel.
Eventually John Howard and Elizabeth Fry picked up the banner of penal reform and their lives and personal sacrifice is a noble one – although epidemic typhus spreading from that dark, dank and dismal place probably had more effect in speeding reform when judges started dying of typhus.
Perhaps the biggest factor of all for reform was the pen and personality of Charles Dickens who swung informed opinion towards change after his first visit in 1836.
Out of all that came Oliver Twist and Fagan, images more powerful for his bloody description of public execution. Dickens’s views were widely read and brought about a more tolerant public opinion.
The public boisterous enjoyable participation in executions ended in 1868 when an Act to conduct capital punishment in prisons was passed. The last of these horrific public events took place in May 26 1868 when Michael Barrett, an Irish Nationalist, was topped for killing four people with a bomb in Clerkenwell.
The last hanging at Newgate was on the May 6 1902 when George Wolfe took the drop alone. After the gallows were moved from Tyburn in 1783 more than 1,200 people were executed in that period. A rich crop of the good, the bad and the innocent, Kelly Grovier, has contributed a valuable chapter in the recurring serial of crime and punishment – what deters and what reforms. Answer: no quick fix.
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