compters in Wood Street and The Poultry—raised issues about both security
and the threat to the health of the City. Such overcrowding came to be antici-
pated as wars came to an end. The deputy master (and head turnkey) of New-
gate reportedly claimed, while trying to sell his post in 1712 , that although it was
worth only £ 80 at that time, ‘if there came to be a Peace, it would bee a glorious
place’.^138 The problem of overcrowding was compounded by the fact that most
of the men and women accused of property crimes were sent to gaol to await
trial, though in London, presumably because of the overcrowding in Newgate,
bail was more readily granted in minor felony cases than the law strictly
allowed.^139 It was also the case that many of those who were convicted would be
returned to gaol until their assigned punishments were carried out—a problem
that was to cause difficulties in the 1690 s. In addition, it is also worth noting that
the figures in Figure 1.1represent only one part of a much larger number of
offenders brought to trial at the Old Bailey. Besides those accused of property
offences in the City of London, even larger numbers were charged in
Middlesex—perhaps double the total committed by the magistrates of the City.
But even that accounts for only part of a much larger prison population than the
figure would suggest. Apart from property offenders, others were committed to
Newgate to face trial—and again, from Middlesex as well as the City—for a
range of other offences, some very serious, like high treason, murder, infanti-
cide, rape, or arson; others for one of a multitude of less serious matters that
occasionally led to someone being held for trial rather than being bound over.
The population of Newgate was made up of a larger and more heterogeneous
population than the group of men and women charged with property offences.
The best analysis of the problem of overcrowding in Newgate has been made
by Wayne Sheehan. From a calculation of the number and size of wards and
rooms in Newgate as it was rebuilt after the Great Fire and as it existed through
this period, and from the size of cells provided for individual prisoners in
the model penitentiary at Millbank in the early nineteenth century, Sheehan
believes that Newgate would have been full with a total population of about
150 prisoners.^140 In the last years of the seventeenth century, when prosecutionsIntroduction: The Crime Problem 49(^138) LMA, DL/C/ 255 , fo. 367 (evidence given in the libel suit Thomasine Rewse v. Bodenham Rewse,
1715 ); for Rewse, an old thief-taker and deputy master of Newgate, see below, Ch. 5.
(^139) Bail was not supposed to be granted in felony cases (Beattie, Crime and the Courts, 281 – 3 ). But Lon-
don magistrates appear to have allowed bail in felony cases more generously than magistrates elsewhere,
mainly it would seem when the accused had been charged merely on suspicion of having committed the
offence, rather than on the oath of the victim. Gaol calendars in the late seventeenth century regularly
list accused who had been on bail and had surrendered themselves for trial (see CLRO: SF 199 – 200 (Feb-
ruary and April 1670 ), for example). In February 1697 , to sample a slightly later period, four women
charged with shoplifting were bailed and released from Newgate a few days after being charged; and as
many as twelve men and women charged with felonies were allowed bail before the following session in
April (CLRO: SF 424 – 5 ). In the 1690 s the City grand jury criticized the slackness of the rules respecting
the granting of bail (see, for example, CLRO: London Sess. Papers, December 1699 ). A liberal granting
of bail in minor cases would have been one way of reducing overcrowding in Newgate.
(^140) Sheehan, ‘Finding Solace in Eighteenth-Century Newgate’, 231 – 2.
ch1(a).y5 11/6/01 12:44 PM Page 49