who had contravened the precautionary rules against the plague, petitions the council that he has been very heavily laden with such intolerable bolts and shackles that he is lamed, and being a weak and aged man, is like to perish in the gaol. “Having always lived in good reputation and been a liberal benefactor where he has long dwelt, he prays enlargement on security.” The prison is so constantly over-crowded that the prisoners have “an infectious malignant fever which sends many to their long home. The magistrates who think them unfit to breathe their native air when living bury them as brethren when dead.” All kinds of robbery and oppression were practised within the precincts of the gaol. Inside, apart from personal discomfort, the inmates do much as they please. “There are seditious preachings by fifth monarchy men at Newgate,” say the records, “and prayers for all righteous blood.” Some time previous, when the Puritans were nominally the weakest, they also held their services in the prison. Samuel Eaton, a prisoner committed to Newgate as a dangerous schismatic, is charged with having conventicles in the gaol, some to the number of seventy persons. He was, moreover, permitted by the keeper to preach openly. The keeper was petitioned by one of the inmates to remove Eaton and send him to some other part of the prison, but he replied disdainfully, threatening to remove the petitioner to a worse place. He, the keeper himself, attended the conventicles, “calling it a very fair and goodly company, and staying there some season.” Besides this, he gave license to Eaton to go abroad, to preach, contrary to the charge of the High Commission (1638). Another complaint made by the petitioner is that the keeper caused petitioner’s sister to be removed out of the prison contrary to the opinion of a doctor, and that she died the very next day. Her chamber after her removal was assigned to Eaton, it being the most convenient place in the prison for holding his conventicles.
This keeper may be condemned as a fanatical partizan at worst. But he had predecessors who were active oppressors, eager to squeeze the uttermost farthing out of their involuntary lodgers. The bar kept within the prison must have been a cause of continued extortion, although those who pandered to the cupidity of the bar-keepers occasionally got into trouble. Sir Francis Mitchell, we read, was sent on foot and bareheaded to the Tower on account of his patent for ale-houses. “He is a justice of Middlesex, and had a salary of £40 a year from Newgate prison on condition of sending all his prisoners there,” … no doubt to drink the liquor supplied to the prison bar.
But still worse was the conduct of the under-strappers. An instruction to the Lord Mayor and sheriffs in the State Papers (Dec. 1649) directs them to examine the miscarriages of the under officers of Newgate who were favourers of the felons and robbers there committed, and to remove such as appear faulty. The nefarious practices of the Newgate officers were nothing new. They are set forth with much quaintness of diction and many curious details in a pamphlet of the period, entitled the ‘Black Dogge of Newgate.’ There was a tavern entitled the ‘Dogge Tavern in Newgate,’ as appears by the State Papers, where the place is indicted by an informer for improper practices. The author of the pamphlet pretends that the dog has got out of prison and leapt into a sign-board. “ ‘What the devil’s here?’ quoth a mad fellow going by, seeing the black cur ringed about the nose with a golden hoop, having two saucer-like eyes, and an iron chain about his neck. The public-house must be a well-customed house where such a porter keeps the door and calls in company.” The writer enters it and describes the scene. He finds “English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Dutch, and French in several rooms; some drinking the neat wine of Orleans, some the Gascony, some the Bordeaux. There wanted neither sherry sack nor charnico, paligo nor Peter Seeme, amber-coloured canary or liquorish Ipocras, brown beloved Bastard, fat Alicant, or any quick-spirited liquor that might draw their will into a circle. …” Not desiring to mix with such company, the writer sat himself and called for his “whole pint” alone. Presently he was joined by a “poor thin-gut fellow with a face as red as the gilded knobs of an alderman’s horse-bridle, who as it seemed had newly come out of limbo.” The two treated each other, and then exchanged opinions as to the sign of the tavern, wondering how it came first to be called the Black Dog of Newgate; and the writer maintained that he had read in an old chronicle “that it was a walking spirit in the likeness of a black dog, gliding up and down the streets a little before the time of execution, and in the night while the sessions continued.” From this archæological exercise they pass on to discuss the prison and its officers. This part of the pamphlet sheds a strong light upon the evil-doings of the turnkeys, who appear to have been guilty of the grossest extortion, taking advantage of their position as officers of the law to levy black-mail alike on criminals and their victims. Of these swindling turnkeys or bailiffs, whom the writer designates “coney-catchers,” he tells many discreditable tales, one or two of which may be worth transcribing.
The term coney-catching had long been in use to define a species of fraud akin to our modern “confidence trick,” or, as the French call it, the vol à l’Americain. Shakespeare, in the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ makes Falstaff call Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol “coney-catching rascals.” The fraud was then of but recent introduction. It is detailed at length by Robert Greene in his ‘Notable Discovery of Cozenage,’ published in 1591. He characterizes it as a new art. Three parties were needed to practise it, called respectively the setter, the verser, and the barnacle; their game, or victim, was the coney. The first was the decoy, the second was a confederate who plied the coney with drink, the third came in by accident should the efforts of the others to beguile the coney into “a deceit at cards have failed.” In the end the countryman was completely despoiled. Later on there was a new nomenclature: the setter became the beater, the tavern to which the rogues adjourned was the “bush,” and the quarry was the bird. The verser was the retriever, the barnacle was the pot-hunter, and the game was called bat-fowling. Greene’s exposure was supposed to have deprived the coney-catchers of a “collop of their living.” But they still prospered at their nefarious practices, according to the author of the ‘Black Dogge,’ to whom I will now return.
This was their plan of procedure. Two coney-catchers enter a tavern together, and there find a gentleman drinking wine. They note his appearance, his weapons, his good cloak and his neat apparel, and are clear that he has a good store of money; so they make up to him. The three become friendly, and the gentleman stands treat. After two or three pottles of wine are disposed of one of the rogues says to their entertainer, “I pray you heark in your ear. Thus it is; my fellow hath a warrant to take you, therefore in kindness I pray you draw your purse and give him an angel to spend in drink, and I will undertake we will not see you at this time.” The stranger, however, would not be imposed upon, and said they were coney-catching knaves, and that they should not wrong him in any respect. “Whereupon the two sent for a constable, and charged the other with felony. The constable, recognizing the two as officials, took the stranger into custody and deprived him of his weapons. Then the two told the constable they would be answerable for his prisoner, and took charge of him. Now mark what followed. As these two knaves were bringing the party charged with felony to Newgate, one of them offered yet xx shillings to set him free, of which, when the party had considered, knowing though he was clear of that he was charged, yet if he lay in prison till the Sessions it would be greater charges. When he was on Newgate stairs ready to go into the gaol, he was content to leave his cloak, what money he had in his purse, and his weapons, which were in the constable’s hand, in pawn for the xx shillings, which the coney-catchers took, and discharged the prisoner without any more to do.”
A little later the same victim is again encountered, with a companion, in a tavern without Bishopgate, where he “had spoke for supper.” In came the swindling turnkeys, whereat the other set on the best face he could, and bade them welcome. The coney-catchers accepted the invitation, and ate and drank merrily. Supper being ended, the reckoning was called for, the shot paid, and, all things discharged, the coneys would fain have been gone. “But one of the knaves said nay: … thus it is, such a man was robbed within this week, and hath got out a warrant for you by name. He hath lost £10; now, if you will restore the money, and bestow xx shillings on us two to drink for our pains, we will undertake to satisfy the party and be your discharge. If not, we have a warrant, and you must answer it at Newgate. This back reckoning is something sharp, but there is no remedy; either pay so much money, or else must a constable be sent for, and so to Newgate as round as a hoop.”
“To
