Chapter 7

of "A Tale of Two Cities," in connection with the trial of Charles Darnay, Dickens writes of the Old Bailey Court: "They hanged at Tyburn in those days, so the street outside of Newgate had not obtained the infamous notoriety that has since attached to it. But the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of debauchery and villainy were practiced, and where dire diseases were bred, that came into the Court with the prisoners, and sometimes rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief Justice himself, and pulled him off the bench. It had more than once happened that the judge in the black cap pronounced his own doom as certainly as the prisoner's, and even died before him." In the course of the same chapter he describes the accused as standing quiet and attentive, with his hands resting on the slab of wood forming the shelf of the prisoner's dock, "so composedly that they had not displaced a leaf of the herbs with which it was strewn. The Court was all bestrewn with herbs, and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against gaol air and gaol fever." In 1770, Mr. Ackerman, one of the keepers, testified before the House of Commons, which had the question of rebuilding the prison before it, that in the spring of 1750, the jail distemper had spread to the Sessions House, now the Old Bailey, and had caused the death, in addition to two Judges, and the Lord Mayor already alluded to, of several of the jury and others to the number of over sixty persons.

The surroundings of Newgate are full of historical memories. Just off Giltspur street, but a step away, is Cock lane, where the ghost walked. Along Newgate street, going from the Old Bailey to Cheapside, was the noble old charity of Christ's Hospital, otherwise famous as the Blue-Coat School, rich in works of art and richer in the recollections of such scholars within its cloisters as Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Richardson, who wrote "Clarissa Harlowe," and many more. Along the same street opens Queen's Head Passage, in which Dolly's chop-house, which is a part of the commercial history of England, stands, and Ivy Lane, where Dr. Johnson established his club of that name. Newgate Market, between Newgate street and Paternoster Row, is the great meat market of London. It is what is known as the carcass market, and for many years was the chief source of slaughtered meat supply to the retail butchers of London. At a certain hour of the morning Newgate street was a veritable butchers' exchange. Newgate market was originally a meat market, but its convenient proximity to Smithfield, which lies on the other side of Newgate, only a few streets off, led to its conversion to its later uses. Smithfield was the historic cattle market of London. Here in the past were slaughtered beasts for food, and men and women for their opinions. The beasts had the better part of the bargain. They were killed before they were cooked. The human victims of Smithfield Shambles were roasted and boiled alive. In