The Disgrace of Kitty Grey (17 page)

 

The next few hours passed in a blur. I just could not believe what was happening to me – to us – on account of such a seemingly small offence. I knew I'd done wrong in breaking up the chair and burning it, but to say that I had committed arson! Surely the magistrate, when I told him about Betsy being ill and the necessity of getting her warm, would make allowances for us? And as for the chickens – well, that was probably some underhand trick played by Mr Burroughs to try and obtain money from the courts. As far as I knew there wasn't even a yard in the lodging house for any chickens to run about in.

We spent several hours waiting in a tiny, windowless box room in the magistrates' court in Bow Street. I was left alone with my thoughts at this time (and you can imagine that they were very dark ones) because the two Runners had been sent to apprehend other criminals and the beast of a landlord had gone away. Betsy fell asleep, and I was pleased about this for it meant I didn't have to keep up the pretence that everything was going to be all right.

At some stage a man wearing a black gown and grey powdered wig came in to say that the charge against me was too serious to be heard by the magistrates and would need the deliberations of a judge and jury.

‘Your offence, if deemed to be arson, may be a capital one,' he said. ‘Do you understand what that means?'

I nodded, terrified.

‘Although 'tis unlikely you will suffer the noose,' he added as an afterthought. A rush of relief ran through my body, but this didn't last for long, for he went on, ‘Depending on who the presiding judge is, your offence will probably be commuted to a spell in a pillory or a number of lashes.'

I began to shake, for either punishment sounded terrible. To be in a pillory: to have dead dogs and cats and the contents of latrines thrown at my head! Or to be lashed on my bare back in public!

Someone came in with two bowls of gruel and I woke Betsy so that she could drink hers. It was so thin it could not have had much goodness in it, but at least it was hot. After what seemed like another long time we were taken out into a yard and I had shackles placed on my lower legs. They were made of rusty, stone-cold iron, were tight around my calves and bit into the bones of my ankles. Wearing them was a horror for I felt like a proper and wicked criminal. We were put into a cart with about ten other prisoners, all similarly chained, and I saw that these pitiable wretches were the very poorest of vagabonds and beggars, all smelling foul, some lacking shoes and most wearing repellent, tattered clothing. Seeing this, and knowing that I must look and smell badly, too, I shed a few tears, thinking of how neat and clean I had always kept myself as a milkmaid: my nails scrubbed, my wayward hair coiled and my petticoats snowy white. How quickly my life had changed!

At home I had always enjoyed a ride in a farm cart, jigging along with two dray horses afront, sitting on a hay bale and singing in time to the
clip-clop
of their hooves, but this ride was very different. None of us miserable travellers on the prison cart looked any other in the eye, and folk in the street jeered at us as we went along, catcalling and shouting such things as ‘Look! Here comes the King and his court!'. I kept my eyes down the whole time, huddled inside my shawl and spoke to no one.

Betsy was the only one who was not shackled, so sat on my lap during our shameful journey, pressed against me and hardly speaking a word. It would have been possible for me to lift her over the side of the cart so that she could have run away, but I knew this would not have helped her, for there was nowhere safe for her to run to. Having only just begun to recover from the sickness, she would not have been strong enough to survive on her own and would either have died of cold, been picked up by a gang of thieves and trained as a pickpocket, or suffered the perhaps worse fate of being placed in an orphanage. No, I thought, I could not take what would be the easiest path for me, just put her over the side and tell her to run away; I must keep her with me and look after her as well as I could.

After about half an hour's travelling, the cart stopped outside two windowless square blocks, grey-bricked and several storeys high. In front of these was a large open area where, I found out later, public hangings were conducted. We prisoners were driven to a gatehouse in front of one of these blocks, then clambered out of the cart as best we could and stood in a speechless huddle staring around us.

‘What is this place?' Betsy asked in a whisper, but I just shook my head, too fraught to reply.

Someone overheard her, though, and a man I later discovered to be a turnkey gave a low, mocking bow. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are at the doors of London's finest. I bid you welcome to Newgate Prison!'

Chapter Sixteen

 

 

I had heard about Newgate Prison, of course; knew of it as the most terrible of all prisons where only the very wickedest of people ended up. The thought that I was actually to be
inside it
, and with a child dependent on me, felt akin to being in a nightmare.

All natural light had gone by the time we were taken below to the cells, and our way down the long stone corridors was lit by flaming torches on each side of the wall. The light from these didn't carry very far, however, so most of the vast space about us remained in darkness, with who-knew-what lurking in the depths of its murky corners. The stench of filth was indescribable, and a faint, cloying mist hung in the air.

‘It smells!' Betsy said, taking hold of her nose.

‘It does.' I nodded, breathing in as shallow a way as possible.

‘You'll get used to that, dearies,' said the turnkey who was leading us through. ‘Soon you won't remember there was any other aroma 'cepting a bad one.'

I did not respond or even glance in his direction, for I had already looked at him once and been horrified to see that he had but one ear, the other having been sliced away, leaving a dreadful, knotted scar. Whether this missing ear was as a result of a brawl, or as punishment for some wicked deed or other, I never found out.

I trudged on with the others, the leg irons gnawing at my skin, and at last came to a large barred area containing perhaps a hundred or so filthy, stinking and unshaven men standing around a brazier, pushing and fighting with each other in order to obtain some warmth from the fire. Here a gate was opened and the men in our little party were left, with one fellow receiving a farewell shove from the earless man which sent him sprawling on to the floor.

We set off again, the turnkey whistling cheerily, and the rest of us – four girls and Betsy – followed in his wake as best we could. Reaching the next large cell, the women's quarters, the gate was unlocked for us and we were told to get in quickly and not hang about or we would miss our roasted swan dinner. Betsy clutched my hand at this and looked up at me hopefully, and I had to tell her that it was a so-called joke on the part of the turnkey, and there were no roasted dinners of swan or anything else to be had in Newgate. One of the girls with us said that we should not expect any food at all that night, for we were too late to receive our daily allowance.

If I'd hoped that the women's accommodation might be somewhat cleaner than the men's then I was sadly disappointed, for it seemed to me even more disgusting – it certainly stank just as badly. There were perhaps sixty or seventy women in the large cell, most of them clustering around the brazier, and I could see immediately that some of them were drunk, for there were two or three fights going on, and one pair was actually on the floor, pulling each other's hair and rolling in and out of the filth, screeching words which I didn't want Betsy to hear.

Two of the girls in our group of new prisoners set off in an almost sprightly manner across the cell to greet acquaintances, but I, knowing no one, shuffled through holding tightly on to Betsy's hand – though whether this was for her benefit or mine, I wasn't sure. We reached the back wall of the vast cell and I stood there feeling strange and giddy, not knowing what to do or how to act. I felt as if I had somehow been removed to a strange place, a country I knew nothing about, where I could not speak the language. It could have been hell, except that hell is hot.

I looked about me. The girls and women were those types who are usually referred to as – I hate to describe my fellow inmates so, but 'twas the truth – the lowest of the low. There was not one clean face to be seen, not a single girl without ratted hair, nor a gown that was not grimy, ragged or had a hemline that was not caked in mud or worse. While most of the women surrounded the brazier, pushing in order to get a view of the fire, rowing, cursing or berating each other, there were many, I was to notice later, who stayed in corners, slumped over and seemingly overwhelmed by sadness, and did not ever speak as much as a word.

‘Hello . . .' A girl of about seven had addressed Betsy, who immediately responded. The little girl was sitting on a bench placed along the back wall, beside a woman I presumed to be her mother, who was feeding a baby. Next to her was a middle-aged woman in a dark woollen dress which looked as though it had once been costly. There were two other children playing nearby and I could not help but be pleased to see them, for although it was a lamentable thing that they were there at all, they would surely make Betsy's life a little more endurable.

Betsy said hello back to the girl, and in just a moment the two of them were talking together and she had opened her bag to show off her remaining corn dollies. I looked about me and, too fearful to try and join the large scrum of women around the brazier, moved towards the two women on the bench and asked, very politely, their permission to be seated beside them.

The woman in the woollen dress replied first, saying rather crossly, ‘We have paid for this bench, you know!' Her voice, to my surprise, was almost aristocratic; a bit like Lady Cecilia's, and she wore a lopsided wig, curls piled upon curls, a style which had been popular some years back.

I had been about to sit down, but I straightened up again. ‘I'm sorry,' I said and, not knowing quite what to do next, bent to look at the grazed and sore patches where the leg irons had rubbed my skin.

‘The first thing you want to do is get those fetters off,' the younger woman said. ‘Have you any money?'

‘A very little.'

She finished feeding, and her baby emerged from under its shawl covering and had its face wiped with a rag. ‘For tuppence, one of the turnkeys will knock them off for you,' the young woman said. ‘It'll make you feel better, believe me.'

It seemed rude not to take her advice, so I let her direct me to a turnkey who was willing to do this for, as she'd said, the sum of two pennies, and it took but a moment.

‘But you may sit with us now for a little while,' the younger woman said, indicating the space on the bench. ‘May she not, Mrs Goodwin?'

The other woman shrugged. ‘I suppose she may.'

‘For our children have already begun to be friends.' The woman smiled at me. ‘My name is Martha.'

‘Mine is Kitty,' I said. I limped towards them and sat on the edge of their bench, knowing that I was only there under sufferance.

‘And this is Mrs Goodwin,' Martha said, and that lady inclined her head towards me like a fine lady in a carriage acknowledging a greeting.

I took some shallow breaths while surveying the scene before me: the glimpsed sight of the glowing brazier, the quarrelling women, the stink, the squalor, the buckets of filth and – most probably – the rats. This was what I'd been brought to. Feeling tears coming, I closed my eyes tightly for a moment and wished with all my might that when I opened them I would be restored to my real life back in the dairy at Bridgeford Hall.

But the screams and the blaspheming and the quarrelling went on and I opened my eyes to find Martha looking at me curiously.

‘You have just this moment arrived?' she asked.

I nodded.

‘And you have been here before?'

‘Never!'

‘You were working the streets?'

I felt myself blush, but she spoke in such a matter-of-fact way that I wondered if this was
her
way of life. ‘No, not that,' I said. ‘My charge, Betsy, was ill and it was so cold in our room that I broke up a chair and used it for firewood.'