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The Chronicles of Newgate - Volume 1

Arthur Griffiths

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The Chronicles of Newgate - Volume 1 | Arthur Griffiths

The Chronicles of Newgate - Volume 1

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Good against evil; right versus wrong; the judicial system against the criminal world. The struggle is as old as mankind. Sometimes the lines are blurred as the 'good' punish the 'bad' - the warriors against crime have resorted not only to killing wrong-doers, but additionally subjecting them to "starvation or the withholding of fluid, by drowning, stoning, impaling or by exposing the wretched victims to the stings of insects or snakes." Newgate Prison was one of the most famous - or infamous - prisons in England from the middle ages until the nineteenth century. Griffiths, a prison administrator, takes us inside where we discover "man's inhumanity to man".
or, being content that one should be bound for another, they were all discharged, being bound only to appear in the Star Chamber the next day after All Souls, there to answer if they were called; but neither was there any person called, neither did any appear."

Bonner, then Bishop of London, and afterwards one of the queen's principal advisers, had power to persecute even under Henry. The Bible had [50]been set up by the king's command in St. Paul's, that the public might read the sacred word. "Much people used to resort thither," says Foxe, to hear the reading of the Bible, and especially by one John Porter, "a fresh young man, and of a big stature," who was very expert. It displeased Bonner that this Porter should draw such congregations, and sending for him, the Bishop rebuked him very sharply for his reading. Porter defended himself, but Bonner charged him with adding expositions of the text, and gathering "great multitudes about him to make tumults." Nothing was proved against Porter, but "in fine Bonner sent him to Newgate, where he was miserably fettered in irons, both legs and arms, with a collar of iron about his neck, fastened to the wall in the dungeon; being there so cruelly handled that he was compelled to send for a kinsman of his, whose name is also Porter, a man yet alive, and can testify that it is true, and dwelleth yet without Newgate. He, seeing his kinsman in this miserable case, entreated Jewet, the keeper of Newgate, that he might be released out of those cruel irons, and so, through friendship and money, had him up among other prisoners, who lay there for felony and murder." Porter made the most of the occasion, and after hearing and seeing their wickedness and blasphemy, exhorted them to amendment of life, and "gave unto them such instructions as he had learned of in the Scriptures; for which his so doing he was