The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

The distinctive character of Dickens's fiction is so pronounced that critics often talk as if the individual worlds of all of his novels were continuous. In part Dickens's tendency to return repeatedly to the subjects that possessed his imagination supports this impression. One of those subjects is prisons. "A Visit to Newgate" is his earliest piece on the topic, to which he returns many times, as in Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Pickwick Papers, and Little Dorrit. Prison for Dickens is a particular social abuse; the most harrowing setting in which to contemplate criminality and guilt; a metaphor for the psychological captivity his characters create for themselves; and the system through which society enforces its discipline. Throughout his fiction key elements of Victorian society, such as the prison, take on multiple layers of significance;

 .

A VISIT TO NEWGATE / 123 9

in this way, as the critic J. Hillis Miller observes, Dickens's creative vision in part determines the Victorian spirit itself.

A Visit to Newgate1

"The force of habit" is a trite phrase in everybody's mouth; and it is not a little remarkable that those who use it most as applied to others, unconsciously afford in their own persons singular examples of the power which habit and custom exercise over the minds of men, and of the little reflection they are apt to bestow on subjects with which every day's experience has rendered them familiar. If Bedlam could be suddenly removed like another Aladdin's palace,2 and set down on the space now occupied by Newgate, scarcely one man out of a hundred, whose road to business every morning lies through Newgatestreet, or the Old Bailey,' would pass the building without bestowing a hasty glance on its small, grated windows, and a transient thought upon the condition of the unhappy beings immured in its dismal cells; and yet these same men, day by day, and hour by hour, pass and repass this gloomy depository of the guilt and misery of London, in one perpetual stream of life and bustle, utterly unmindful of the throng of wretched creatures pent up within it�nay, not even knowing, or if they do, not heeding, the fact, that as they pass one particular angle of the massive wall with a light laugh or a merry whistle, they stand within one yard of a fellow-creature, bound and helpless, whose hours are numbered, from whom the last feeble ray of hope has fled for ever, and whose miserable career will shortly terminate in a violent and shameful death. Contact with death even in its least terrible shape, is solemn and appalling. How much more awful is it to reflect on this near vicinity to the dying�to men in full health and vigour, in the flower of youth or the prime of life, with all their faculties and perceptions as acute and perfect as your own; but dying, nevertheless�dying as surely�with the hand of death imprinted upon them as indelibly�as if mortal disease had wasted their frames to shadows, and corruption had already begun!

It was with some such thoughts as these that we determined, not many weeks since, to visit the interior of Newgate�in an amateur capacity, of course; and, having carried our intention into effect, we proceed to lay its results before our readers, in the hope�founded more upon the nature of the subject, than on any presumptuous confidence in our own descriptive pow- ers�that this paper may not be found wholly devoid of interest. We have only to premise, that we do not intend to fatigue the reader with any statistical accounts of the prison; they will be found at length in numerous reports of numerous committees, and a variety of authorities of equal weight. We took no notes, made no memoranda, measured none of the yards, ascertained the exact number of inches in no particular room, are unable even to report of how many apartments the gaol is composed.

We saw the prison, and saw the prisoners; and what we did see, and what we thought, we will tell at once in our own way.

1. First published in Sketches by Boz (1836). New-his palace to Africa. "Bedlam": a London hospital gate was London's main criminal prison. for the insane. 2. In Arabian Nights, an evil magician temporarily 3. London's criminal court. gets control of Aladdin's magic lamp and transports

 .

124 0 / CHARLES DICKENS