NEW'GATE. A famous London prison, es tablished at the 'new gate' of the city, probably near the beginning of the twelfth century. The earliest authentic mention of it dates from 1218, when it was repaired by order of the King. It was repaired and enlarged in 1038, and wholly rebuilt after the great tire of 1000, which had partially destroyed the old building. In 1770 work was begun on the reconstruction of the prison. The work was hardly finished when the prison was sack?d during the 'Lord George Gor don riot-.' In 1857-59 the internal structure of Newgate was chnnged, so as to provide separate cells for prisoners, who had formerly been per mitted to mingle with each other. In 1902 the building was demolished.
In the early centuries of its existence Newgate was used for almost every class of prisoners— prisoners of State, Jews charged with child mur der. regrators and forestallers, debtors, as well as for ordinary criminals. The prisoners endured a most wretched existence. it' they possessed property. they were subjected to the limitless rapacity of their jailers; if without property. they had to rely upon alms for food. Frequently they were detained for years before securing a hearing on the charges upon which they had been committed to prison. These eonditions remained Practically unchanged in the sixteenth and seven teenth centuries, when the prison began to be crowded with a new class of inmates, those who adhered to proscribed religious creeds. henry VII 1. and Mary, and in later years of her reign, Elizabeth. made use of Newgate as a place of detention for those who were to be tried for heresy or popery, as the case might be. It was in Newgate that such prisoners were tortured in the hope of their recantation, or to them to implicate others. John Rogers and Hooper
were among the more famous of the prisoners of this class.
With the cessation of religious persecution, Newgate was again occupied chiefly by felons awaiting execution, of persons awaiting trial on criminal charges, and of debtors. The condition of its inmates was evil both from a moral and a sanitary point of view. Those who were guilty of mere misdemeanors were permitted to asso ciate with the most hardened criminals, with the result that many not originally inclined toward professional crime became involved in the plots of the professional criminals. This evil was ag gravated after 1780, when Newgate became the regular place of detention of felons condemned to transportation. After 1815 debtors were no longer confined in Sanitary conditions were even worse. From the :Middle Ages New gate had been noted for its epidemic diseases— the 'jail distemper,' probably a form of typhus fever, being a frequent malady. In 1414 sixty four prisoners had died of this disease; and its ravages were common down to the end of the eighteenth century. In 1752 an attempt was made to cheek the evil by the employment of mechanical ventilation, but with small success. In the early part of the nineteenth century phi lanthropists began to interest themselves in the moral and sanitary conditions of Newgate. Ef fective reform did not take place, however. until after 1840. After 1849 convicted prisoners were removed to a new prison in Holloway, and New gate remained. until its demolition, almost ex clusively a place of detention for prisoners awaiting trial. Consult Griffiths, Chronicles of Yemr•gute (London, 1884).