In the 12th century, Henry II instituted legal reforms that gave the Crown more control over the administration of justice.

As part of his Assize of Clarendon of 1166, he required the construction of prisons, where the accused would stay while royal judges debated their innocence or guilt and subsequent punishment.

The building was collapsing and decaying, and many prisoners were dying from the close quarters, overcrowding, rampant disease, and bad sanitary conditions.

There was a new central hall for meals, a new chapel, and the creation of additional chambers and basement cells with no light or ventilation.

[5] The king often used Newgate as a holding place for heretics, traitors, and rebellious subjects brought to London for trial.

[8] In 1769, construction was begun by the King's Master Mason, John Deval,[9] to enlarge the prison and add a new 'Old Bailey' sessions house.

[10] Construction of the second Newgate Prison was almost finished when it was stormed by a mob during the Gordon riots in June 1780.

The building was gutted by fire, and the walls were badly damaged; the cost of repairs was estimated at £30,000 (~£5.6 million in 2020 terms).

[14] The number of prisoners in Newgate for specific types of crime often grew and fell, reflecting public anxieties of the time.

Those who had been sentenced to death stayed in a cellar beneath the keeper's house, essentially an open sewer lined with chains and shackles to encourage submission.

Prisoners who could afford to purchase alcohol from the prisoner-run drinking cellar by the main entrance to Newgate remained perpetually drunk.

These keepers in turn were permitted to exact payment directly from the inmates, making the position one of the most profitable in London.

Inevitably, often the system offered incentives for the keepers to exhibit cruelty to the prisoners, charging them for everything from entering the gaol to having their chains both put on and taken off.

Guards, whose incomes partially depended on extorting their wards, charged the prisoners for food, bedding, and to be released from their shackles.

[1] Among the most notorious Keepers in the Middle Ages were the 14th-century gaolers Edmund Lorimer, who was infamous for charging inmates four times the legal limit for the removal of irons, and Hugh De Croydon, who was eventually convicted of blackmailing prisoners in his care.

Proposed regulations included separating freemen and freewomen into the north and south chambers, respectively, and keeping the rest of the prisoners in underground holding cells.

Good prisoners who had not been accused of serious crimes would be allowed to use the chapel and recreation rooms at no additional fees.

[3] Over the centuries, Newgate was used for a number of purposes including imprisoning people awaiting execution, although it was not always secure: burglar Jack Sheppard twice escaped from the prison before he went to the gallows at Tyburn in 1724.

Prison chaplain Paul Lorrain achieved some fame in the early 18th century for his sometimes dubious publication of Confessions of the condemned.

The condemned were kept in narrow, sombre cells separated from Newgate Street by a thick wall and received only a dim light from the inner courtyard.