for property offences rose steadily and when large numbers of convicted of-
fenders were confined in Newgate for longer periods because of the problems in
the penal system, the population of the gaol far exceeeded those numbers. The
gaol was most often seriously overcrowded in the days just before the sessions
were to begin at the Old Bailey, since the defendants who had been committed
to await their trials were joined by others who had been held in other prisons,
particularly the Middlesex gaols and the sheriffs’ compters. Between May 1696
and the end of 1699 —to take a period in which prosecutions were running at a
high level—the number of prisoners in Newgate on the eve of the gaol delivery
session at the Old Bailey ranged between a low of 161 to a high (in December
1696 ) of 347. The median number of accused or convicted felons over that
period was 213 , and the average 228.^141 No doubt there were lower points between
sessions, but at the least one can say that, by Sheehan’s measure, Newgate was
frequently crowded in those months, and occasionally very crowded indeed.
Such conditions were known only too well to the City magistrates, who, as al-
dermen, were responsible for the administration of Newgate and who were
made all too aware of conditions in the gaol when it became overcrowded and
gaol fever increased mortality among the prisoners. The magistrates also kept
in touch with changes in the population of Newgate when it reached dangerous
levels by calling for regular accounts of the bread delivered to the inmates.^142
Sharp upturns in the number of prosecutions, as in the last decades of the sev-
enteenth century and early years of the eighteenth, invariably aroused public
disquiet and drew complaints about the weakness of the law, the failures of the
magistrates, the constables and the courts, and the corruption of gaolers. A
widespread sense of increasing criminality in the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries was almost certainly responsible for a number of the ini-
tiatives taken in the City and in parliament in this period to make the law and its
administration more effective. Many were aimed against particular offences—
robbery, housebreaking, shoplifting, and coining, among others. Others intro-
duced measures to encourage the prosecution of the most violent and
dangerous offenders, which, in turn, helped to transform policing and aspects
of trial. But much of the comment about crime in the City and prescriptions for
addressing it were more general in that they tended to emphasize the moral
weakness and failings that led to crime in the first place. The reigns of William
and Anne were a period in which there was intense concern in some quarters
with the moral health of the society, and much of the analysis and discussion of
crime in the quarter century and more after the Revolution of 1689 was shaped50 Introduction: The Crime Problem(^141) These totals are for the City of London and the Middlesex gaol calendars for three categories of
felons: those committed to Newgate for trial since the previous session of the court; those brought for trial
from other gaols or surrendering on bail; prisoners ‘on orders’—that is, for the most part, convicted of-
fenders awaiting punishment. The gaol calendars survive for both jurisdictions at twenty-one sessions
over those years (LMA: MJ/SR 1872 – 1931 ; CLRO: SF 418 – 46 ).
(^142) See, for example, Rep 95 , ff. 26 , 69 , 127 , 317 ; Rep 123 , ff. 430 , 489.
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