The Gaol the Story of Newgate London's Most Notorious Prison by Kelly Grovier

But if you want to glimpse the barbarism on which our admired, world-famous city is built, The Gaol is not a bad place to start.'Although the subject of the book is quite grim, the author tells us the history in an entertaining and easy manner which makes us want to read on. As recently as 2006 Stephen Halliday published Newgate: London's Prototype of Hell, which is duly credited here. It is such a great idea, in fact, that The Gaol is far from the first. The history of Newgate is a great idea for a book, both for the intricate and fathomless horrors of the place and for the way it filters London as a whole.

These apart, the book does not pretend to new discoveries or deep insights, but only to tell the story.

A few affectations, like that of giving each chapter a monosyllabic title from prison slang, grate. He does so in a clear, readable style that takes the reader at a pleasantly trotting pace through the centuries of oppression and inhumanity. Grovier tells these stories, as well as those of picturesque criminals like the serial escapee Jack Sheppard. It also inspired the Victorian reform movement which, starting with prisons, then turned its attention to slums. It inspired Moll Flanders, the Beggar's Opera, the writing of Dickens and the paintings of Hogarth. Dick Whittington endowed it, and Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d'Arthur, and Christopher Marlowe were imprisoned there. In The Gaol, Newgate Prison, which stood where the Old Bailey courts now stand, becomes a murky prism for the history and culture of London during the period of its existence, from the late 12th to the early 20th century. It is almost as much about Tyburn, where prisoners were taken from Newgate to be executed, as it is about the prison itself. It is the history of Newgate Prison, once the most important in the country, and therefore also a history of the most spectacular forms of crime and punishment in London. The Gaol is the latest work in the school of Londonology made popular by Peter Ackroyd, which revels in the city's dank dark side, in its poverty and squalor, and the dazzling if desperate ingenuity of people trapped in it. If anyone should ever believe too much in English decency, or become too complacent about the elegance of Georgian London or the beauty of Elizabethan verse, or feel warmth towards the jolly old rogue Henry VIII, we should remember the racks, thumbscrews and burnings, the hanging, drawing and quartering, the public executions and rank injustice that lurked behind. N case we should ever congratulate ourselves too much on our civilisation and peacefulness, books like this are salutary. New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENT.

The Gaol the Story of Newgate London's Most Notorious Prison by Kelly Grovier