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From: <>
Subject: [RHEA-L] England's Newgate Prison
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 03:22:26 EDT

TITLE: Chronicles of Newgate

AUTHOR: Athur Griffiths
PUBLISHER:LONDON: Chapman & Hall, Ltd.
PUBLISHED:1896

England's Newgate Prison Executions

NAMES...........................PAGES

REAY 115 116 117 118 177

http://www.fred.net/jefalvey/newgate.html

The Chronicles of Newgate

by Arthur Griffiths published 1896
which we hope you will find of interest, and perhaps a name you are
interested in.

Newgate Prison, located in London, was probably the most notorious prison in
all England. A prison has stood on the Newgate site for almost a thousand
years. The first prison was nearly as old as the Tower of London and much
older than the Bastille. It is first mentioned in the reign of King John and
in the following reign of Henry the III, (1218), the King expressly commands
the sheriffs of London to repair it, and promised to repay them from his own
exchequer. This shows that the prison was under the direct control of the
King at that time. The prison itself was originally above the gate or in the
gatehouse.

London was anciently a walled city with four gates. It has been argued that
Newgate was one of the original four, and conversely, that it was indeed a
"new" gate, being the fifth to provide entry to the city. This is somewhat
substantiated, according to Stowe, by the fact that in 1086 the old
cathederal church of St Paul was destroyed. In building a new cathederal,
Mauritius, Bishop of London, wanted a building so large and so grand plus a
cemetry and churchyard that he blocked the then great thoroughfare from
Aldgate in the east to Ludgate in the west. This resulted in traffic having
to make long and dangerous detours. The remedy for this was to make a new
gate which allowed a route from Aldgate through West Cheape to St Paul's. It
was rebuilt and modified several times, once after the great fire of London
in 1666.

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