Read Newgate: London's Prototype of Hell for Free Online Page B

transportation for life.
----
    John Fielding’s work had its lighter moments. In 1764 he received a complaint from the jilted fiancée of the notorious libertine Giacomo Casanova who, the unhappy girl claimed, had promised to marry her before she let him have his wicked way. Fielding interviewed Casanova who spoke flatteringly of the magistrate’s excellent command of Italian. The two parted on amicable terms. Casanova was unpunished (though the brief spell that he spent in Newgate made a deep impression on him) 37 and the disappointed girl remained single.
    John Fielding was not without vanity. In 1761 he suggested to the Prime Minister, the Duke of Newcastle, that he deserved a knighthood and this was duly awarded. Nor was he wanting in charity. He recognised the problems posed by homeless orphans who had little choice but to descend into criminality. This was the era of Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital and John Fielding made his own contribution to the welfare of these unfortunate waifs. He helped to found a charity which prepared homeless boys for service in the Royal Navy and two homes in Lambeth for girls. The orphan asylum trained girls for domestic service and the Magdalen Hospital was a home for girls who wished to escape their life of prostitution.
     
----
Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital : Thomas Coram ( c . 1668–1751) was a sea captain from Lyme Regis in Dorset who was a pioneer in the development of trade between Britain and the colonies in North America and Canada. He retired with a modest fortune and devoted himself to raising money to provide homes for abandoned children whose small bodies he had seen rotting in the streets near his home on Rotherhithe. He spent eighteen years (1721–39) lobbying and gained the support of both men and women among the aristocracy. Finally, on 17 October 1739, George II granted a charter for ‘an Hospital for the Reception, Maintenance and Proper Education of such cast off Children and Foundlings as may be brought to it’. The Foundling Hospital attracted the support of many prominent citizens, including painters who donated works to raise funds, notably William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, Godfrey Kneller and Thomas Gainsborough. Handel gave an annual performance of The Messiah for the same purpose. The hospital acquired premises in Coram Fields, Holborn (close to the later site of Great Ormond Street Hospital) where mothers could leave their unwanted children in a basket. The Foundling Hospital moved to Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire in 1935 and remained in use until 1951 when the practice of fostering replaced the need for such a home. The Berkhamsted building is now Ashlyns School and the original Holborn site is the home of the Foundling Museum and Coram Fields, the only park in London which an adult may not enter unless accompanied by a child. The Thomas Coram Foundation remains active in child welfare work.
----
    THE AFTERMATH
     
    A severe test of the peacekeeping system arose in 1780. As John Fielding lay on his deathbed a renegade aristocrat, Lord George Gordon, led a rioting mob in an orgy of anti-Catholic violence which for eight days in June of that year wrecked property, killed 300 citizens and brought the business of government to a standstill. One of the most prominent casualties was the partially rebuilt Newgate prison which was burned to the ground and looted. 38 Order was eventually restored by a full-scale military operation and the rioters were taken before courts martial rather than the civil courts. Much of the blame for the disorder fell unjustly on Fielding’s successor, Sir John Hawkins, who had tried to contain the disturbance with inadequate resources. He was succeeded by William Mainwaring, MP, a banker who returned to the old, corrupt ways, placing his friends and family in positions of influence and profit. The problems of corruption were thus not entirely banished. In 1780, the year of John Fielding’s death, the great Parliamentarian