Between
Snow-hill and Ludgate Hill runs the street called the Old Bailey, which
is possibly a corruption of Bale Hill, where once stood a Bale, or Bailiff's
House which was a court for malefactors. On the east side of the Old
Bailey stood Newgate Prison on the site of the medieval city gate Newgate
(which itself was also a prison). Regency writers called it "a
massy stone building, consisting of two parts, the northern being formerly
appropriated for debtors, the southern for felons, between which stands
the dwelling house of the keeper."
The
eighteenth-century Newgate prison was rebuilt in the 1770s, and this
prison burned down in the Gordon Riots on 2 June 1780. The prison was
rebuilt yet again as in the engraving above. Executions were held in
the open space before it in the Old Bailey. Newgate was finally demolished
in 1902 to make way for the Central Criminal Court.
