mighty army of malefactors or maledictors,
called otherwise, in contemporary literature,
blades, make-bates, cuffs, highflyers,
bloods, bucks, smarts, fribbles, bravoes, and
so forth ? Were there no prisons for them ?
Oh yes ! and they had their own names for
these places of their detention (to put a
fine point on it), and for the men they
must consort with therein, and the other
objects of their surroundings. Newgate
itself they called Whit ; the sessions-house
from which they would be taken there was
the nubbing-ken ; the highwaymen they
would find inside, befouled, and fettered, and
considerably chopfallen, were rum-padders
(the road itself on which they performed
their exploits being the pad) ; the gallows,
the shadow of which was ever hanging over
them, was the nubbing-cheat ; and the
executioner, whose knuckles they must
surely, in imagination, have often felt far
too intimate and nimble about their necks,
became the nubbing-cove. And these
prisons were full to overflowing. At "Whit,"
in consequence of the dense crowding, the
air became putrid ; and this putrefied air,
says Smollett, adhering to the clothes of
the malefactors brought to the May trials
at the bar of the Old Bailey, produced,
even among the audience, a pestilential
fever. The lord mayor caught it and died
of it ; so died, also, one alderman, two
of the judges, divers lawyers who attended
the session, the greater part of the jury,
and likewise a considerable number of the
spectators.

These were the days, too, it must be
recollected, when the nubbing-cove, the
hangman, had brisk work; when he was
always adjusting his rope and drop. "There
are pretty orders beginning, I can tell you:
it is but heading and hanging;" as Escalus
warns us in Measure for Measure. Twenty,
thirty, forty, pinioned corpses were no
unusual sight for the Cockneys then.
Clumpertons (country-folk), agape at the giant
proportions of the still somewhat new St.
Paul's, would turn from their wondering
walks to shudder and shrink at the ghastly
exhibition; going on afterwards to the
Tower lions, or Mrs. Salmon's, with what
appetite they might. For, supposing a
rattling mumper (a coach beggar) should
officiously help a ridge cully (a goldsmith)
as he extricated himself from his sedan-chair
at the porch, let us say, of Mr.
Winstanley's Water Theatre at the lower end
of Pickadilly; and supposing the rattling
mumper should convey a massive watch
from the good man's loose keeping safely
into his own. There would have been no
pondering as to how much, or how little, of
orderly imprisoning. Rattling mumper
would simply have been hanged. And
supposing a kinchin-cove (a little man) in
sauntering the three miles of smelling
cheats (gardens) between London and
Hackney, should hear the twittle-twattle
of a cobble-colter (a turkey), or the sagacious
cackle of tib of the buttery (a goose) ;
and supposing the said kinchin-cove should
think a dinner off these big birds would be
delicious, and should steal them for that
purpose or any other. Again, short work
would have been made of it, and kinchin-cove would simply have been hanged. Let a
squeaker, too (a bar-boy), run off with a
tempting chine of ruff-peck (bacon) ; let a
prig-napper (a horse stealer) get possession
of a roan or grey ; let any insignificant
vagabond appropriate a peeper (a looking-
glass), a pair of glym-fenders (andirons),
anything that would have a knack of placing
itself beneath his handy hand ; and
Great Britain would still contain just those
many inhabitants the less. Mr. Executioner
would be the speedy answer to every one
of them. He, like the watch known so
affectionately to us, was to " comprehend
all vagrom men;" was to bid them all
hang, and hang completely, in the good
king's name.

For which matter, are we not aware how
forging, for instance, if detected, meant
inevitable hanging? Do we not call to
mind William Dodd, LL.D., incumbent of
Winge, in Buckinghamshire, and once
king's chaplain, who forged a bond in the
name of his former pupil, the most noble
the Earl of Chesterfield, and who lost his
life for it at the gallows, precisely as if he
had been an illiterate man? And do we
not all think, at once, of Captain Macheath
(Royal Navy, King's Dragoons, or
elsewhere), who was "cast for death" by
Judge Gay for various elegant and
romantic misdemeanours? Though this case,
after all, may not serve our purpose; since,
in spite of the common hangman the
gallant gentleman was condemned to, he lives
green and lively, and with lappels, rapier,
and peruke, brand-new, even to this very
to-day. We can cite Dick Turpin, safely,
however; and Jack Sheppard. They and
their associates were expert at knipping a
bung (picking a pocket), and at the game
of bulk and file (jostling in order to rob).
They were perfectly aware what was a
stalling-ken (a house for receiving stolen
goods). If inside one of them any young