MikhailT/lj-speech huggingface dataset:
Almost absolute silence prevailed until the great bell began to toll its deep note, and broke the stillness with its regular and monotonous clangour,
and the ordinary, in a voice trembling with emotion, read the burial service aloud.
Mackay's fortitude, which had been great,
broke down at the supreme moment before the horror of the stillness, the awful impressiveness of the scene in which he was the principal actor.
No time was lost in carrying out the dread ceremony; but it was not completed without some of the officials turning sick, and the moment it was over,
all who could were glad to escape from the last act of the ghastly drama at which they had assisted.
Private executions at their first introduction were not popular with the Newgate officials, and for intelligible reasons.
The change added greatly to the responsibilities of the governor and his subordinates. Hitherto the public had seemed to assist at the ceremony;
the moment too that the condemned man had passed through the debtors' door on to the scaffold the prison had done with him,
and the great outside world shared in the completion of the sacrifice.
This feeling was the stronger because
all the ghastly paraphernalia, the gallows itself and the process of erecting and removing it, rested with the city architect, and not with the prison officials.
Moreover, after the execution, under the old system, the latter had only to receive the body for burial after it had been cut down by the hangman,
and placed decently in a shell by the workmen who removed the gallows.
Under the new system the whole of the arrangements from first to last fell upon the officers.
It was they who formed the chief part of the small select group of spectators;
upon them devolved the painful duty of cutting down the body and preparing for the inquest.
All that the hangman, whoever he may be, does under the new regime is to unhook the halter and remove the pinioning straps.
The interment in a shell filled with quicklime in the passage-way leading to the Old Bailey is also a part of the duty of the prison officials.
and for the greater security of prisoners it is roofed in with iron bars which gives it, at least overhead, the aspect of a huge cage.
Underfoot and upon the walls roughly cut into the stones, are single initial letters, the brief epitaphs of those who lie below.
As this burial-ground leads to the adjacent Central Criminal Court, accused murderers, on going to and returning from trial,
literally walked over what, in case of conviction, would be their own graves.
The older officers, with several of whom I have conversed, have thus had unusual opportunities of watching the demeanor of murderers both before trial
and after sentence.
All as a rule, unless poignant remorse has brought a desire to court their richly-merited retribution, are buoyed up
with hope to the last. There is always the chance of a flaw in the indictment, of a missing witness, or extenuating circumstances.
Even when in the condemned cell, with a shameful death within measurable distance,
many cling still to life, expecting much from the intercession of friends or the humanitarianism of the age.
All almost without exception sleep soundly at night, except the first after sentence,
when the first shock of the verdict and the solemn notification of the impending blow keeps nearly all awake, or at least disturbs their night's rest.
But the uneasiness soon wears off. The second night sleep comes readily, and is sound;
many of the most abandoned murderers snore peacefully their eight hours, even on the night immediately preceding execution.
All too have a fairly good appetite, and eat with relish, up to the last moment.
A few go further, and are almost gluttonous.
Giovanni Lanni, the Italian boy who murdered a Frenchwoman in the Haymarket,
and was arrested on board ship just as he was about to leave the country, had a little spare cash, which he devoted entirely to the purchase of extra food.
He ate constantly and voraciously after sentence, as though eager to cram as many meals as possible into the few hours still left him to live.
Jeffrey, who murdered his own child, an infant of six, by hanging him in a cellar in Seven Dials,
called for a roast duck directly he entered the condemned cell.
The request was not granted, as the old custom of allowing capital convicts whatever they asked for in the way of food has not been the rule in Newgate.
The diet of the condemned is the ordinary diet of the prison,
but to which additions are sometimes made, chiefly of stimulants, if deemed necessary, by the medical officer of the jail.
The craving for tobacco which so dominates the habitual smoker often leads the convicted to plead hard for a last smoke.
As a special favor
Wainwright was allowed a cigar the night before execution, which he smoked in the prison yard, walking up and down with the governor, Mr. Sydney Smith.
Wainwright's demeanor was one of reckless effrontery steadily maintained to the last.
His conversation turned always upon his influence over the weaker sex, and the extraordinary success he had achieved.
No woman could resist him, he calmly assured Mr. Smith that night as they walked together, and he recounted his villanies one by one.
His effrontery was only outdone by his cool contempt for the consolations of religion.
The man who had made a pious life a cloak for his misdeeds, the once exemplary young man and indefatigable Sunday School teacher,
went impenitent to the gallows. The only sign of feeling he showed was in asking to be allowed to choose the hymns on the Sunday
the condemned sermon was preached in the prison chapel, and this was probably only that he might hear the singing of a lady with a magnificent voice
who generally attended the prison services.
During the singing of these hymns Wainwright fainted, but whether from real emotion or the desire to make a sensation was never exactly known.
On the fatal morning he came gaily out of his cell,
nodded pleasantly to the governor, who stood just opposite, and then walked briskly towards the execution shed, smiling as he went along.
There was a smile on his face when it was last seen, and just as the terrible white cap was drawn over it.
Wainwright's execution was within the jail, but only nominally private.
No less than sixty-seven persons were present, admitted by special permission of the sheriff.
Rumour even went so far as to assert that among the spectators were several women, disguised in male habiliments;
but the story was never substantiated, and we may hope that it rested only on the idle gossip of the day.
Many, like Wainwright, were calm and imperturbable throughout their trying ordeal.
Catherine Wilson, the poisoner, was reserved and reticent to the last, expressing no contrition, but also no fear --
a tall, gaunt, repulsive-looking woman, who no more shrank from cowardly, secret crimes than from the penalty they entailed.
Kate Webster, who was tried at the Central Criminal Court, and passed through Newgate, although she suffered at Wandsworth,
is remembered at the former prison as a defiant,
brutal creature who showed no remorse, but was subject to fits of ungovernable passion, when she broke out into language the most appalling.
The man Marley displayed fortitude of a less repulsive kind. He acknowledged his guilt from the first.
When the sheriff offered him counsel for his defense, he declined, saying he wished to make none -- "the witnesses for the prosecution spoke the truth."
During the trial and after sentence he remained perfectly cool and collected.
When visited one day in the condemned cell, just as St. Sepulchre's clock was striking, he looked up and said laughingly, "Go along, clock;
come along, gallows.
He tripped up the chapel-stairs to hear the condemned sermon, and came out with cheerful alacrity on the morning he was to die.
Some condemned convicts converse but little with the warders who have them unceasingly in charge.
Others talk freely enough on various topics, but principally upon their own cases.
When vanity is strongly developed there is the keen anxiety to hear what is being said about them outside.
One was vexed to think that his victims had a finer funeral than he would have.
The only subject another showed any interest in was the theatres and the new pieces that were being produced. A third, Christian Satler,
laughed and jested with the officers about "Jack Ketch," who, through the postponement of the execution, would lose his Christmas dinner.
When they brought in the two watchers to relieve guard one night, Sattler said,
"Two fresh men! May I speak to them? Yes! I must caution you," he went on to the warders, "not to go to sleep, or I shall be off through that little hole,"
pointing to an aperture for ventilating the cell. On the morning of execution he asked how far it was to the gallows, and was told it was quite close.
that the convict's clothes were still the executioner's perquisite.
Often the convicts give way to despair. They are too closely watched to be allowed to do themselves much mischief, or suicides would probably be more frequent.
But it is neither easy to obtain the instruments of self-destruction nor to elude the vigilance of their guard.
The man, Bousfield, however, whose execution was so sadly bungled,
made a determined effort to burn himself to death by throwing himself bodily on to the fire in the condemned ward.
He was promptly rescued from his perilous condition, but not before his face and hands were badly scorched.
They were still much swollen when he was led out to execution.
Miller, the Chelsea murderer, who packed his victim's body in a box, and tried to send it by parcels delivery, tried to kill himself,
but ineffectively, by running his head against his cell wall.
The Chronicles of Newgate, Volume 2. By Arthur Griffiths. Section 20: Newgate Notorieties, part 1.
As these records draw to a close, the crimes I chronicle become so much more recent in date that they will be fresh in the memory of most of my readers.
Nevertheless, in order to give completeness to the picture
I have attempted to draw of crime in connection with Newgate, from first to last, I must make some mention, in this my penultimate chapter,
of some of the most heinous offenses of modern times.
The crime of poisoning has always been viewed with peculiar loathing and terror in this country.
It will be remembered that as far back as the reign of Henry VIII. a new and most cruel penalty was devised for the punishment of the Bishop of Rochester's cook,
who had poisoned his master and many of his dependents.
Sir Thomas Overbury was undoubtedly poisoned by Lord Rochester in the reign of James I.,
and it is hinted that James himself nearly fell a victim to a nefarious attempt of the Duke of Buckingham.
But secret poisoning on a wholesale scale such as was practiced in Italy and France was happily never popularized in England.
The well-known and lethal aqua Toffania,
so called after its inventress, a Roman woman named Toffana, and which was so widely adopted by ladies anxious to get rid of their husbands,
was never introduced into this country. Its admission was probably checked by the increased vigilance at the custom houses,
the necessity for which was urged by Mr. Addison, when Secretary of State, in 1717.
The cases of poisoning in the British calendars are rare, nor indeed was the guilt of the accused always clearly established.
It is quite possible that Catherine Blandy, who poisoned her father at the instigation of her lover,
was ignorant of the destructive character of the powders, probably arsenic, which she administered.
Captain Donellan, who was convicted of poisoning his brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Broughton, and executed for it,
would probably have had the benefit in these days of the doubts raised at his trial.
A third case, more especially interesting to us as having passed through Newgate,
was that of Eliza Fenning, who was convicted of an attempt to poison a whole family
by putting arsenic in the dumplings she had prepared for them. The charge rested entirely on circumstantial evidence,
and as Fenning, although convicted and executed, protested her innocence in the most solemn manner to the last,
the justice of the sentence was doubted at the time.
Yet it was clearly proved that the dumplings contained arsenic, that she, and she alone, had made the dough,
that arsenic was within her reach in the house,
that she had had a quarrel with her mistress, and that the latter with all others who tasted the dumplings were similarly attacked, although no one died.
The crime of poisoning is essentially one which will be most prevalent in a high state of civilization,
when the spread of scientific knowledge places nefarious means at the disposal of many,
instead of limiting them, as in the days of the Borgias and Brinvilliers, to the specially informed and unscrupulously powerful few.
The first intimation conveyed to society of the new terror which threatened it was in the arrest and arraignment of William Palmer,
a medical practitioner, charged with doing to death persons who relied upon his professional skill.
The case contained elements of much uncertainty, and yet it was so essential,
in the interests and for the due protection of the public, that the fullest and fairest inquiry should be made,
that the trial was transferred to the Central Criminal Court,
under the authority of an Act passed on purpose, known as the Trial of offenses Act, and sometimes as Lord Campbell's Act.
That the administration of justice should never be interfered with by local prejudice or local feeling
is obviously of paramount importance, and the powers granted by this Act have been frequently put in practice since.
The trial of Catherine Winsor, the baby farmer,
was thus brought to the Central Criminal Court from Exeter assizes, and that of the Stauntons from Maidstone.
Palmer's trial caused the most intense excitement.
The direful suspicions which surrounded the case filled the whole country with uneasiness and misgiving,
and the deepest anxiety was felt that the crime, if crime there had been, should be brought home to its perpetrator.
The Central Criminal Court was crowded to suffocation.
Great personages occupied seats upon the bench;
the rest of the available space was allotted by ticket, to secure which the greatest influence was necessary.
People came to stare at the supposed cold-blooded prisoner;
with morbid curiosity to scan his features and watch his demeanor through the shifting, nicely-balanced phases of his protracted trial.
Palmer, who was only thirty-one at the time of his trial, was in appearance short and stout, with a round head
covered rather scantily with light sandy hair.
His skin was extraordinarily fair, his cheeks fresh and ruddy; altogether his face, though commonplace, was not exactly ugly;
there was certainly nothing in it which indicated cruel cunning or deliberate truculence.
His features were not careworn, but rather set, and he looked older than his age.
Throughout his trial he preserved an impassive countenance, but he clearly took a deep interest in all that passed.
Although the strain lasted fourteen days, he showed no signs of exhaustion, either physical or mental.
On returning to jail each day he talked freely and without reserve to the warders in charge of him, chiefly on incidents in the day's proceedings.
He was confident to the very last that it would be impossible to find him guilty;
even after sentence, and until within a few hours of execution, he was buoyed up with the hope of reprieve.