Newgate
The New Gate of the City of London,
the principal west gate at the
point where Watling
Street reached London, roughly along the line of
Oxford Street and Holborn, built in the reign of
Henry I, used as
a prison from at least 1188, and
rebuilt as such in 1420.
It was destroyed in the
Gordon Riots in
1780 but rebuilt in 1783 and used
for both civil debtors and
criminals until 1815.
Thereafter, it was used for criminals only, and
from
1881, only during the sittings of the Central
Criminal Court.
It was finally destroyed in 1902,
part of the site being occupied by
the Central
Criminal Court then built.
Newgate Calendar
(or
Malefactor's Bloody Register) The
original series of this work, by R. Sanders,
was published in five
volumes in 1760 and narrated
notorious crimes from 1700 till
then. There were
many later editions. Later series were
issued from
about 1820 as the Newgate Calendar, and the
New Newgate Calendar appeared weekly in
1863-65. There was also an Annals of Newgate
by
the Rev. M. Villette and others (1776).
(from The
Oxford Companion to Law, 1980)
|
