This surviving writings of the chaplain of Newgate Prison, 1823-1838, focusing on the emotions of those waiting to be hanged - early nineteenth-century Londoners whose lives are otherwise largely lost to us.


Horace Salusbury Cotton was the Ordinary (chaplain) of Newgate Prison 1814-1838, a quarter-century in which both the prison itself and English criminal law were fundamentally transformed. This volume presents the text of Cotton's entries in the Prison Visitors Books. His remarks focus especially upon the spiritual and emotional state of those who were hanged - and sometimes pardoned - during the waning years of England's infamous "Bloody Code," opening a window into the lives of early nineteenth-century Londoners which are otherwise largely lost to us. Cotton's stern vision of his spiritual mission contrasts, not only with the more humane sentiments of many officials, but his own private life. Remarkable details about this ambitious but flawed clergyman are revealed here: his neglect and abuse of the wife whom he married only after two premarital pregnancies; his efforts to abandon his surviving daughters; and the whiff of scandal attached to his dealings with female prisoners.