Connecticut western news., 1882-07-12
NEWGATE: A RETROSPECT.

In antiquity and varied interest New gate prison yields to no place of durance in the world. A jail has stood on this same site for almost thousand years. The first prison was nearly as old as the Tower of London, and much older than the Bastile of Paris. Hundreds of thousands of "felons and trespassers have from first to last been incarcerated within, and to many it must have been an abode of sorrow, suffering, and un- speakable woe, a kind of terrestrial in- ferno, to enter which was to abandon every hope. Imprisonment was often lightly and capriciously inflicted in days before our liberties were fully won, and innumerable victims of tyran- ny and oppression have been lodged in Newgate. Political troubles also sent their quota; the jail was the halfway house to the scaffold or gallows for tur- bulent or short-sighted persons who es- poused the leading side; it was the starting place for that painful pilgrim age to the pillory or whipping-post which was too frequently the punish ment for rashly uttered ibels and philippics against constituted power. Newgate, again, was on the high road to Smithield; in times of intolerance and fierce religious dissentions numbers of devoted martyrs went thence to suf- fer for conscience sake at the stake.
 For centuries large section of the permanent population of Newgate, as of all jails, consisted of offenders against commercial laws fraudulent bankrupts were hanged others more unfortunate than criminals were clapped into jail to finger out their lives without the chance of earning the funds by which alone freedom could be recovered. Debtors of all degrees were equally condemned to languish for years in prison, often for the most paltry sums-innocent per- sons, also; jail deliveries were rare, and the boon of arraignment and fair trial was strangely and uniustly with held, while even those acquitted in open court were often hauled back to prison because they were unable to discharge the jailer's illegal fees. The condition of the prisoners was long most deplora. ble. They were but scantily supplied with the commonest necessaries of life. Light scarcely penetrated their dark and loathsome dungeons; no breath oi fresh air sweetened the fetid atmosphere they breathed; that they enjoyed the luxury of water was due to the munif. cence of & pious eccleslastic. As fol their daily subsistence, it was most pre- carious. Food, clothing, fuel, were doled out in limited quantities by pros porous citizens as charitable gifts, while some bequeathed small legacies to bt expended in the same articles of supply These bare prison allowances were fur ther eked out by the chance seizures 1T the markets by bread forfeited as in ferior or of light weight, and meat unfi to be publicly sold.
 All classes and categories of prisoner were herded indiscriminately together men and women, tried and untried, up right but misguided zealots with hard ened habitual offenders. The only principle of classification was prison CTS ability or otherwise to pay certaiI fees; money could purchase squalit comfort of the masters side, but do i'm munity from the baneful fellowship of felons equally we'll furnished witt funds and no less anxious to escap the awful horrors of the common side of the jail. The weight of tn chains, which innocent and guilty alik wore, depended upon the price pris oner could pay for " easement of irons,
 and it was 8 common practice to over load a newcomer with enormous letter and so terrify him into lavish disburse ments. The jail at all times was S hideously overcrowded that plague an pestilence perpetually ravaged it, an the deadly infection often spread int
 the neighboring courts of law.-Th
 F'ortnightly ReVieao.