Escapes from Newgate have been numerous enough, but except in a few cases not particularly remarkable. They miss the extraordinary features of celebrated evasions, such as those of Casanova Von Trenck and Latude. The heroes of Newgate, too, were mostly commonplace criminals. There was but little romance about their misdeeds, and they scarcely excite the sympathy which we cannot deny to victims of tyrannical oppression immured under the Piombi of Venice or in the Bastile. They lacked aptitude, moreover, or perhaps opportunity, to weave their stories into thrilling narratives, such as have been preserved from the pens of more scholarly prisoners. Hence the chronicle of Newgate is somewhat bald and uninteresting as regards escapes. It rings the changes upon conventional stratagems and schemes. All more or less bear testimony to the cunning and adroitness of the prisoners, but all equally prove the keepers' carelessness or cupidity. An escape from prison argues always a want of precaution. This may come of mere neglectfulness, or it may be bought at a price. Against bribery there can be no protection, but long experience has established the watchful supervision, which to-day avails more than bolts and bars and blocks of stone. A prisoner can sooner win through a massive wall than elude a keen-eyed warder's care. Hence in all modern prison construction the old idea of mere solidity has been abandoned, and reliance is placed rather upon the upright intelligence of that which we may term the prison police. The minute inspection of cells and other parts occupied by prisoners; the examination of the prisoners themselves at uncertain times; above all, the intimate acquaintance which those in authority should have of the movements and doings of their charges at all seasons—these are the best safeguards against escapes.

In early days attempts to break prison were generally rude and imperfect. Now and again a rescue was accomplished by force, at risk, however, of a levÉe of the citizens in vindication of the law. This was the case in 1439, when Phillip Malpas and Robert Marshall, the sheriffs of London, recovered a prisoner who had been snatched from their officers' hands. Sometimes the escape followed a riotous upheaval of the inmates of Newgate, as when two of the Percies and Lord Egremond were committed to Newgate for an affray in the North Country between them and Lord Salisbury's sons. Soon after their committal these turbulent aristocrats "broke out of prison and went to the king; the other prisoners took to the leads of the gate, and defended it a long while against the sheriffs and all their officers," till eventually the aid of the citizens had to be called in. In 1520 a prisoner who was so weak and ill that he had to be let down out of Newgate in a basket broke through the people in the Sessions Hall, and took sanctuary in Grey Friars Church. The rest of the story, as told by Holinshed, states that after staying six or seven days in the church, before the sheriffs could speak with him, "because he would not abjure (the country) and asked a crowner, they took him hence, with violence, and cast him again into prison, but the law served not to hang him."

In the "Calendar of State Papers," under date 1593, there is a reference to a more ingenious method of compassing the enlargement of a prisoner. The scheme was to convey a living body out of Newgate in a coffin, instead of the dead one for which it had been prepared. The prisoner was a member of the congregation or secret conventicle, and the coffin had been made by subscription of the whole society, at a cost of four and eightpence. The State Papers give the examination of one Christopher Bowman, a goldsmith, on the subject, but unfortunately gives few details as to the meditated escape. The idea was to write a wrong name on the coffin-lid, and no doubt to trust to a corrupt officer within the prison for the substitution of the bodies. I find another curious but brief reference to escapes in the State Papers about this date. It is the endorsement of "the examination of Robert Bellamy, of the manner of his escape from Newgate, from thence to Scotland, and then over to Hamburgh. His arrest in the Palsgrave's country, and his conveyance to Duke Casimir."

As time passed the records become fuller, and there is more variety in the operations of the prisoners in their efforts towards freedom. In 1663 a man escaped by his wife changing clothes with him, and got into a hole between two walls in Thomas Court; "but though he had a rug and food, yet the night being wet he wanted beer, and peeping out, he was taken, is brought back prisoner, and will, it is thought, be hanged." Sometimes the prisoners rose against their keepers, and tried to set the prison on fire, hoping to get out during the confusion. This was repeatedly tried. In 1615, for instance, and again in 1692, when the prison was actually alight; but the fire was discovered just as certain of the prisoners were in the act of breaking open the prison gates. Sometimes no violence was used, but the prisoner walked off with the connivance of his keeper. This was what occurred with Sir Nicholas Poyntz, who escaped between Newgate and the King's Bench, on the road to the latter prison, to which he was being transferred. The references to this case throw some light upon the interior of Newgate in the year 1623. Poyntz had been arrested for killing a man in a street brawl. He had been committed first to the King's Bench, whence, on pretence of his having excited a mutiny in that prison, he was transferred to Newgate, and lodged in a dungeon without bed or light, and compelled to lie in a coffin. All this he sets forth in a petition to the high and mighty prince, George, Duke of Buckingham, for whose use he paid the sum of £500 to Sir Edward Villiers, and prays that he may have leave to sue out his Habeas Corpus, or have back his money. No notice having been taken of this appeal, he made shift for himself in the manner described. He was soon afterwards retaken, as appears from other petitions from the under-sheriffs, against whom actions had been commenced for allowing the escape.

Another somewhat similar case is reported in 1635, where the deputy keeper of Newgate, Edward James by name, was attached and committed to the Fleet for allowing Edward Lunsford, a prisoner in his custody, to go at large. Lunsford was concerned with Lewis and others in a foul attempt to kill Sir Thomas Pelham, on a Sunday going to church, and committed under an order of the Star Chamber to Newgate, where he lay for a year. His imprisonment was from time to time relaxed by James: first that he might prosecute his suit to a gentlewoman worth £10,000; and afterwards on account of the prosecutions against him in the Star Chamber; ultimately on account of his lameness and sickness James gave him liberty for the recovery of his health, and he was allowed to lodge out of prison, his father being his surety, and promising that he should be produced when required. But he abused his kindness, and instead of showing himself at regular periods to the keeper, made off altogether. All this is stated in a petition from James, who prays for enlargement on bail that he may pursue and recapture Lunsford. "Lunsford is so lame that he can only go in a coach, and though it is reported that he has been at Gravelines and Cologne, yet he had been seen in town within ten days." This petition, which is in the State Papers, is underwritten that the Attorney-General be directed to prosecute the petitioner in the Star Chamber, and upon it are Secretary Windebank's notes; to the effect that James had received a bribe of £14 to allow Lunsford and his companions to go abroad without a warrant, and one of them to escape. Various sentences were proposed. Lord Cottington suggested that James should pay a fine of £1,000 to the king, imprisonment during pleasure, to be bound to good behaviour when he comes out, and acknowledgments. Secretary Windebank added that he should be put from his place; the earl marshal suggested standing with a paper in Westminster Hall, and prosecution of the principal keeper; Archbishop Laud concluded with whipping, and that the chief keeper should be sent for to the Council Board.

The ordinary methods of attempting escape were common enough in Newgate. Quarrying into the walls, breaking up floors, sawing through bars, and picking locks were frequent devices to gain release. In 1679 several prisoners picked out the stones of the prison walls, and seven who had been committed to Newgate for burglary escaped. No part of the prison was safe from attack, provided only the prisoners had leisure and were unobserved, both of which were almost a matter of course. Now it is a passage through the back of a chimney in a room occupied by the prisoner, now a hole through a wall into a house adjoining the prison. Extraordinary perseverance is displayed in dealing with uncompromising material. The meanest and seemingly most insufficient weapons served. Bars are sawn through like butter;[217:1] prisoners rid themselves of their irons as though they were old rags; one man takes a bar out of the chapel window, climbs through, and gets away over the house-tops; a gang working in association saw through eight bars, "each as thick as a man's wrist, leaving enough iron to keep the bars together, and fitting up the notches with dirt and iron-rust to prevent discovery;" but they are detected in time, and for proper security are all chained to the floor. Another lot are discovered "working with large iron crows," meaning to get through the floor. On this occasion "a great lot of saws, files, pins, and other tools" were found among the prisoners, plainly revealing the almost inconceivable license and carelessness prevailing. Again, two men under sentence of death found means to break out of Newgate "through walls six feet in thickness." They were brothers, and one of them being ill, he was out of humanity removed from his cell to an upper room, where the other was suffered to attend him. As they were both bricklayers by trade, they easily worked through the wall in a night, and so escaped. They were, however, retaken and hanged. The ease with which irons are slipped is shown repeatedly. One man having attempted to escape was as usual chained to the floor, yet he managed to get himself loose from an iron collar in which his neck was fastened and his hands extended. This man, when disengaged from the floor, had the resolution to wring the collar from his neck by fixing it between two of the bars of the gaol window, and thus by main strength he broke it in two. Others cut through their handcuffs and shackles two or three times in succession with the ease of the Davenport brothers freeing themselves from bonds.

Jack Sheppard's escapes from Newgate are historical, although much embellished by the novelist's art. Sheppard's success was really marvellous, but it may be explained to some extent by his indomitable pluck, his ingenuity, and his personal activity. As he was still quite a lad when he was hanged in 1724, he could have been barely twenty-two at the time of his escapes. In the proclamation for his apprehension after his second escape, he is described as about twenty-two years of age, five feet four inches in height, very slender, of a pale complexion, having an impediment or hesitation in his speech and wearing a butcher's blue frock with a greatcoat over it; a carpenter or house-joiner by trade. Twenty guineas reward was offered to any who might discover or apprehend him. From his early apprenticeship to a carpenter he had much skill and knowledge in the handling of tools. He first became celebrated as a prison-breaker by his escapes from the St. Giles's Round House and from the New Prison. His first escape, from the condemned hold of Newgate, where he lay under sentence of death, was more a proof of ingenuity than of prowess. The usual neglect of proper precautions allowed two female visitors to have access to him and to supply him with tools, probably a file and saw. With these he partly divided a spike on the top of the hatch which led from the condemned hold.

Upon a second visit from his fair friends he broke off the spike, squeezed his head and shoulders through the opening, the women then pulling him through. How he got past the lodge where the turnkeys were carousing is not recorded, but it was probably in female disguise. His second escape, following his recapture, and a second sentence of death, was much more remarkable. This escape was, however, only rendered possible by the negligence of his keepers. They visited him at dinner-time, and after a careful examination of his irons, having satisfied themselves that he was quite secure, left him for the day. Released thus from all surveillance, time was all that Sheppard needed to effect his escape.

He had been chained to the floor by heavy irons, which were riveted into a staple fixed in the ground. Various fancy sketches exist of the means of restraint employed, but none can be relied upon as accurate or authentic. Some irons still in existence at Newgate may be akin to those by which Sheppard was secured, but they are hardly the identical fetters. Sheppard was also handcuffed. He is said to have rid himself of these by holding the connecting chain firmly between his teeth, squeezing his fingers as small as possible, and drawing the manacles off. "He next twisted the gyves,[220:1] the heavy gyves, round and round, and partly by main strength, partly by a dexterous, well-applied jerk, snapped asunder the central link by which they were attached to the padlock." He was now free to move about, but the basils still confined his ankles, and he dragged at every step the long connecting chain. He drew up the basils on his calf, and removing his stockings, used them to tie up the chains to his legs. He first attempted to climb up the chimney, but his upward progress was impeded by an iron bar that crossed the aperture. He descended, therefore, and from the outside, with a piece of his broken chain set to work to pick out the stones and bricks so as to release the bar. This he accomplished and thus obtained an implement about an inch square and nearly a yard long, which was of the utmost service to him in his further operations. The room in which he had been confined was a part of the so-called "castle;" above it was the "Red-room," and into this he effected an entrance by climbing the chimney and making a fresh hole on the level of the floor above. In the "Red-room" he found a rusty nail, with which he tried to pick the lock, but failing in this, he wrenched off the plate that covered the bolt and forced the bolt back with his fingers. This Red-room door opened on to a dark passage leading to the chapel. There was a door in it which he opened by making a hole in the wall and pushing the bolt back, and so reached the chapel. Thence he got into an entry between the chapel and the lower leads. "The door of this entry was very strong,[221:1] and fastened with a great lock. What was worse, the night had now overtaken him, and he was forced to work in the dark. However, in half an hour, by the help of the great nail, the chapel spike, and the iron bar, he forced off the box of the lock and opened the door which led him to another yet more difficult, for it was not only locked, but barred and bolted. When he had tried in vain to make this lock and box give way, he wrenched the fillet from the main post of the door and the box and staples came off with it.... There was yet another door betwixt him and the lower leads; but it being bolted within side he opened it easily, and mounting to the top of it he got over the wall and so to the upper leads." All that remained for him to do was to descend. There was a house adjoining, that of Mr. Bird, a turner, on to which he might drop, but he deemed the leap too dangerous, and coolly resolved to retrace his steps to the prison chamber, from whence he had so laboriously issued, and secure his blanket. Having accomplished this risky service, he returned to the leads, made fast his blanket, slid down it, entered the turner's house by a garret window, and eventually, after some delay and no little danger of detection, got away down into the street.

Mr. Austin, the Newgate turnkey, who was specially in charge of Sheppard, and who, on unbolting the castle strong room next morning, found that his prisoner was gone, was amazed beyond measure. The whole of the prison warders ran up, and at sight of the cart-loads of rubbish and dÉbris "stood like men deprived of their senses." After their first surprise they got their keys to open the neighbouring strong rooms, hoping that he might not have got entirely away. It was not difficult to follow his track. Six great doors, one of which it was said had not been opened for seven years, had been forced, and their massive locks, screws, and bolts lay broken in pieces, and scattered about the gaol. Last of all they came to the blanket hanging pendent from the leads, and it was plain that Sheppard was already far beyond pursuit.

It may be interesting to mention here that he was recaptured, mainly through his own negligence and drunkenness, within a fortnight of his escape. In the interval, after ridding himself of his irons, he had committed several fresh robberies, the most successful being a burglary at a pawnbroker's, where he furnished himself with the fine suit, sword, and snuff-box he possessed at the time of his arrest. "When he was brought back to the gaol," says a contemporary account, "he was very drunk, carry'd himself insolently, defy'd the keepers to hold him with all their irons, art, and skill." He was by this time quite a notorious personage. "Nothing contributes so much to the entertainment of the town at present," says another journal of the time, "as the adventures of the house-breaker and gaol-breaker, John Sheppard. 'Tis thought the keepers of Newgate have got above £200 already by the crowds who daily flock to see him." "On Wednesday several noblemen visited him." He sat for his portrait to Sir James Thornhill, the eminent painter,[223:1] and the likeness was reproduced in a mezzotint which had a large circulation. Seven different histories or narratives of his adventures were published and illustrated with numerous engravings. His importance was further increased by the special instructions issued to the Attorney-General to bring him to immediate trial. A letter from the Duke of Newcastle, then Secretary of State, is preserved in the Hardwicke MSS., wherein that great official condescends to convey the king's commands to Sir Philip Yorke that Sheppard, having made two very extraordinary escapes, and being a very dangerous person, should be forthwith brought to trial, "to the end that execution may without delay be awarded against him." This letter is dated the 6th November; he was arraigned on the 10th, found guilty, and sentenced the same day. His execution took place on the 16th November, just one month after his escape. He exhibited great coolness and effrontery during his trial. He told the court that if they would let his handcuffs be put on he by his art would take them off before their faces. The largest crowds ever seen in London paid testimony to his notoriety as he passed through the streets; and Westminster Hall had not been so densely thronged in the memory of man as at the time of his trial. No pains were spared to ensure his safe custody in Newgate. He was chained to the floor in the condemned hold, and constantly watched night and day by two guards.

But up to the last Sheppard entertained schemes for eluding justice. He had obtained a penknife by some means or other, and he had intended to cut his cords while actually in the cart going to Tyburn, throw himself in amongst the crowd at a place called Little Turnstile, and run for his life through the narrow passage, along which the mounted officers could not follow him. But this plan was nullified by the discovery of the knife on his person just before he left Newgate. It is said that he had also hopes of resuscitation, and that friends had agreed to cut him down promptly, and to apply the usual restoratives. This scheme, if it had ever existed, was probably rendered abortive by the proceedings of the mob after the execution.

Sheppard had many imitators, but few equals. Possibly the ease with which he broke prison led to an increase in precautions, and I can find no other cases of evasion in Jack Sheppard's manner. There are several instances of attempted escapes by the reverse process, not over the walls, but through them or along the sewers. Burnworth, while in Newgate in 1726, projected a plan of escape. He got an iron crow, and assisted by certain prisoners, pulled stones out of the walls, while others sung psalms to put the turnkeys off their guard. Next day the officers came to remove five convicts awaiting execution, but found the room so full of stones and rubbish that some hours elapsed before the prisoners could be got out, and Burnworth was still in durance. Joshua Dean, capitally convicted in 1731 for counterfeiting stamps, formed a design with seven other prisoners awaiting transportation to the plantations to break gaol. They found means to get down into the common sewer, no doubt by taking up the floor. Thence four of them reached a vault under a house in Fleet Lane, and so into the shop, through which three got off, but the fourth was secured and carried back to Newgate. The fate of two at least of the remaining three was not known till long afterwards. In 1736, a certain Daniel Malden, who had already escaped once, again got out of Newgate, by sawing his chains near the staple with which they were fastened to the wall of the condemned hold and getting through the brickwork and dropping into the common sewer. "Several persons were employed to search after him, but to no purpose, though the chains about him weighed nearly a hundred pounds." Malden was not discovered, but the searchers came upon "the bodies of two persons who had been smothered in trying to escape." These were no doubt two of those mentioned above. This method of evasion continued to be practised till long afterwards. In 1785 two convicts cut a hole in the floor of their cell, and got into the common sewer to make their escape. "But wading till they were almost suffocated, they at length reached the gully-hole, and calling for help, were taken out alive, but too weak to walk, and carried to their former quarters."

Daniel Malden, who twice in successive years escaped from the condemned hold in Newgate, in a manner little less surprising, although less notorious, than Jack Sheppard, had been a man-of-war's man, and served on several of his Majesty's ships. After his discharge he took to burglary and street-robberies, for which he was presently arrested and sentenced to suffer death. While lying in the condemned hold, on the very morning of his execution he effected his escape. A previous occupant of the same cell in the condemned hold had told him that a certain plank was loose in the floor, which he found to be true. Accordingly, between ten and eleven on the night of October 21, 1736, before execution, he began to work, and raised up the plank with the foot of a stool that was in the cell. He soon made a hole through the arch under the floor big enough for his body to pass through, and so dropped into a cell below from which another convict had previously escaped. The window-bar of this cell remained cut just as it had been left after this last escape, and Malden easily climbed through with all his irons still on him into the press-yard. When there he waited a bit, till, seeing "all things quiet," he pulled off his shoes and went softly up into the chapel, where he observed a small breach in the wall. He enlarged it and so got into the penthouse. Making his way through the penthouse, he passed on to the roof. At last, using his own words, "I got upon the top of the cells by the ordinary's house, having made my way from the top of the chapel upon the roofs of the houses, and all round the chimneys of the cells over the ordinary's house;" from this he climbed along the roofs to that of an empty house, and finding one of the garret windows open, entered it and passed down three pairs of stairs into the kitchen, where he put on his shoes again, "which I had made shift to carry in my hand all the way I came, and with rags and pieces of my jacket wrapped my irons close to my legs as if I had been gouty or lame; then I got out at the kitchen window, up one pair of stairs into Phoenix Court, and from thence through the streets to my home in Nightingale Lane."

Here he lay till six o'clock, then sent for a smith, who knocked off his irons, and took them away with him for his pains. Then he asked for his wife, who came to him; but while they were at breakfast, hearing a noise in the yard, he made off, and took refuge at Mrs. Newman's, "the sign of the Black-boy, Millbank; there I was kept private and locked up four days alone and no soul by myself."

Venturing out on the fifth day, he heard they were in pursuit of him, and again took refuge, this time in the house of a Mrs. Franklin. From thence he despatched a shoemaker with a message to his wife, and letters to two gentlemen in the city. But the messenger betrayed him to the Newgate officers, and in about an hour "the house was beset. I hid myself," says Malden, "behind the shutters in the yard, and my wife was drinking tea in the house. The keepers, seeing her, cried, 'Your humble servant, madam; where is your spouse?' I heard them, and knowing I was not safe, endeavoured to get over a wall, when some of them espyed me, crying, 'Here he is!' upon which they immediately laid hold of me, carried me back to Newgate, put me into the old condemned hold as the strongest place, and stapled me down to the floor."

Nothing daunted by this first failure, he resolved to attempt a second escape. A fellow prisoner conveyed a knife to him, and on the night of June 6, 1737, he began to saw the staple to which he was fastened in two. His own story is worth quoting.

"I worked through it with much difficulty, and with one of my irons wrenched it open and got it loose. Then I took down, with the assistance of my knife, a stone in front of the seat in the corner of the condemned hold: when I had got the stone down, I found there was a row of strong iron bars under the seat through which I could not get, so I was obliged to work under these bars and open a passage below them. To do this I had no tool but my old knife, and in doing the work my nails were torn off the ends of my fingers, and my hands were in a dreadful, miserable condition. At last I opened a hole just big enough for me to squeeze through, and in I went head foremost, but one of my legs, my irons being on, stuck very fast in the hole, and by this leg I hung in the inside of the vault with my head downward for half an hour or more. I thought I should be stifled in this sad position, and was just going to call out for help, when, turning myself up, I happened to reach the bars. I took fast hold of them by one hand, and with the other disengaged my leg to get it out of the hole."

When clear he had still a drop of some thirty feet, and to break his fall he fastened a piece of blanket he had about him to one of the bars, hoping to lower himself down; but it broke, and he fell with much violence into a hole under the vault, "my fetters causing me to fall very heavy, and here I stuck for a considerable time." This hole proved to be a funnel, "very narrow and straight; I had torn my flesh in a terrible manner by the fall, but was forced to tear myself much worse in squeezing through." He stuck fast and could not stir either backward or forward for more than half an hour. "But at last, what with squeezing my body, tearing my flesh off my bones, and the weight of my irons, which helped me a little here, I worked myself through."

The funnel communicated with the main sewer, in which, as well as he could, he cleaned himself. "My shirt and breeches were torn in pieces, but I washed them in the muddy water, and walked through the sewer as far as I could, my irons being very heavy on me and incommoding me much." Now a new danger overtook him: his escape had been discovered and its direction. Several of the Newgate runners had therefore been let into the sewer to look for him. "And here," he says, "I had been taken again had I not found a hollow place in the side of the brickwork into which I crowded myself, and they passed by me twice while I stood in that nook." He remained forty-eight hours in the sewer, but eventually got out in a yard "against the pump in Town Ditch, behind Christ's Hospital." Once more he narrowly escaped detection, for a woman in the yard saw and suspected him to be after no good. However, he was suffered to go free, and got as far as Little Britain, where he came across a friend who gave him a pot of beer and procured a smith to knock off his fetters.

Malden's adventures after this were very varied. He got first to Enfield, when some friends subscribed forty-five shillings to buy him a suit of clothes at Rag Fair. Thence he passed over to Flushing, where he was nearly persuaded to take foreign service, but he refused and returned to England in search of his wife. Finding her, the two wandered about the country taking what work they could find. While at Canterbury, employed in the hop-fields, he was nearly discovered by a fellow who beat the drum in a show, and who spoke of him openly as "a man who had broken twice out of Newgate." Next he turned jockey, and while thus employed was betrayed by a man to whom he had been kind. Malden was carried before the Canterbury justices on suspicion of being the man who had escaped from Newgate, and a communication was sent to the authorities of that prison. Mr. Akerman and two of his officers came in person to identify the prisoner, and, if the true Malden, to convey him back to London. But Malden once more nearly gave his gaolers the slip. He obtained somehow an old saw, "a spike such as is used for splicing ropes, a piece of an old sword jagged and notched, and an old knife." These he concealed rather imprudently upon his person, where they were seen and taken from him, otherwise Mr. Akerman, as Malden told him, "would have been like to have come upon a Canterbury story" instead of the missing prisoner. However, the Newgate officers secured Malden effectually, and brought him to London on the 26th of September, 1737, which he reached "guarded by about thirty or forty horsemen, the roads all the way being lined with spectators." "Thus was I got to London," he says in his last dying confession, "handcuffed, and my legs chained under the horse's belly; I got to Newgate that Sunday evening about five o'clock, and rid quite up into the lodge, where I was taken off my horse, then was conveyed up to the old condemned hole, handcuffed, and chained to the floor."

On Friday, the 15th October, the last day of Sessions, Malden was called into court and informed that his former judgment of death must be executed upon him, and he was accordingly hanged upon the 2d November following.

Stratagem and disguise in some shape or other were, however, the most favourite and generally the most successful forms of escape. Extraordinary and quite culpable facilities for changing clothes were given by the lax discipline of the prison. The substitution of persons, devoted wife or friend, taking the place of the accused, as in the story of Sydney Carton, as told by Dickens; or the well-known exchange between Lord and Lady Nithsdale, which occurred at Newgate. George Flint, an imprisoned journalist, who continued to edit his objectionable periodical from the prison, got away in the costume of a footman. His wife was suffered to live with him, and helped him to the disguise. She concealed the escape for two or three days, pretending that her husband was dangerously ill in bed, and not fit to be disturbed; for which fidelity to her husband, who was now beyond the seas, having made the most of the time thus gained, Mrs. Flint was cast into the condemned hold, and "used after a most barbarous manner to extort a confession." Another very similar and unsuccessful case was that of Alexander Scott, a highwayman suspected of robbing the Worcester and Portsmouth mails. Scott attempted to get out in the "habit" of an oyster-woman, whom his wife had persuaded to favour their design. The change was made, and the lodge bell rung to give egress to Scott. Unfortunately for the prisoner the gatekeeper was dilatory. Meanwhile, an assistant turnkey, missing Scott, conjectured that he had escaped, and seeing the oyster-woman standing at the gate, began to question her, and insisted upon looking at her face. Scott being at once detected, he struck the turnkey a blow in the face, hoping to knock him down. A scuffle ensued, the turnkey proved the strongest, and Scott was secured.

Female disguise was one of the many methods employed by the imprisoned Jacobites to compass escape, but it was not always successful. Among others Mr. Barlow of Burton Hall tried it. In the first instance a crazy woman, Elizabeth Powell, well known in Westminster Market, came to Mr. Barlow with a whole suit of female apparel, but "he, fearing it might be a trick, or that he might fail in the attempt, discovered her." A week or two later, as if inspired by the proposal, Mr. Barlow did make the attempt. Close shaved and neatly dressed in female clothes, he came to the gate with a crowd of ladies who had been visiting their Jacobite friends, hoping to pass out unobserved with the others. But the turnkey—escapes had been very frequent, and all officials were on the alert—caught hold of him, turned him about, and in the struggle threw him down. The rest of the women cried out in a lamentable tone, "Don't hurt the poor lady; she is with child;" and some of them cried, "Oh, my dear mother!" whereupon the turnkey, convinced he had to do with a lady, let him go. Mr. Barlow, says the account, acted the part to the life. He was padded, his face was painted red and white, and he would certainly have made his escape had not Mr. Carleton Smith, one of the special commissioners appointed to ensure the safe custody of the rebels, strictly examined the would-be fugitive and detected his disguise. Mr. Barlow offered Smith ten guineas to let him go, but instead of accepting the bribe, Mr. Smith carried his prisoner just as he was, in female disguise, before the court then sitting at the Old Bailey. Mr. Barlow declared that the clothes had been brought him by his wife. "The court," says the account, "was very well pleased to see him thus metamorphosed, but ordered him to be put in heavy irons, and the clothes to be kept as a testimony against him."

The circumstances under which Mr. Pitt, the governor of Newgate, was superseded in his functions have been described in a previous chapter. Mr. Pitt was so strongly suspected of Jacobite leanings that he was tried for his life. No doubt escapes were scandalously frequent during his rÉgime, and it is just possible that they were due to the governor's complicity, although Mr. Pitt was actually acquitted of the charge. More probably they owed their success to the ingenuity of desperate men easily triumphing over the prevailing carelessness of their keepers. The first escape which made a considerable noise was that of Mr. Forster, commonly known as General Forster, who headed the Northumbrian rising in 1715, and lost the battle of Preston Pans. Mr. Forster was allowed considerable liberty, and lodged in apartments in the keeper's house. One afternoon, when Forster and another were drinking "French wine" with Mr. Pitt, Mr. Forster sent his servant to fetch a bottle of wine from his own stock to "make up the treat." The servant on pretence of going to the vault left the room. Being long away, Mr. Forster pretended to be very angry, and followed him out. Meanwhile the servant had sent the governor's black man, a species of hybrid turnkey, down to the cellar for the wine, and had locked him up there. The black thus disposed of, Forster's servant returned and waited for his master just outside Mr. Pitt's parlour door. Being an adept at the locksmith's art, as well as a smart and intelligent fellow, the servant had previously obtained an impression in clay of Mr. Pitt's front door key, and had manufactured a counterfeit key. Directly Mr. Forster appeared, the front door was unlocked, master and servant passed through and went off together, first taking care to lock the door on the outside and leave the key in the lock to prevent their being readily pursued. Mr. Forster got to Prittlewell in Essex by four o'clock next morning, with two more horsemen that had been waiting to attend them. From Prittlewell, they hastened on to Leigh, where a vessel was provided, in which they made a safe voyage to France. "By this it appears," says the chronicler, evidently a stout Whig, "that Mr. Forster was much better skilled in contriving an escape than leading an army, which shows the weakness of the Pretender and his council, who put so great a trust in the hands of a person who was altogether unfit for it, and never made other campaign than to hunt a fox and drink down his companions."

The next attempt was on a larger scale. It was planned by Brigadier Macintosh, with whom were Mr. Wogan, two of the Delmehoys, Mr. James Talbot, and the brigadier's son, with several others, to the number of fifteen in all. The prime mover was the brigadier, who, having "made a shift to get off his irons, and coming down with them in his hand under his gown, caused a servant to knock at the gaol door outside, himself sitting close by it." As soon as the door was opened he pushed out with great violence, knocking down the turnkey and two or three of the sentinels. One of the soldiers made a thrust at him with his bayonet; but the brigadier parried the charge, seized the piece, unscrewed the bayonet, and "menaced it at the breast of the soldier, who thereupon gave way and suffered him and fourteen more to get into the street." Eight of the fugitives were almost immediately recaptured, but the other gentlemen got clean off. One of them was Mr. James Talbot, who, unhappily, fell again into the hands of the authorities. He was discovered by the chance gossip of a garrulous maid servant, who, chattering at an ale-house in Windmill Street, near the Haymarket, said her master had a cousin come to see him who had the whitest hands she ever saw in her life. This caused suspicion, and suspicion brought discovery. A reward of £500 had been offered by proclamation for the arrest of any fugitives, except the brigadier, who was valued at £1,000, and Talbot was given up.

The escapes did not end here. The next to get away was Mr. George Budden, an upholsterer, who had a shop near Fleet Bridge, a Jacobite, but not in the rebellion of 1715. He effected his escape at the time when Mr. Pitt was himself a prisoner, suspected of collusion in the previous evasions. Mr. Budden's plan was simple. He was possessed of money, and had friends who could help to convey him away could he but get out of Newgate. One night as he sat drinking with the head turnkey, Mr. Budden purposely insulted the officer grossly, and even went so far as to strike him. The turnkey was furious, and carried off his prisoner to the lodge, there to be heavily ironed, Mr. Budden trusting that either on the way there or back he might contrive to escape. On reaching the lodge Mr. Budden apologized and "made atonement to the good-natured keeper, who was a little mellower than ordinary," and was led back to his former apartment; on the way he turned up the keeper's heels and made off through the gate. Once outside, Budden ran into Newgate Market, and thence by many windings and turnings out of London, riding post-haste seventy miles to the coast, and so across to France.

There were other attempts, such as that of Mr. Robertson, who tried to make off in a clergyman's habit, but was discovered and stopped before he had passed one of the doors; and of Mr. Ramsay, who escaped with the crowd that came to hear the condemned sermon. Now and then there was the concerted action of a number, as when the prisoners thronged about the gates in order to make their escape. Trouble, again, was only prevented by timely warning that there was a design to convey large iron crows to the rebels, by which they might beat open the gaol and escape. The most important and about the last of the rebel escapes was that of Mr. Ratcliffe, brother of the unfortunate Lord Derwentwater. This was effected so easily, indeed, with so much cool impudence, that connivance must assuredly have been bought. Mr. Ratcliffe seized his opportunity one day when he was paying a visit to Captain Dalziel and others on the master's side. At the gate he met by previous agreement a "cane-jobber," or person who sold walking-sticks, and who had once been an inmate of Newgate himself. Mr. Ratcliffe paused for a time and bargained for a cane, after which he passed under the iron chain at the gate, and upon the cane-seller's saying that he was no prisoner, the turnkey and guard suffered Ratcliffe to get off. The author of the "History of the Press-yard" says that Mr. Ratcliffe bribed the officer, "which," as another writer adds, "must be owned to be the readiest way to turn both lock and key."

Mr. Ratcliffe, thirty years later, paid the penalty to the law which he had escaped on this occasion. A warm adherent of the Pretender, he embarked from France for Scotland to take part in the Jacobite rising in 1745. The French ship was captured, and Ratcliffe sent as a prisoner to the Tower. He was presently arraigned at the bar of the King's Bench for having escaped from Newgate in 1716, when under sentence of death for high treason. Ratcliffe at first refused to plead, declaring that he was a subject of the French king, and that the court had no jurisdiction over him. Then he denied that he was the person named in the record produced in court, whereupon witnesses were called to prove that he was Charles Ratcliffe. Two Northumbrian men identified him as the leader of five hundred of the Earl of Derwentwater's men, remembering him by the scar on his face. They had been to see him in the Tower, and could swear to him; but could not swear that he was the same Charles Ratcliffe who had escaped from Newgate prison. A barber who had been appointed "close shaver" to Newgate in 1715, and who attended the prison daily to shave all the rebel prisoners, remembered Charles Ratcliffe, Esq., perfectly as the chum or companion of Basil Hamilton, a reputed nephew of the Duke of Hamilton; but this barber, when closely pressed, could not swear that the prisoner at the bar was the very same Charles Ratcliffe whom he had shaved, and who had afterwards escaped out of Newgate. No evidence indeed was forthcoming to positively fix Mr. Ratcliffe's identity; but "a gentleman" was called who deposed that the prisoner had in the Tower declared himself to be the same Charles Ratcliffe who was condemned in the year 1716, and had likewise told him, the witness, that he had made his escape out of Newgate in mourning, with a brown tie wig, when under sentence of death in that gaol. Upon this evidence the judge summed up against the prisoner, the jury found a verdict of guilty, and Ratcliffe was eventually beheaded on Tower Hill.

FOOTNOTES:

[221:1] Quoted from the "Tyburn Calendar," the wording of which is copied in all other accounts.