The Gaol the Story of Newgate London's Most Notorious Prison by Kelly Grovier

So riddled with the disease that doctors would refuse to visit, it's thought that Gaol Fever carried off more than 4 times as many as the Executioners did and, considering their fearsome tallies (with one noted to have been hanging, drawing and quartering more than a dozen men a day during the Bloody Assizes), that's a heck of a lot of dead people. Whatever unlucky sod was sent there (as many were for such paltry crimes as being in debt) was soon a victim of the corruption of the institution - being charged on entering the prison, for each chain they wore, for their food and board, for having chains removed and for leaving prison - if they hadn't already become the victim of Typhus.

Regardless of the prison's incarnation (it having been rebuilt after being razed to the ground in the Great Fire of London and the 1780 anti-papist Gordon Riots) the picture it paints is an incredibly gruesome one - the prison a hellish labyrinth of dark corridors and overcrowded cells (it housing more than 4 times the inmates intended along with their families, dogs, pigs and poultry!), Press Yards and Ketch's Kitchens (where the executioners would boil the heads of those they'd recently dispatched), sending its stench and noise far across London.

MDS classes with significant recommendations overlap, excluding ones under the same top-level class.A fascinating and very readable look at the long and murky history of Newgate prison, this features a parade of some of the characters to have haunted its cells and looks at its role in society, the changing attitudes of the English to crime and punishment, and its influence on the popular imagination.

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The Gaol the Story of Newgate London's Most Notorious Prison by Kelly Grovier