THERE WAS AN OLD JOKE that Newgate must be like Heaven, for the way to it was straight and narrow. It must have originated with a waggish prisoner, not with any free man. For a free man would approach Newgate through ways (from the west, Holborn, from the east, Newgate Street) that were broad and crooked. For the convenience of Newgate’s exclusive membership, however, there was a short-cut, a chute or gutter running straight and narrow for about an hundred paces from the holding-pens of the Court to the southeastern corner of the Prison. It was one of those sacred and inviolable English rights-of-way, hemmed in by high walls to either side. For the owners of the properties to the left and to the right sides of it did not love to see long necklaces of chained prisoners marching to and fro across their back yards.