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someone fell. Others tripped and also tumbled down. Panic broke out and twenty-eight people were crushed to death.
    The prison’s rebuilding did not terminate the appalling conditions and vociferous criticisms continued to be heard throughout the rest of its life, most of all about the overcrowding and the unsanitary conditions. In 1811 the House of Commons established a committee to enquire into conditions in prisons. Newgate was supposed to hold 300 inmates, but on the day that members of the committee visited it, the number was no less than 900 felons and 300 debtors. One outcome of this visit was the opening of a debtors’ prison in Whitecross Street in 1815 which helped to relieve the overcrowding.From 1852, Newgate was used only to house prisoners awaiting trial or execution. Hangings ceased outside Newgate in 1868. It went out of regular use as a prison after the Home Office took over control in 1877. Demolition started in 1902 and when this was completed, in 1904, the Central Criminal Court was built on the site.
    Newgate seems to have exercised a macabre fascination for Charles Dickens and it features particularly in Barnaby Rudge and also Oliver Twist and Great Expectations. The prison also appears in Thackeray’s novel Henry Esmond and Harrison Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard.
    Coldbath Fields
    Coldbath Fields was located in Clerkenwell, close to a natural spring, and was built in the 1790s, quickly becoming notorious for the severity of its regime. It was this notoriety which encouraged Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) to pen the following lines:
    As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw
    A solitary cell,
    And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint
    For improving his prisons in Hell.
    Coldbath Fields gained more literary distinction when Samuel Butler in his semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh, published posthumously in 1903, has his character Ernest Pontifex confined there. The inmates of Coldbath Fields at one time numbered as many as 1,400. It closed in 1877.
    Not far away was the Clerkenwell House of Detention, built in 1615. This had an eventful history. It housed numerous Catholic priests, was attacked by London apprentices in 1668 and briefly housed Jack Sheppard and his lady-friend Edgeworth Bess before they made a cunning escape. Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) lodged his character Humphrey Clinker from the eponymous novel in Coldbath Fields, often known as the ‘New Prison’. The prison was attacked during the Gordon Riots of the 1780s but underwent rebuilding and extensions over the next sixty years. In 1867 a Fenian trying to rescue some compatriots from the house of detention blew a huge hole in the wall, demolishing a row of artisans’ dwellings opposite and killing six people and injuring fifty others. He did not manage, however, to extract the prisoners. Although it was rebuilt, the house of detention closed in 1877.
    Bridewell
    Bridewell came to give its name generically to houses of correction and gaols. The original building was a royal palace on the banks of the Fleet. It was completed in 1520 for Henry VIII, and took its name from a nearby well dedicated to St Bride or Brigid. Its years of glory were brief. In 1522 Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor,was entertained to brilliant pageants and banquets by Henry at Bridewell Palace. On 30 November 1529 Henry dined there with Catherine of Aragon, this probably being the last time she saw her husband. In 1553, however, the palace became a temporary lodging place for the indigent and a prison for petty offenders, later adding a hospital and workhouse function. Much of the fabric was destroyed in the Great Fire but was quickly rebuilt, after which the building’s prime purpose was as a prison. Bridewell was closed in 1855.
    ‘ The Clink ’
    On the south bank of the Thames in the Southwark area there were many penal establishments, but one of the best known was ‘The Clink’. The word ‘Clink’ is now an apt generic nickname