Overview

As the place where prisoners, male and female, awaited trial, execution or transportation Newgate was Britain's most feared gaol for over 700 years. It probably best known today from the novels of Charles Dickens including Barnaby Rudge and Great Expectations.But there is much is more to Newgate than nineteenth century notoriety. In the seventeenth century it saw the exploits of legendary escaper and thief Jack Sheppard. Author Daniel Defoe who was imprisoned there for seditious libel, playwright Ben Jonson for murder, the Captain Kidd for piracy were among its most famous inmates. This book takes you from the gaol's 12th century beginnings to its final closure in 1904 and looks at daily life, developments in the treatment of prisoners from the use of torture to penal reform as well as major events in its history. AUTHOR: Caroline Jowett is a journalist and former Arts and Literary Editor of the Daily Express where she has written about everything from badgers to ballet, etiquette to Italy. She's been a fan of the eighteenth century since discovering the work of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer and loves the period's sheer exuberance for life. She later discovered that the complexity of its history is even more beguiling than the fiction of its novels. When not writing about the Georgians she is working on a novel of her own. SELLING POINTS: . Relive the conditions inside Britain's most notorious eight-hundred-year-old gaol . Meet the stars – how the condemned men and women on the road to the Tyburn Tree were the celebrities of their day . Pike with the rum-padders into deusaville and learn the language of thieves . Discover how burning Newgate brought the country to the brink of revolution . From thumbscrews to solitary confinement, discover the most feared punishments of all 16 illustrations

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9781473876408

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Caroline Jowett describes one of the most famous and at the same time most infamous of Britain's jails, from the 1100s to 1904, when it was finally decommissioned. An amazing, entertaining and informative book! --Books Monthly This is a highly readable and accessible account, not only of the iconic institution, but also of the history of crime and punishment. It is packed full of evocative detail and is essential reading for all those interested in crime history. -- (07/01/2017) Read it for: glimpses into Newgate life over the course of seven centuries --Your Family History (05/01/2017)

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Caroline Jowett is a journalist and former Arts and Literary Editor of the Daily Express where she has written about everything from badgers to ballet, etiquette to Italy. She's been a fan of the eighteenth century since discovering the work of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer and loves the period's sheer exuberance for life. She later discovered that the complexity of its history is even more beguiling than the fiction of its novels. When not writing about the Georgians she is working on a novel of her own.

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