first day, to view the laying out and preparation of the corpse; during the
dissection of Mary Bateman in 1809, a woman executed for murder and
witchcraft, he collected £30 from a crowd estimated at 24,000. Medical
students were allowed in at a fee of half a guinea a head and tickets for one
hundred gentlemen at a cost of five guineas each were sold on the second day
to view the dissection proper. On the third day, he dissected the eyes and
gave lectures to ladies, having removed the more gory remains. Mary
Bateman’s dissection was worth over £80 in total. Other surgeons made
similar profits in various towns and cities.^4
Prison as punishment
Newgate Prison was sited next door to the Old Bailey court and included
debtors’wards as well as criminal accommodation. Five storeys high, it was
extended in the 1720s to hold 150 inmates, and fifteen condemned cells were
added. Other London gaols included the Clink, which had existed since 1161
in Southwark, and in the same borough as the Marshalsea prison. Only a small
portion of the walls of the Clink survive, and there is now a Prison Museum at
the site. The Marshalsea prison predominantly held debtors, as did a few other
prisons in London whose traces have now disappeared.
The early eighteenth century saw a rise in the use of imprisonment as a
punishment in houses of correction or‘Bridewells’, named after the original
hospital and prison of the banks of the River Fleet. These institutions housed
petty criminals who were usually committed by Justices of the Peace and who
had been arrested by the watchmen or constables, or because of complaints
made by private individuals, such as the victims of thefts. A very large
proportion of the inmates of the Bridewells were women, often newly arrived
in the city and without means of support. The prisoners were put to hard
labour, usually beating hemp, and many were also whipped as a part of their
punishment. By the eighteenth century, the Bridewells were increasingly used
to house prisoners awaiting trial.
As with most other prisons, which were run as private businesses, the
life of the inmates depended on their wealth. Two of the wards at Newgate
were reserved for those who could pay for decent food and
accommodation, while all others were put into common wards. Gaolers
charged for all privileges at exorbitant rates, inventing charges at will. The
right to administer prisons for profit were sold to private individuals and
even the royal household. Gaol fever (typhus) was rife in most prisons in
Britain, and it was not unusual for a prisoner to die of the disease before
they were brought to trial.
CRIME IN THE AGE OF INDUSTRY AND EMPIRE