Note 64 — Chapter IV · NEWGATE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (AFTER THE GREAT FIRE).

The disgusting brutality with which this operation was carried out will be realized from the following extract from the life of J. Ellwood, who found himself in Newgate in the beginning of Charles II.’s reign:—

“When we first came into Newgate,” says Mr. Ellwood, “there lay (in a little by-place like a closet, near the room where we were lodged) the quartered bodies of three men, who had been executed some days before, for a real or pretended plot; ... and the reason why their quarters lay there so long, was, the relatives were all that while petitioning to have leave to bury them; which, at length, with much ado, was obtained for the quarters, but not for the heads, which were ordered to be set up in some part of the City. I saw the heads when they were brought up to be boiled; the hangman fetched them in a dirty dust basket, out of some by-place; and setting them down among the felons, he and they made sport with them. They took them by the hair, flouting, jeering, and laughing at them; and then, giving them some ill names, boxed them on the ears and cheeks. Which done, the Hangman put them into his kettle, and parboiled them with Bay-Salt and Cummin-seed,—that to keep them from putrefaction, and this to keep off the fowls from seizing on them. The whole sight (as well that of the bloody quarters first, and this of the heads afterwards) was both frightful and loathsome, and begat an abhorrence in my nature.”