Sketches by Boz - Penn State University

Sketches by BozIt is necessary to explain here, that the buildings in soon as we had passed, we should require a gate atthe prison, or in other words the different wards—form every comma—we came to a door composed of thicka square, of which the four sides abut respectively on bars of wood, through which were discernible, passingthe Old Bailey, the old College of Physicians (now forminga part of Newgate-market), the Sessions-house, and majority of whom, however, as soon as they were awareto and fro in a narrow yard, some twenty women: theNewgate-street. The intermediate space is divided into of the presence of strangers, retreated to their wards.several paved yards, in which the prisoners take such One side of this yard is railed off at a considerable distance,and formed into a kind of iron cage, about fiveair and exercise as can be had in such a place. Theseyards, with the exception of that in which prisoners feet ten inches in height, roofed at the top, and defendedin front by iron bars, from which the friends ofunder sentence of death are confined (of which we shallpresently give a more detailed description), run parallel the female prisoners communicate with them. In onewith Newgate-street, and consequently from the Old corner of this singular-looking den, was a yellow, haggard,decrepit old woman, in a tattered gown that hadBailey, as it were, to Newgate-market. The women’s sideis in the right wing of the prison nearest the Sessionshouse.As we were introduced into this part of the buildnet,with faded ribbon of the same hue, in earnest con-once been black, and the remains of an old straw boningfirst, we will adopt the same order, and introduce versation with a young girl—a prisoner, of course—ofour readers to it also.about two-and-twenty. It is impossible to imagine a moreTurning to the right, then, down the passage to which poverty-stricken object, or a creature so borne down inwe just now adverted, omitting any mention of interveninggates—for if we noticed every gate that was the old woman. The girl was a good-looking, robust fe-soul and body, by excess of misery and destitution, asunlocked for us to pass through, and locked again as male, with a profusion of hair streaming about in the202