and Baldwin’s Newgate Calendar (1826)
These prefaces show the new self-consciousness of the attitude to crime. At the start of the eighteenth century, crime was considered an unpleasant fact of life, and criminals were a nuisance to be eradicated, rather than people who needed help. A hundred years later, the idea of correctional punishment was coming into vogue, and the Newgate Calendars, as well as works of fiction (by Dickens, Ainsworth and Thackeray), highlighted the plight of the poor and criminal classes, and helped draw public attention to the need for changes in the ways in which criminals were treated. (Both entries are given in full.)
In an age abandoned to dissipation, and when the ties of religion and morality fail to have their accustomed influence on the mind, the publication of a work of this nature makes its appearance with peculiar propriety.
It has not been unusual, of late years, to complain of the sanguinary complection of our laws; and if there were any reason to expect that the practice of felony would be lessened by the institution of any laws less sanguinary than those now in force, it would be a good argument for the enacting of such laws.
Wise and virtuous legislators can wish nothing more ardently than the general welfare of the community; and those who have from time to time given birth to the laws of England, have indisputably done it with a view to this general welfare. But as the wisest productions of the human mind are liable to error, and as there is visibly an encreasing depravity in the manners of the age, it is no wonder that our laws are found, in some instances, inadequate to the purposes for which they were enacted: and, perhaps, if, in a few instances they were made more, and in others less severe than they are at present, the happiest consequences might result to the public.
It is with the utmost deference to the wisdom of their superiors, that the editors of this work offer the following hints for the improvement of the police of this country, and the security of the lives and properties of the subject: and,
1st. If his majesty would be graciously pleased to let the law operate in its full force against every convicted housebreaker, it would probably greatly lessen the number of those atrocious offenders; and consequently add to the repose of every family of property in the kingdom. What can be conceived more dreadful than a band of ruffians drawing the curtains of the bed at midnight, and presenting the drawn dagger, and the loaded pistol? The imagination will paint the terrors of such a situation, in a light more striking than language can display them.
2dly. If the same royal prerogative was exerted for the punishment of women convicts, it would indisputably produce very happy effects. It is to the low and abandoned women that hundreds of young fellows owe their destruction. They rob, they plunder, to support these wretches. Let it not seem cruel that we make one remark, of which we are convinced experience would justify the propriety. The execution of ten women would do more public service than that of a hundred men; for, exclusive of the force of example, it would perhaps tend to the preservation of more than a hundred.
3dly. Notorious defrauds, by gambling or otherwise, should be rendered capital felonies by a statute; for, as the law now stands, after a temporary punishment, the common cheat is turned loose to make fresh depredations on the public.
4thly. Forgery, enormous as the crime is, in a commercial state, might perhaps be more effectually punished and prevented than at present, by dooming the convict to labour for life on board the ballast-lighters.1 Forgerers are seldom among the low and abandoned part of mankind. Forgery is very often the last dreadful refuge to which the distressed tradesman flies. These people then are sensible of shame, and perpetual infamy would be abundantly more terrible to such men than the mere dread of death.
5thly. Highwaymen, we conceive, might with propriety be punished by labouring on the highway, chained by the legs, agreeable to a design we have given in a plate in this work. Many a young fellow is hardened enough to think of taking a purse on the highway, to supply his extravagancies, who would be terrified from the practice, if he knew he could not ride half a dozen miles out of London, without seeing a number of highwaymen working together, under the ignominious circumstances above-mentioned.
With regard to murderers, and persons convicted of unnatural crimes, we cannot think of altering the present mode of punishment. ‘Him that sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed’:2 as to the other wretches, it is only to be lamented that their deaths cannot be aggravated by every species of torment!
Having said thus much, we submit our labours to the candid revision of the public, nothing doubting that, on a careful perusal, they will be found to answer the purpose of guarding the minds of youth against the approaches of vice; and, in consequence, of advancing the happiness of the community.
The penal laws of the British empire are, by foreign writers, charged with being too sanguinary in the cases of lesser offences. They hold that the punishment of death ought to be inflicted only for crimes of the highest magnitude; and philanthropists of our own nation have accorded with their opinion. Such persons as have had no opportunity of inquiring into the subject will hardly credit the assertion that there are above one hundred and sixty offences punished by death, or, as it is denominated, without benefit of clergy. The multiplicity of punishments, it is argued, in many instances defeat their own ends; for the object is alone the prevention of crimes.
The Roman empire never flourished so much as during the era of the Portian law, which abrogated the punishment of death; and it fell soon after the revival of the utmost severity of its penal laws. But Rome was not a nation of commerce, or it never could, under such an abrogation, have so long remained the mistress of Europe. In the present state of society it has become indispensably necessary that offences which, in their nature, are highly injurious to the community, and where no precept will avail, should be punished with the forfeiture of life: but those dreadful examples should be exhibited as seldom as possible; for while, on the one hand, such punishment often proves inadequate to its intended effect, by not being carried into execution; so, on the other, by being often repeated, the minds of the multitude are rendered callous to the dreadful example.
The punishment awaiting the crime of murder, from the earliest ages of civilized nations, has been the same as that inflicted by the laws of the British empire, varying alone in the mode of putting the sentence into execution. We find the murderer punished by death in the ancient laws of the Jews, the Romans and the Athenians; in nations of heathens and idolaters. The Persians, worshipping the sun as their deity, press murderers to death between two stones. Throughout the Chinese empire, and the vast dominions of the East, they are beheaded; a death in England esteemed the least dishonourable, but there considered the most ignominious. Mahometans impale them alive, where they long writhe in agony before death comes to their relief. In Roman Catholic countries the murderer expiated his crime upon the rack.
Several writers on crimes and punishments deny the right of man to take away life, given to us by God alone; but a crime of the dreadful nature of that now before us, however sanguinary they may find our laws in regard to lesser offences, unquestionably calls loudly for death. ‘Whosoever sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,’ saith Holy Writ; but with the life of the murderer should the crime be fully expiated? The English law on this head goes still further: the effects of the murderer revert to the State – thus, as it were, carrying punishment beyond the grave, and involving in its consequences the utter ruin of many a virtuous widow and innocent children, who had looked up alone to it for support. Yet we may be thankful for laws, the dread of which affords us such ample security for our lives and property, and which we find administered with rigorous impartiality, awarding the same punishment for the same offence, whether the culprit be rich or poor, humble in life or exalted in rank. In proof of this we need only refer our readers to the cases of Laurence Earl Ferrers, Doctor Dodd, the Perreaus, Ryland1 and many others, whose lives are recorded in these pages.
It is the opinion of an able commentator on our criminal laws that punishment should succeed the crime as immediately as possible, if we intend that, in the rude minds of the multitude, the picture of the crime shall instantly awaken the attendant idea of punishment: delaying which, serves only to separate these two ideas; and thus affects the minds of the spectators rather as a terrible sight than the necessary consequences of a crime. The horror should contribute to heighten the idea of the punishment.
Next to the necessary example of punishment to offenders is to record examples, in order that such as are unhappily moved with the sordid passion of acquiring wealth by violence, or stimulated by the heinous sin of revenge to shed the blood of a fellow-creature, may have before them a picture of the torment of mind and bodily sufferings of such offenders. In this light THE NEWGATE CALENDAR must prove highly acceptable to all ranks and conditions of men; for we shall find, in the course of these volumes, that crime has always been followed by punishment; and that, in many instances, the most artful secrecy could not screen the offenders from detection, nor the utmost ingenuity shield them from the strong arm of impartial justice.