Catching a tube from Morden to London Bridge, it was only a five minute walk to my first port of call - The Clink Prison Museum on Clink Street (which featured in ‘Murder by Decree’). The Clink Prison dates back to 1144 making it one of England’s oldest and most notorious prisons. Positioned in the heart of modern-day Southwark and built on the original site, the museum presents the scandalous truth of Old Bankside through a hands-on educational experience, with opportunities to view archaeological artefacts, experience the sights, sounds and smells of the prison, handle torture devices, and to hear all about the tales of torment and many misfortunes of the inmates of the infamous Clink Prison, which gave its name to the prisons that followed it. It also has a link to the Pilgrim Fathers, with former Puritan prisoners fleeing to America in 1620.
Having gone all around the museum, I posed for two commemorative photos (one with a tricorn hat, and the other without) behind bars in a side cell, before exiting to Clink Street.
Making my way back past London Bridge Station, I walked up Borough High Street, passing the former site of the Borough Compter (an alternative name for a prison), which took over the site of the 13th century church of St. Margarets, and is now the Bridge Tap Public House. The Compter was one of the prisons visited and described by prison reformer John Howard who described it as in a deplorable condition: "out of repair and ruinous, without an infirmary and even without bedding; while most of the inmates were poor creatures from the 'Court of Conscience,' who lay there till their debts were paid."
Finally I reached John Harvard Library, and Angel Place, the narrow street that runs alongside it. The Marshalsea Prison was situated north of Mermaid Court, less than 100m from here, and dated back to at least the 14th century. In the late 18th century, it was moved here, just north of St. George’s Church. In later periods it was a debtors’ prison and also held Admiralty prisoners, including smugglers and sailors awaiting court martial. Charles Dickens’ father, John, was imprisoned here in February 1824, and the prison appears in ‘Little Dorrit’ (1856). The prison was closed by an Act of Parliament in 1842 and the land sold off and the inmates were moved to the nearby King’s Bench Prison, itself demolished in 1880.
A brick wall which was the southern boundary of the prison runs along the alleyway of Angel Place. There is also a small garden area. There are several memorials in the alleyway – including a circular stone with a quotation from ‘Little Dorrit’; a plaque and circular stone about ‘Little Dorrit’; a plaque about Dickens’ father and a stone plaque about the site of the Marshalsea Prison.
A short walk up Borough High Street brought me to the former site of Horsemonger Lane Gaol. Built between 1791 and 1799, this was a 300-capacity model prison which operated until 1878, and was demolished in 1880-81, being replaced by a public park. Executions were carried out on the rooftop of the guardhouse, with 131 men and 4 women hanged here between 1800 and 1877. In November 1849, Dickens wrote a letter to The Times after witnessing the hangings of Maria and Frederick Manning here for killing a friend for his money and burying him under his kitchen floor, highlighting the awful scene he observed in front of a callous crowd. Dickens later based the character of Hortense in ‘Bleak House’ on Maria Manning, while Mrs Chivery's tobacco shop in ‘Little Dorrit’ is located on Horsemonger Lane. Executions at Horsemonger Lane are also mentioned in Sarah Waters' novel ‘Fingersmith’. There has been a judicial building on this site since 1794, and it is currently the location of Inner London Crown Court (since 1971), somewhere I have worked at, earlier in my career.
It was then a fifteen minute walk to the Imperial War Museum. The Bethlem (Bedlam) Lunatic Asylum was located here from 1815 to 1864 (after which time they were moved to what is now Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire), in two detached wings at the back of the main building. Founded in 1247, the hospital was originally near Bishopsgate just outside the walls of the City of London. It moved a short distance to Moorfields in 1676, and then to this location, before moving to its current location in Monks Orchard Road in Beckenham in 1930. The word "bedlam", meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from the hospital's nickname. Although the hospital became a modern psychiatric facility, historically it was representative of the worst excesses of asylums in the era of lunacy reform.
Catching a bus from a nearby stop, around five minutes later I was alighting at Millbank. Holmes and Watson alighted from a wherry here, following their visit to Mordecai Smith’s landing-stage on the other side of the river. [SIGN] However, my visit was to see the site of the former prison. The idea for a circular Millbank Prison was originally based on the ideas of social reformer Jeremy Bentham, according to whom if prisoners were kept in the circumference of a jail with their guards in the centre, a feeling of perpetual surveillance is promoted. He also believed that prisoners should be encouraged to work or even enjoy what their shared labour produced. Bentham purchased the site on behalf of the Crown, but the plans for his ‘Panopticon’ fell through, and in 1813 the government took over the project, building a modified star-shaped building which opened in 1816.
Covering seven acres, this damp and gloomy prison was London’s largest, and conditions were horendous. In 1822-23 scurvy and cholera swept through the prison, killing thirty inmates. However, this did lead to an improvement in conditions. The prison was closed in 1890 – and the Tate Britain Gallery (my destination after a short walk) sits on the original site.
Opposite the gallery is a bollard commemorating the penitentiary. However, when I visited it was in an area behind a locked gate.
Another short walk along Millbank brought me to the Morpeth Arms, which was originally built for prison warders in 1845. When it opened, tunnels were built connecting the pub and prison. Some underground prison cells still remain, in the basement of the pub, but are not open to the public.
Catching a bus from outside the pub to Holborn, I changed onto another bus to Holborn Circus. Walking along Holborn Viaduct, in the rain that had just begun to fall, I reached Holy Sepulchre Church. Named after the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, this church, the largest in the City of London, was first mentioned in 1137. In 1605, London merchant tailor John Dowe paid the parish £50 (equivalent to £12,000 in today’s money) to buy a handbell which was rung at midnight on the eve of an execution at the nearby Newgate prison. It would be carried via a tunnel that passed below the street to the condemned’s cell and twelve double tolls would be rung in front of the prisoner, while a macabre rhyme was recited by the ringer:
All you that in the condemned hold
do lie,
Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die;
Watch all, and pray, the hour is drawing near
That you before the Almighty must appear;
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That you may not to eternal flames be sent.
And when St Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord above have mercy on your souls.
Past twelve o'clock!
Within sight of the Old Bailey, St. Sepulchre’s bells are mentioned in the famous rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons’ – “When will you pay me? Say the bells of Old Bailey”. It is also here that Sir John Smith, governor of Virginia and associate of Pocahontas, was buried 1631, in the south aisle. Smith is also commemorated by a window designed by Francis Skeat and installed in 1968. In the 1940’s, the ashes of conductor Sir Henry Wood, founder of The Proms, who learnt to play the organ at the church as a boy, were also interred here. Unfortunately, due to it being the weekend, the church was closed to visitors so I could not go in to see the bell.
Overlooking the churchyard is the Watch House, originally built in the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century, families would pay the watchmen to keep an eye on the bodies of their newly departed to prevent against ‘resurrection men’ who robbed graves to sell the bodies to doctors at the nearby St. Bartholomew’s Hospital (where Watson first met Holmes in ‘A Study in Scarlet’).
Continuing along Holborn Viaduct, I reached The Viaduct Tavern, which opened in 1869, at the same time as the Holborn Viaduct – the world’s first flyover. It is claimed that the tavern’s cellars were once part of Newgate Prison, but the location of the cells (the smallest London had ever seen) – and a plaque at 2 Giltspur Street – suggests that they were more likely to be part of Giltspur Street Compter, which was mainly used to hold debtors. It was located in Giltspur Street between 1791 and 1853, being demolished to make way for the King Edward Buildings Royal Mail Sorting Office, which eventually became the General Post Office Headquarters. Respectable enough now, it was once a rough pub, with a prostitute being murdered in the ladies’ lavatory.
Just across the road was the country’s most famous law courts, the Central Criminal Court – known as the Old Bailey – opened in 1907 to replace those that joined Newgate prison, part of which was formerly on this site. The Crown Court sitting in the Old Bailey hears major criminal cases from within Greater London. In exceptional cases, trials may be referred to the Old Bailey from other parts of England and Wales.
On the dome above the court stands the court's symbolic gilt bronze statue of Lady Justice by sculptor F. W. Pomeroy. She holds a sword in her right hand and the scales of justice in her left. The statue is popularly supposed to show ‘blind Justice’, but the figure is not blindfolded: the courthouse brochures explain that this is because Lady Justice was originally not blindfolded, and because her "maidenly form" is supposed to guarantee her impartiality which renders the blindfold redundant. Inside the Court, ‘Domine, Dirige Nos’ is imprinted on the court seats. This Latin phrase can be interpreted by the judges as ‘Lord, direct us’ or – if you are on the other side – as ‘God help us’.
The exterior of the Court appeared in ‘Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall’ in which Jim Moriarty is spectacularly acquitted of all charges despite Sherlock’s efforts.
The Court was formerly part of Newgate, once London’s premier prison, was just a stone’s throw away from St. Paul’s Cathedral. Henry Fielding (novelist and founder of the Bow Street Runners) described it as a ‘prototype of hell’ – heaven and hell had never been so close. The prison was extended many times, and remained in use for over 700 years, from 1188 to 1902. By 1800, Newgate was one of nineteen large prisons gathered in London and held prisoners prior to execution. After the death sentence was pronounced, the unfortunates had to attend Newgate Chapel to hear the condemned sermon, sitting around a table on which a coffin rested.
By 1830, the death sentence could be handed down for over 300 different offences, including stealing as little as five shillings (25p). However, by 1860 only four capital crimes remained: murder, treason, arson in the Queen’s docks, and piracy. In 1783, the site of London's gallows had been moved from Tyburn to Newgate. Public executions outside the prison – by this time, London's main prison – continued to draw crowds of up to 30,000 until public executions were abandoned in 1868. Executions were then carried out on gallows inside Newgate, initially using the same mobile gallows in the Chapel Yard, but later in a shed built near the same spot. Nevertheless, the public still gathered to see the black flag raised. Between 1868 and the demolition of the prison in 1902, 1106 men and 49 women were hanged within Newgate.
Famous Newgate inmates include pirate William Kidd; anti-Catholic conspirator Titus Oates; and literary figures, Daniel Defoe (held in 1703 for seditious libel), Ben Jonson (imprisoned for killing fellow actor Gabriel Spenser in a 1598 duel), and Oscar Wilde (who was briefly held there in 1895 before transfer to Pentonville).
Newgate’s high and long walls were black and provided a dark view from the Old Bailey, with ‘black as Newgate’ being a popular metaphor. Amazingly, a piece of one of these walls – complete with gas lamps – remains, in the quiet private residential street of Amen Corner, built in the seventeenth century for the clergymen of St. Paul’s, and located on the other side of the Old Bailey.
This represented the last of my prisons of the day, so I quickly made my way to St. Paul’s Underground Station to get out of the rain, and wended my way home.
