No. 721: Goldsmith’s Row, E2
Goldsmith’s Row, London, E2. Photo © Roger Dean 2012
The Great Metropolis, Volume II – James Grant, 1838:
Chapter IV, NEWGATE
It will never be made what it is intended to be—a place for the correction of offenders and the repression of crime, so long as the system of allowing the prisoners to associate together is continued. They will necessarily corrupt one another, and employ their time in forming new schemes for the commission of crime, as soon as they have regained their liberty. That they deem imprisonment in Newgate no great punishment, if, indeed, it be any punishment at all, is proved by the fact of so many of them being returned within a few months of their liberation. There are many instances on record of criminals spending full one-half of their time in Newgate, until, as they themselves say, a new leaf is turned over by their being transported beyond seas.
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