CHAPTER II

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NEWGATE WITHIN.

The entrance to Newgate is through the keeper's lodge, which, with the house in which the keeper lives, occupies the centre of what has been well called "this vast quarry of stone." It fronts on the Old Bailey. The prisoner's quarters are in the wings, which extend from either side of the keeper's quarters. In the gloomy office, men with that indescribable prison air all such officials bear, lounge about, and come and go on business. There is iron everywhere, from the huge bolts on the outer doors, and the door inside of them, to the barred windows and other doors beyond number, that open and shut with a sullen clangor that goes echoing through the stone passages as if it would never die away. The smell of the jail is as powerful in its way as these evidences of its actual strength. It blows into your face in a strong breath when the door opens for you, and you find it lingering about you hours after your visit has been made. Some scientist ought to analyze this odor of the prison. It is unique. A soldier's barracks, a hospital, a ship's forecastle--all places, in short, where men live in close quarters--have an odor that tells of their origin; but the scent of the jail is different from all, and as horrible as the thing it recalls to you whenever you breathe it, or fancy you do.

"What London pedestrian is there," writes Dickens, in