Newgate, compared by one eminent author to a university, by another to
a ship, was a republic, whose liberty extended only so far as its iron
door. While there was no liberty without, there was licence within; and
if the culprit, who paid for the smallest indiscretion with his neck,
understood the etiquette of the place, he spent his last weeks in an
orgie of rollicking lawlessness. He drank, he ate, he diced; he
received his friends, or chaffed the Ordinary; he attempted, through
the well-paid cunning of the Clerk, to bribe the jury; and when every
artifice had failed he went to Tyburn like a man. If he knew not how to
live, at least he would show a resentful world how to die.
'In no country,' wrote Sir T. Smith, a distinguished lawyer of the time,
'do malefactors go to execution more intrepidly than in England'; and
assuredly, buoyed up by custom and the approval of their fellows, Wild's
victims made a brave show at the gallows. Nor was their bravery the
result of a common callousness. They understood at once the humour and
the delicacy of the situation. Though hitherto they had chaffed the
Ordinary, they now listened to his exhortation with at least a semblance
of respect; and though their last night upon earth might have been
devoted to a joyous company, they did not withhold their ear from the
Bellman's Chant. As twelve o'clock approached--their last midnight upon
earth--they would interrupt the most spirited discourse, they would
check the tour of the mellowest bottle to listen to the solemn doggerel.
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