FOOTNOTES:
[14] This was the Clerkenwell House
of Detention, where
prisoners
were sent after being sentenced, pending their
disposal
at a House of Correction. It was originally intended
for
the overflow from Newgate. The prison stood in
Clerkenwell
Close.
The Life of JOHN JONES, a Pickpocket
There is not, perhaps, a greater misfortune to young people than that too great tenderness and compassion with which they are treated in their youth, and those hopes of amendment which their relations flatter themselves with as they grow up. If they could suffer themselves to be guided by experience, they would quickly find that sagacious minds do but increase in wickedness as they increase in years. Timely services, therefore, and proper restraints are the only methods with which such persons are to be treated, for minds disposed to such gross impurities as those which lead to such wickednesses or are rendered capital by Law, are seldom to be prevailed on by gentleness, or admonitions unseconded by harsher means. I am very far from being an advocate for great severities towards young people, but I confess in cases like these, I think they are as necessary as amputations, where the distemper has spread so far that no cure is to be hoped for by any other means. If the relations of John Jones had known and practised these methods, it is highly probable he had escaped the suffering and the shame of that ignominious death to which, after a long persisting in his crimes, he at last came.
[Illustration: A PRISONER UNDER PRESSURE IN NEWGATE
Accused men who refused to plead to their indictment might be pressed to death. Edward Burnworth carried 424 lb. on his chest for an hour and three minutes before he consented to plead