ABSTRACT
In 1612 a merchant left a perpetual bequest to St Sepulchre’s Church opposite Newgate Prison to have the Passing Bell rung ‘as us’d to be toll’d for those that are at the Point of Death’ each time a cart made its way to the scaffolds at Tyburn, as a warning to the condemned to prepare for eternity.1 Over a century later the procession was still being held, but to one observer it was a scene of confusion,2 not a solemn funeral cortege.3 A tumult of strong voices and loud laughter, scolding and quarrelling, outcries and bawling answers, jests, oaths and imprecations accompanied the clanking of fetters. Drunken criminals rode in carts that burst through the prison gate with a mob of ‘thieves, pickpockets, whores and rogues’, the rough crowd thronging the carts as ‘young villains’ crept through the legs of men and horses to shake hands with the prisoners, and friends of the convicts amused themselves by harassing spectators:
nothing is more entertaining to them, than the dead Carcasses of Dogs and Cats … flung as high and as far as a strong arm can carry them … great Shouts accompany them in their Course; and, as the Projectiles come nearer the Earth, are turn’d into loud Laughter, which is more or less violent in Proportion to the Mischief promis’d by the Fall. And to see a good Suit of Cloaths spoiled by this Piece of Gallantry, is the tip-top of their Diversion.4
