"I have just returned from a melancholy visit to Newgate, where I have
been at the request of Elizabeth Fricker, previous to her execution
to-morrow at 8 o'clock. I found her much hurried, distressed and
tormented in mind. Her hands were cold, and covered with something like
the perspiration which precedes death, and in an universal tremor. The
women who were with her said she had been so outrageous before our
going, that they thought a man must be sent for to manage her. However,
after a serious time with her, her troubled soul became calmed." Another
entry in the same journal casts a lurid light upon the interior of
Newgate. "Besides this poor young woman, there are also six men to be
hanged, one of whom has a wife near her confinement, also condemned, and
seven young children. Since the awful report came down he has become
quite mad from horror of mind. A straight waistcoat could not keep him
within bounds; he had just bitten the turnkey; I saw the man come out
with his hand bleeding as I passed the cell. I hear that another who has
been tolerably educated and brought up, was doing all he could to harden
himself through unbelief, trying to convince himself that religious
truths were idle tales." Contemporary light is cast upon this matter by
a letter which the Hon. G.H. Bennett addressed to the Corporation of
London, relative to the condition of the prison. In it this writer
observed:--

A man by the name of Kelly, who was executed some weeks back for
robbing a house, counteracted, by his conversation and by the jests
he made of all religious subjects, the labors of Dr. Cotton to
produce repentance and remorse among the prisoners in the cells;
and he died as he lived, hardened and unrepenting. He sent to me
the day before his execution, and when I saw him _he maintained the
innocence of the woman convicted with him_ (Fricker, before
mentioned), asserting that not her, but a boy concealed, opened