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Jemmy Botting, hangman of England, came to Old Bailey in the early evening to inspect the finished scaffold. One or two passers by, recognising him, called out ironic greetings, but Botting ignored them.
He had little to inspect. He took it on trust that the beams were properly bolted together, the planks nailed down and the baize properly secured. The platform did sway a little, but it always had and the motion was no worse than being on the deck of a ship in a very slight swell. He pulled the peg that held the trapdoor's support beam in place, then went down below into the gloom beneath the platform where he seized the rope that tugged the beam free. It gave way with a judder, then the trapdoor swung down to let in a wash of evening sunlight.
Botting did not like that judder. No one had been standing on the trapdoor, yet still the beam had been reluctant to move, so he opened his bag and took out a small jar of tallow that had been a gift from the chandler. He climbed the wooden framework and greased the beam until its surface felt slippery, then he raised the trapdoor and clumsily pushed the beam back into place. Two rats watched him and he growled at them. He clambered down to the Old Bailey's cobbles and pulled the rope again and this time the beam slid easily and the trapdoor thumped down to bang against two of the upright supports. 'Bloody works, eh?' Botting said to the rats that were quite unafraid of his presence.
He replaced the trapdoor and beam, put the tallow back in his bag and climbed to the top of the scaffold where he first replaced the locking peg, then gingerly tested the firmness of the trapdoor by putting one foot on its planks and slowly easing his weight onto that leg. He knew it was secure, knew it would not give way beneath him, yet still he tested it. He did not want to become London's laughing stock by pushing a prisoner onto a trap that gave way before the rope was round the man's neck. He grinned at the thought, then, confident that all was ready, he went to the Debtor's Door and knocked loudly. He would be given dinner in the prison, then provided with a small bedroom above the Lodge. 'Got any rat poison?' he asked the turnkey who opened the door. 'Only there's rats the size of bleeding foxes under the scaffold. That platform can't have been up more than two hours yet there's already rats there.'
'Rats everywhere,' the turnkey said, then locked the door.
Beneath them, even though it was a warm evening, the cellars of Newgate Prison held a chill and so, before Charles Corday and the other condemned man were put into the death cell, a coal fire was lit in the small hearth. The chimney did not draw well at first and the cell filled with smoke, but then the flue heated and the air cleared, though the stench of coal smoke stayed. A metal chamber pot was put in a corner of the cell, though no screen was provided for privacy. Two iron cots with straw palliasses and thin blankets were put by the wall and a table and chairs were provided for the turnkeys who would watch the prisoners through the night. Lamps were hung from iron hooks. At dusk the two men who would die in the morning were brought to the cell and given a meal of pease pottage, pork chops and boiled cabbage. The Keeper came to see them during their supper and he thought, as he waited for them to finish their meal, that the two men were so utterly dissimilar. Charles Corday was slight, pale and nervous while Reginald Venables was a hulking brute with a lavish dark beard and a grimly hard face, yet it was Corday who had committed murder while Venables was being hanged for the theft of a watch.
Corday merely picked at his food then, his leg irons clanking, went to his cot where he lay down and gazed wide-eyed at the damp stones of the vaulted ceiling. 'Tomorrow…' the Keeper began as Venables finished his meal.
'I hope that damn preacher won't be there,' Venables interrupted.
'Silence while the Keeper's talking,' the senior turnkey growled.
'The preacher will be there,' the Keeper said, 'to offer what spiritual comfort he can.' He waited as the turnkey removed the spoons from the table. 'Tomorrow,' he started again, 'you will be taken from here to the Association Room where your irons will be struck and your arms pinioned. You will already have been given breakfast, but there will be brandy for you in the Association Room and I advise you to drink it. After that we walk to the street.' He paused. Venables watched him with a resentful eye while Corday seemed oblivious. 'It is customary,' the Keeper went on, 'to slip the hangman a coin because he can make your passage to the next world less painful. Such an emolument is not something of which I can approve, but he is an officer of the city, not of the jail, and so I can do nothing to end the practice. But even without such an emolument you will find that your punishment is not painful and is soon done.'
'Bloody liar,' Venables snarled.
'Silence!'
'It's all right, Mister Carlisle,' the Keeper said to the offended turnkey. 'Some men,' he continued, 'go unwilling to the scaffold and attempt to hinder the necessary work. They do not succeed. If you resist, if you struggle, if you try to inconvenience us, then you will still be hanged, but you will be hanged painfully. It is best to cooperate. It is easier for you and easier for your loved ones who might be watching.'
'Easier for you, you mean,' Venables observed.
'No duties are easy,' the Keeper said sanctimoniously, 'not if they are done with proper assiduity.' He moved to the door. 'The turnkeys will stay here all night. If you require spiritual comfort then they can summon the Ordinary. I wish you a good night.'
Corday spoke for the first time. 'I'm innocent,' he said, his voice close to breaking.
'Yes,' the Keeper said, embarrassed, 'yes indeed.' He found he had nothing more to say on the subject so he just nodded to the turnkeys. 'Good night, gentlemen.'
'Good night, sir,' Mister Carlisle, the senior turnkey, responded, then stood to attention until the Keeper's footsteps had faded down the passage. Then he relaxed and turned to look at the two prisoners. 'You want spiritual bloody comfort,' he growled, 'then you don't disturb me and you don't disturb the Reverend Cotton, but you get down on your bloody knees and disturb Him up there by asking Him for bloody forgiveness. Right, George,' he turned to his companion, 'spades are trumps, is that right?'
In the Birdcage Walk, which was the underground passage that led from the prison to the courtrooms of the Session House, two felons were working with pickaxes and spades. Lanterns had been hung from the passage ceiling and the flagstones, great slabs of granite, had been pried up and stacked to one side. A stench now filled the passageway; a noxious stink of gas, lime and rotted flesh.
'Christ!' one of the felons said, recoiling from the smell.
'You won't find Him down there,' a turnkey said, backing away from the space that had been cleared of its flagstones. When the Birdcage Walk had been built the paving slabs had been laid direct on the London clay, but this clay had a mottled, dark look in the uncertain light of the guttering lanterns.
'When was this bit of the passage last used?' one of the prisoners asked.
'Got to be two years ago,' the turnkey said, but sounded dubious, 'at least two years.'
'Two years?' the prisoner said scornfully. 'They're still bloody breathing down there.'
'Just get it over with, Tom,' the turnkey encouraged him, 'then you get this.' He held up a bottle of brandy.
'God bloody help us,' Tom said gloomily, then took a deep breath and struck down with his spade.
He and his companion were digging the graves for the two men who would be executed in the morning. Some of the bodies were taken for dissection, but hungry as the anatomists were for bodies they could not take them all and so most were brought here and put into unmarked graves. Although the passage was short and the prison buried the corpses in quicklime to hasten their decomposition, and though they dug up the floor in a strict rotation so that no part of it was excavated too soon after a burial, still the picks and spades struck down into bones and rotting, deliquescent clay. The whole floor was buckled, looking as though it had been deformed by an earthquake, but in truth it was merely the flagstones settling as the bodies decomposed beneath. Yet, though the passage stank and the clay was choked with unrotted flesh, still more corpses were brought and thrust down into the filth.
Tom, ankle-deep in the hole, brought out a yellow skull that he rolled down the passageway. 'He looks in the pink, don't he?' he said, and the two turnkeys and the second prisoner began to laugh and somehow could not stop.
Mister Botting ate lamb chops, boiled potatoes, and turnips. The Keeper's kitchen provided a syrup pudding to follow, then a tin mug of strong tea and a beaker of brandy. Afterwards Mister Botting slept.
Two watchmen stood guard on the scaffold. Just after midnight the skies clouded over and a brief shower blew chill from Ludgate Hill. A handful of folk, eager for the best positions by the railings that fenced off the gallows, were sleeping on the cobbles and were woken by the rain. They grumbled, shrugged deeper into their blankets and tried to sleep again.
