Gallows Thief

‘The Association Room?’ Sir Henry enquired.

‘Where the condemned associate, sir, during the daylight hours, sir,’ the turnkey explained, ‘except on high days and holidays like this one is today, sir, and those windows to your left, sir, those are the salt boxes.’

Sir Henry saw at the end of the yard, which was very narrow and long, fifteen barred windows. The windows were small, dark-shadowed and on three floors, and the cells behind those windows were called the salt boxes. He had no idea why they were called that and he did not like to ask in case he encouraged more of the turnkey’s coarse humour, but Sir Henry knew that the fifteen salt boxes were also known as the devil’s waiting rooms and the antechambers of hell. They were Newgate’s condemned cells. A doomed man, his eyes a mere glitter behind the thick bars, stared back at Sir Henry who turned away as the turnkey hauled open the heavy door of the Association Room. ‘Obliged to you, Sir Henry, obliged, I’m sure,’ the turnkey knuckled his forehead as Sir Henry offered him a shilling in thanks for his guidance through the prison’s labyrinthine passages.

Sir Henry stepped into the Association Room where he was greeted by the Keeper, William Brown, a lugubrious man with a bald head and heavy jowls. A stout priest wearing an old-fashioned wig, a cassock, stained surplice and Geneva bands stood smiling unctuously beside the Keeper. ‘Pray allow me to name the Ordinary,’ the Keeper said, ‘the Reverend Doctor Horace Cotton. Sir Henry Forrest.’

Sir Henry took off his hat. ‘Your servant, Doctor Cotton.’

‘At your service, Sir Henry,’ Doctor Cotton responded fulsomely, after offering Sir Henry a deep bow. The Ordinary’s old-fashioned wig was three plump billows of white fleece that framed his whey-coloured face. There was a weeping boil on his left cheek while, as a specific against the prison’s smell, a nosegay was tied around his neck, just above the Geneva bands.

‘Sir Henry,’ the Keeper confided to the prison chaplain, ‘is here on official duty.’

‘Ah!’ Doctor Cotton’s eyes opened wide, suggesting Sir Henry was in for a rare treat. ‘And is this your first such visit?’

‘My first,’ Sir Henry admitted.

‘I am persuaded you will find it edifying, Sir Henry,’ the priest said.

‘Edifying!’ The choice of word struck Sir Henry as inappropriate.

‘Souls have been won for Christ by this experience,’ Doctor Cotton said sternly, ‘won for Christ, indeed!’ He smiled, then bowed obsequiously as the Keeper ushered Sir Henry away to meet the other six guests who had come for the traditional Newgate breakfast. The last of the guests was called Matthew Logan and he needed no introduction, for he and Sir Henry were old friends and, because both were city aldermen, they were considered very distinguished visitors this morning for the Court of Aldermen were the official governors of Newgate Prison. The Keeper and the Ordinary, whose salaries were fixed by the aldermen, pressed coffee on the two men, but both declined and Logan took Sir Henry’s arm and led him to the hearth where they could talk privately beside the smouldering embers and smoking ashes.

‘You’re sure you want to see this through?’ Logan asked his friend solicitously. ‘You look damned pale.’

Sir Henry was a good-looking man, lean, tall and straight-backed with a clever and fastidious face. He was a banker, rich and successful. His hair, prematurely silver for he was only a few days past his fiftieth birthday, gave him a distinguished appearance, yet at that moment, standing in front of the prisoners’ fireplace in the Association Room, he looked old, frail, emaciated and sickly. ‘It’s the early morning, Logan,’ he explained, ‘and I’m never at my shining best this close to dawn.’

‘Quite,’ Logan said, pretending to believe his friend’s explanation, ‘but this ain’t an experience for everyone, though I must say the breakfast afterwards is very good. Devilled kidneys. This is probably my tenth or eleventh visit, and the breakfast has yet to disappoint me. How is Lady Forrest?’

‘Florence keeps well, thank you for asking.’

‘And your daughter?’

‘Eleanor will doubtless survive her troubles,’ Sir Henry said drily. ‘A broken heart has yet to prove fatal.’

‘Except in poets?’

‘Damn poets, Logan,’ Sir Henry said with a smile. He held his hands towards the remnants of the fire that was waiting to be blown back into life. The prisoners had left their cooking pots and cauldrons stacked about its edges and a pile of blackened potato peelings was curled in the ashes. ‘Poor Eleanor,’ Sir Henry said, ‘if it was up to me, Logan, I’d let her marry, but Florence won’t hear of it and I suppose she’s right.’

‘Mothers usually know best about such things,’ Logan said airily, and then the room’s low murmur of conversation died as the guests turned towards a barred door that had opened with a sudden and harsh squeal. For a heartbeat no one appeared in the doorway and it seemed all the guests held their breath, but then, to an audible gasp, a man carrying a stout leather bag stumped into sight. There was nothing about his appearance to explain the gasp. He was burly, red-faced and dressed in brown gaiters, black breeches and a black coat that was buttoned too tightly over his protuberant belly. He respectfully pulled off a shabby brown hat when he saw the waiting gentry, but he offered no greeting and no one in the Association Room acknowledged his arrival.

‘That,’ Logan told Sir Henry under his breath, ‘is Mister James Botting, more familiarly known as Jemmy.’

‘The petitioner?’ Sir Henry asked softly.

‘The very same.’

Sir Henry suppressed a shudder and reminded himself that men should not be judged by their outward appearance, though it was hard not to disapprove of a being as ugly as James Botting, whose raw-beef slab of a face was disfigured by warts, wens and scars. His bald pate was surrounded by a fringe of lank brown hair that fell over his frayed collar and, when he grimaced, which he did every few seconds in a nervous habit, he displayed yellow teeth and shrunken gums. He had big hands which heaved a bench away from a table onto which he slung his leather bag. He unbuckled the bag and, conscious of being watched by the silent visitors, brought out eight coils of thin white cord. He placed the coils on the table where he fussily arranged them so that they were in a neat row and equidistant from each other. Next, and with the air of a conjuror, he took out four white cotton sacks, each about a foot square, that he placed by the coiled lines and last of all, after glancing up to make sure he was still being observed, he produced four heavy ropes made of three-stranded hemp. Each rope looked to be about ten or twelve feet long and each had a noose tied into one end and an eye spliced in the other. James Botting laid the ropes on the table and then stepped back. ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said smartly.

‘Oh, Botting!’ William Brown, the Keeper, spoke in a tone which suggested he had only just noticed Botting’s presence. ‘A very good morning to you.’

‘And a nice one it is too, sir,’ Botting said. ‘I feared it might rain, there was such a pain in my elbow joints, but there ain’t a cloud in sight, sir. Still just the four customers today, sir?’

‘Just the four, Botting.’

‘They’ve drawn a good crowd, sir, they have, a very good crowd.’

‘Good, very good,’ the Keeper said vaguely, then returned to his conversation with one of the breakfast guests. Sir Henry looked back to his friend Logan. ‘Does Botting know why we’re here?’

‘I do hope not.’ Logan, a banker like Sir Henry, grimaced. ‘He might botch things if he did.’

‘Botch things?’

‘How better to prove he needs an assistant?’ Logan suggested with a smile.

‘Remind me what we pay him.’

‘Ten shillings and sixpence a week, but there are emoluments. The hand of glory for one, and also the clothes and the ropes.’

‘Emoluments?’ Sir Henry was puzzled.

Logan smiled. ‘We watch the proceedings up to a point, Sir Henry, but then we retire for devilled kidneys and as soon as we’re gone Mister Botting will invite folk onto the scaffold for a touch of the dead man’s hand. It’s supposed to cure warts and I believe he charges one shilling and sixpence for each treatment. And as for the prisoners’ clothes and the killing ropes? He sells the clothes to Madame Tussaud if she wants them, and if not then the clothes are sold as keepsakes and the rope is cut into fragments that are usually hawked about the streets. Believe me, Mister Botting does not suffer from penury. I’ve often thought we ought to offer the job of hangman to the highest bidder instead of paying the wretch a salary.’

Sir Henry turned to look at Botting’s ravaged face. ‘The hand of glory doesn’t seem to work on the hangman though, does it?’

‘Not a pretty sight, is he?’ Logan agreed with a smile, then he held up his hand. ‘Hear it?’

Sir Henry could hear a clanking sound. The room had fallen silent again and he felt a kind of chill dread. He also despised himself for the prurience that had persuaded him to come to this breakfast, then he shuddered as the door from the Press Yard opened.

Another turnkey came into the room. He knuckled his forehead to the Keeper, then stood beside a low slab of timber that squatted on the floor. The turnkey held a stout hammer and Sir Henry wondered what its purpose was, but he did not like to ask, and then the guests closest to the door hauled off their hats because the Sheriff and Under-Sheriff had appeared in the doorway and were ushering the prisoners into the Association Room. There were four of them, three men and a young woman. The latter was scarce more than a girl and had a pinched, pale and frightened face.

‘Brandy, sir?’ One of the Keeper’s servants appeared beside Matthew Logan and Sir Henry.

‘Thank you,’ Logan said, and took two of the beakers. He handed one to Sir Henry. ‘It’s bad brandy,’ he said under his breath, ‘but a good precaution. Settles the stomach, eh?’

The prison bell suddenly began to toll. The girl twitched at the sound, then the turnkey with the hammer ordered her to put a foot onto the wooden anvil so her leg irons could be struck off. Sir Henry, who had long ceased to notice the prison’s stench, sipped the brandy and feared it would not stay down. His head felt light, unreal. The turnkey hammered the rivets from the first manacle and Sir Henry saw that the girl’s ankle was a welt of sores.

‘Other foot, girl,’ the turnkey said.

The bell tolled on and it would not stop now until all four bodies were cut down. Sir Henry was aware that his hand was shaking. ‘I hear corn was fetching sixty-three shillings a quarter in Norwich last week,’ he said, his voice too loud.

Logan was gazing at the quivering girl. ‘She stole her mistress’s necklace.’

‘She did?’

‘Pearls. She must have sold it, for the necklace was never found. Then the tall fellow next in line is a highwayman. Pity he isn’t Hood, eh? Still, we’ll see Hood swing one day. The other two murdered a grocer in Southwark. Sixty-three a quarter, eh? It’s a wonder anyone can eat.’

The girl, moving awkwardly because she was unaccustomed to walking without leg irons, shuffled away from the makeshift anvil. She began crying and Sir Henry turned his back on her. ‘Devilled kidneys, you say?’