Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
released, and being left there to die; he was so tortured and tormented,
that nothing man has ever done to man in the horrible caprice of power
and cruelty, exceeds his self-inflicted punishment.
Now, now, the door was down. Now they came rushing through the jail,
calling to each other in the vaulted passages; clashing the iron gates
dividing yard from yard; beating at the doors of cells and wards;
wrenching off bolts and locks and bars; tearing down the door-posts to
get men out; endeavouring to drag them by main force through gaps and
windows where a child could scarcely pass; whooping and yelling without
a moment’s rest; and running through the heat and flames as if they were
cased in metal. By their legs, their arms, the hair upon their heads,
they dragged the prisoners out. Some threw themselves upon the captives
as they got towards the door, and tried to file away their irons; some
danced about them with a frenzied joy, and rent their clothes, and were
ready, as it seemed, to tear them limb from limb. Now a party of a dozen
men came darting through the yard into which the murderer cast fearful
glances from his darkened window; dragging a prisoner along the ground
whose dress they had nearly torn from his body in their mad eagerness to
set him free, and who was bleeding and senseless in their hands. Now
a score of prisoners ran to and fro, who had lost themselves in the
intricacies of the prison, and were so bewildered with the noise and
glare that they knew not where to turn or what to do, and still cried
out for help, as loudly as before. Anon some famished wretch whose theft
had been a loaf of bread, or scrap of butcher’s meat, came skulking
past, barefooted--going slowly away because that jail, his house, was
burning; not because he had any other, or had friends to meet, or old
haunts to revisit, or any liberty to gain, but liberty to starve and
die. And then a knot of highwaymen went trooping by, conducted by the
friends they had among the crowd, who muffled their fetters as they went
along, with handkerchiefs and bands of hay, and wrapped them in coats
and cloaks, and gave them drink from bottles, and held it to their lips,
because of their handcuffs which there was no time to remove. All this,
and Heaven knows how much more, was done amidst a noise, a hurry, and
distraction, like nothing that we know of, even in our dreams; which
seemed for ever on the rise, and never to decrease for the space of a
single instant.
He was still looking down from his window upon these things, when a band
of men with torches, ladders, axes, and many kinds of weapons, poured
into the yard, and hammering at his door, inquired if there were any
prisoner within. He left the window when he saw them coming, and drew
back into the remotest corner of the cell; but although he returned them
no answer, they had a fancy that some one was inside, for they presently
set ladders against it, and began to tear away the bars at the casement;
not only that, indeed, but with pickaxes to hew down the very stones in
the wall.
As soon as they had made a breach at the window, large enough for the
admission of a man’s head, one of them thrust in a torch and looked all
round the room. He followed this man’s gaze until it rested on himself,
and heard him demand why he had not answered, but made him no reply.
In the general surprise and wonder, they were used to this; without
saying anything more, they enlarged the breach until it was large enough
to admit the body of a man, and then came dropping down upon the floor,
one after another, until the cell was full. They caught him up among
them, handed him to the window, and those who stood upon the ladders
passed him down upon the pavement of the yard. Then the rest came out,
one after another, and, bidding him fly, and lose no time, or the way
would be choked up, hurried away to rescue others.
It seemed not a minute’s work from first to last. He staggered to his
feet, incredulous of what had happened, when the yard was filled
again, and a crowd rushed on, hurrying Barnaby among them. In another
minute--not so much: another minute! the same instant, with no lapse or
interval between!--he and his son were being passed from hand to hand,
through the dense crowd in the street, and were glancing backward at a
burning pile which some one said was Newgate.
From the moment of their first entrance into the prison, the crowd
dispersed themselves about it, and swarmed into every chink and crevice,
as if they had a perfect acquaintance with its innermost parts, and bore
in their minds an exact plan of the whole. For this immediate knowledge
of the place, they were, no doubt, in a great degree, indebted to the
hangman, who stood in the lobby, directing some to go this way, some
that, and some the other; and who materially assisted in bringing about
the wonderful rapidity with which the release of the prisoners was
effected.
But this functionary of the law reserved one important piece of
intelligence, and kept it snugly to himself. When he had issued his
instructions relative to every other part of the building, and the mob
were dispersed from end to end, and busy at their work, he took a bundle
of keys from a kind of cupboard in the wall, and going by a kind of
passage near the chapel (it joined the governors house, and was then
on fire), betook himself to the condemned cells, which were a series of
small, strong, dismal rooms, opening on a low gallery, guarded, at the
end at which he entered, by a strong iron wicket, and at its opposite
extremity by two doors and a thick grate. Having double locked the
wicket, and assured himself that the other entrances were well secured,
he sat down on a bench in the gallery, and sucked the head of his stick
with the utmost complacency, tranquillity, and contentment.
It would have been strange enough, a man’s enjoying himself in this
quiet manner, while the prison was burning, and such a tumult was
cleaving the air, though he had been outside the walls. But here, in the
very heart of the building, and moreover with the prayers and cries
of the four men under sentence sounding in his ears, and their hands,
stretched out through the gratings in their cell-doors, clasped in
frantic entreaty before his very eyes, it was particularly remarkable.
Indeed, Mr Dennis appeared to think it an uncommon circumstance, and to
banter himself upon it; for he thrust his hat on one side as some men do
when they are in a waggish humour, sucked the head of his stick with a
higher relish, and smiled as though he would say, ‘Dennis, you’re a rum
dog; you’re a queer fellow; you’re capital company, Dennis, and quite a
character!’
He sat in this way for some minutes, while the four men in the cells,
who were certain that somebody had entered the gallery, but could not
see who, gave vent to such piteous entreaties as wretches in their
miserable condition may be supposed to have been inspired with: urging,
whoever it was, to set them at liberty, for the love of Heaven; and
protesting, with great fervour, and truly enough, perhaps, for the time,
that if they escaped, they would amend their ways, and would never,
never, never again do wrong before God or man, but would lead penitent
and sober lives, and sorrowfully repent the crimes they had committed.
The terrible energy with which they spoke, would have moved any person,
no matter how good or just (if any good or just person could have
strayed into that sad place that night), to have set them at liberty:
and, while he would have left any other punishment to its free course,
to have saved them from this last dreadful and repulsive penalty; which
never turned a man inclined to evil, and has hardened thousands who were
half inclined to good.
Mr Dennis, who had been bred and nurtured in the good old school, and
had administered the good old laws on the good old plan, always once
and sometimes twice every six weeks, for a long time, bore these appeals
with a deal of philosophy. Being at last, however, rather disturbed in
his pleasant reflection by their repetition, he rapped at one of the
doors with his stick, and cried:
‘Hold your noise there, will you?’
At this they all cried together that they were to be hanged on the next
day but one; and again implored his aid.
‘Aid! For what!’ said Mr Dennis, playfully rapping the knuckles of the
hand nearest him.
‘To save us!’ they cried.
‘Oh, certainly,’ said Mr Dennis, winking at the wall in the absence
of any friend with whom he could humour the joke. ‘And so you’re to be
worked off, are you, brothers?’
‘Unless we are released to-night,’ one of them cried, ‘we are dead men!’
‘I tell you what it is,’ said the hangman, gravely; ‘I’m afraid, my
friend, that you’re not in that ‘ere state of mind that’s suitable to
your condition, then; you’re not a-going to be released: don’t think
it--Will you leave off that ‘ere indecent row? I wonder you an’t ashamed
of yourselves, I do.’
He followed up this reproof by rapping every set of knuckles one after
the other, and having done so, resumed his seat again with a cheerful
countenance.
‘You’ve had law,’ he said, crossing his legs and elevating his eyebrows:
‘laws have been made a’ purpose for you; a wery handsome prison’s
been made a’ purpose for you; a parson’s kept a purpose for you;
a constitootional officer’s appointed a’ purpose for you; carts is
maintained a’ purpose for you--and yet you’re not contented!--WILL you
hold that noise, you sir in the furthest?’
A groan was the only answer.
‘So well as I can make out,’ said Mr Dennis, in a tone of mingled
badinage and remonstrance, ‘there’s not a man among you. I begin to
think I’m on the opposite side, and among the ladies; though for the
matter of that, I’ve seen a many ladies face it out, in a manner that
did honour to the sex.--You in number two, don’t grind them teeth of
yours. Worse manners,’ said the hangman, rapping at the door with his
stick, ‘I never see in this place afore. I’m ashamed of you. You’re a
disgrace to the Bailey.’
After pausing for a moment to hear if anything could be pleaded in
justification, Mr Dennis resumed in a sort of coaxing tone:
‘Now look’ee here, you four. I’m come here to take care of you, and see
that you an’t burnt, instead of the other thing. It’s no use your making
any noise, for you won’t be found out by them as has broken in, and
you’ll only be hoarse when you come to the speeches,--which is a pity.
What I say in respect to the speeches always is, “Give it mouth.” That’s
my maxim. Give it mouth. I’ve heerd,’ said the hangman, pulling off his
hat to take his handkerchief from the crown and wipe his face, and then
putting it on again a little more on one side than before, ‘I’ve heerd a
eloquence on them boards--you know what boards I mean--and have heerd
a degree of mouth given to them speeches, that they was as clear as a
bell, and as good as a play. There’s a pattern! And always, when a thing
of this natur’s to come off, what I stand up for, is, a proper frame of
mind. Let’s have a proper frame of mind, and we can go through with it,
creditable--pleasant--sociable. Whatever you do (and I address myself in
particular, to you in the furthest), never snivel. I’d sooner by half,
though I lose by it, see a man tear his clothes a’ purpose to spile
‘em before they come to me, than find him snivelling. It’s ten to one a
better frame of mind, every way!’
While the hangman addressed them to this effect, in the tone and with
the air of a pastor in familiar conversation with his flock, the noise
had been in some degree subdued; for the rioters were busy in conveying
the prisoners to the Sessions House, which was beyond the main walls of
the prison, though connected with it, and the crowd were busy too, in