London: The Biography полностью

In this manner the institutions of the city begin to resemble one another. Newgate also became a kind of theatre when, on Wednesdays or Thursdays between the hours of twelve and three, it was open to visitors. Here sightseers would be shown casts of the heads of notorious criminals, as well as the chains and handcuffs which once held Jack Sheppard; they could at their wish be locked into one of the condemned cells for a moment, or even sit within the old whipping post. At the end of their tour they were conducted along “Birdcage” walk, the passage from the cells of Newgate to the Court of Sessions; here also they could read “curious letters on the walls” denoting the fact that the bodies of the condemned were interred behind the stone. The name of the walk is strangely reminiscent of a scene from Arthur Morrison’s A Child of the Jago where an infant visits her father “before a double iron railing covered with wire netting” at Newgate-“carrying into later years a memory of father as a man who lived in a cage.”

The last execution at Newgate took place at the beginning of May 1902, and three months later the work of demolition began. At a quarter past three in the afternoon of 15 August, according to the Daily Mail of the following day, “a piece of stone about the size of a foot fell on the pavement, and a hand with a chisel in it was seen working away in the breach. A little crowd soon gathered to watch the operations.” It was noticed, too, that the “old pigeons, rough and grimy as the prison itself compared with the other flocks in London,” fluttered about the statue of liberty on the pinnacle of the prison. These birds, at least, had no wish to leave their London cage.

Six months later an auction of Newgate relics was held within the prison itself. The paraphernalia of the execution shed sold for £5 15s 0d while each of the plaster casts of the famous criminals was “knocked down” for £5. Two of the great doors, and the whipping post for the “patients,” may now be seen by the curious in the Museum of London. The Old Bailey now lies upon the ancient site.

Many inmates committed “self-murder” within the walls of Newgate, but in London suicide assumes many forms. People have hurled themselves from the Whispering Gallery in the cathedral of St. Paul’s; poisoned themselves in the solitude of London attics; and drowned themselves for love in the waters of St. James’s Park. The Monument was another favourite location: the unhappy subject would throw himself or herself from the summit of the pillar and fall upon its base rather than the street. On 1 May 1765, according to Grosley’s A Tour of England, “the wife of a colonel drowned herself in the canal in St. James’s park; a baker hanged himself in Drury-lane; a girl, who lived near Bedlam, made an attempt to dispatch herself in the same manner.” In the summer of 1862 “the Suicide Mania” became a topic of public attention. In that same century the Thames was wreathed with the bodies of the drowned.

London was the suicide capital of Europe. As early as the fourteenth century Froissart described the English as “a very sad race,” which description applied particularly and even principally to Londoners. The French considered that the London vogue for suicides was owing to “the affectation of singularity,” although a more perceptive observer believed that it was “from a contempt of death and a disgust of life.” One Frenchman described the plight of London families “that had not laughed for three generations,” and observed that citizens committed suicide in the autumn in order “to escape the weather.” Another visitor remarked that self-slaughter was “no doubt owing to the fogs.” He also suggested that beef was another essential cause, since “its viscous heaviness conveys only bilious and melancholic vapours to the brain”; his diagnosis has a curious resemblance to the folk superstition of Londoners, in which to dream of beef “denotes the death of a friend or relation.” The modern connection between beef and “BSE” may be noted here.