tortures in 1659. left him in possession of a farm, an elder sister being executrix. Here they lived together, it is said, very happily, till the sister formed an acquaintance with Fussell, a respectable lawyer. The brother appears to have been from the first greatly averse to this connexion, and once swore, if ever she married Mr. Fussell, to be the death of him, either in his study or elsewhere.' They parted, and in parting quarrelled about their property. This led to litigation; Fussell, after his marriage with the sister, prosecuted certain suits against Strangeways. One day, whilst the former was in London, engaged in this and similar business, he was suddenly struck, where he sat in his lodgings, by two bullets, and fell dead. Suspicion fell on Strangeways, who was taken into custody. On the day of the inquest he was conveyed by a guard to the place where Mr. Fussell's body lay, where, before the coroner's jury, he was commanded to take his dead brother-in-law by the hand, and to touch his wounds. This sage expedient having failed, the foreman of the jury proposed that all the gunsmiths' shops in London, and the adjacent places, should be examined, to see what guns had been lent or sold on the day of the murder. jury mostly thought this proposition impracticable, and one of them, who was a gun-maker, a Mr. Holloway, said decidedly the thing was not to be done from the great number of his profession; adding that he, for one, had lent a gun on the day

"The father of Strangeways had

6

The

in question, and so no doubt had many others. Strange to say, that was the very gun with which the murder had been committed, and by its means Strangeways was discovered to be the murderer.

Overcome by the extraordinary nature of the proof, he confessed his connexion with the alleged crime. The day of trial was the 24th of February, when, on being asked to plead, he said, that if it might, on his being tried, be admitted him to die by that manner of death by which his brother fell, he would plead; if not, by refusing to plead, he would both preserve an estate to bestow on such friends for whom he had most affection, and withal free himself from the ignominious death of a public gibbet.' Persisting in this resolution, he was sentenced by Lord Chief Justice Glynn to be put into a mean house, stopped from any light, and that he be laid upon his back, with his body bare; that his arms shall be stretched forth with a cord, the one to the one side, the other to the other side of the prison, and in like manner shall his legs be used; and that upon his body shall be laid as much iron and stone as he can bear, and more; and the first day shall he have three morsels of barley-bread, and the next shall he drink thrice of the water in the next channel to the prisondoor, but of no spring or fountain, and this shall be his punishment till he die!' On the Monday following, at eleven in the forenoon, the sheriffs and other officers came to the Press Yard, whither the miserable prisoner was presently brought. He wore

a mourning cloak, beneath which he appeared clothed in white from head to foot. By the sheriffs he was conducted to a dungeon, where, after prayers, his friends placed themselves at the corner of the press, whom he desired, when he gave the word, to lay on the weights! This they did at the signal of Lord Jesus, receive my soul;' but, finding the weight too light for sudden execution, many of those standing by added their burthens to disburthen him of his pain.' He died in about eight or ten minutes. The press used on this occasion was of a triangular form, and so constructed as to press upon the breast of the sufferer, about the region of the heart, as the speediest mode of relieving him from his agony.'

Before quitting our notices of the Old Bailey, we must not omit to mention the frightful gaol fever, which raged in its precincts, in May 1750, and especially in the neighbouring gaol of Newgate. Notwithstanding every precaution had been taken to prevent it, the effluvia entered the crowded Court, and among other victims hurried to the grave were, the Judge of the Common Pleas, Sir Thomas Abney, Baron Clark, the Lord Mayor, Sir Samuel Pennant, and several members of the Bar and of the Jury.

Adjoining the Old Bailey is the prison of Newgate. It derives its name from one of the old City gates, which as late as 1778 was still standing, and formed a portion of the prison. This * Knight's "London," vol. iv. p. 301, &c.

VOL. II.

M

gate appears to have been originally built about the time of Henry the First, at which early period we find it used as a place of confinement for felons. Somewhat later, it seems to have been set apart as a prison for persons of rank. Here, in the reign of Edward the Third, the Chancellor, Robert Baldock, ended his days in confinement; and here Sir Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont who afterwards fell at the battle of Northampton -as well as some other persons of distinction, were imprisoned in 1457. At a later period, William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, was put in this prison for preaching in Gracechurch Street against the Established Church; and, in 1702, Daniel Defoe was imprisoned here for his ironical pamphlet, "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters;" and within its walls he wrote his "Review," which is said to have afforded Steele his first idea of the "Tatler." For a long lapse of years it bore the name of Chamberlain's-gate; but when rebuilt in the reign of Henry the Fifth, it obtained the name of New-gate. Having been considerably injured by the great Fire of London, it was again rebuilt in 1672; and was finally destroyed in 1778, to make room for the present Newgate Prison. The latter massive building had scarcely been completed, when, in 1780, the famous riots broke out, which bear the name of their instigator, Lord George Gordon.

In their fury, the mob tore away stones two or three tons in weight, to which the doors of the cells were fastened; the pri

soners were released; the building was fired in several places, and in a short time became a mass of ruins.

Dr. Johnson writes to Mrs. Thrale in June 1780: -"On Wednesday I walked with Dr. Scott to look at Newgate, and found it in ruins, with the fire yet glowing. As I went by, the Protestants were plundering the Sessions-house at the Old Bailey. There were not, I believe, a hundred ; but they did their work at leisure, in full security, without sentinels, without trepidation; as men lawfully employed in full day. Such is the cowardice of a commercial place." Within the walls of the new prison Lord George Gordon died on the 1st November 1793. The first execution which took place at Newgate was on the 9th December 1783.

Let us now proceed to point out the principal objects of interest in the neighbourhood of Newgate Street. From the south side, in the direction of St. Paul's Cathedral, runs Ivy Lane, a narrow gloomy street, in which, for about eight years, Dr. Johnson presided over a convivial and literary club, of which he was himself the founder. It was held at the sign of the King's Head, which is no longer in existence. Sir John Hawkins says,

"The club met weekly at the King's Head, a famous beef-steak house in Ivy Lane, every Tuesday evening. Thither Johnson constantly resorted, and, with a disposition to please and be pleased, would pass those hours in a free and unrestrained interchange of sentiments, which otherwise had