Ordinary of Newgate's Account
The Ordinary of Newgate's Account was a sister publication of the Old Bailey's Proceedings, regularly published from 1676 to 1772 and containing biographies and last dying speeches of the prisoners executed at Tyburn during that period.
[3] Since at the time the administration of justice depended on private prosecutions, the Accounts could lead to valuable judicial discoveries, for instance the names of potential accomplices.
[4] The Accounts also had the power to legitimise the Court's decision, seeking positive statements of guilt to a particular crime, and to justify the hanging with life stories filled with a general range of immoral conduct.
Accepting the judgment of the jury, coming to terms with their guilt and confessing their crimes led the criminals to a sort of reintegration into society, working as a repayment of their debts to the community and a preparation for salvation.
[4] The gallows scene was a moment of public reconciliation and mutual forgiveness as well: the condemned participated actively in his execution, healing the fractures in the spiritual and social order caused by his sins and crime.
The Accounts presented the most compelling truth claims, speaking to the spiritual state and eternal prospects not only of the condemned but of the reader too, asking the audience to place themselves in the shoes of the criminal.
The Accounts presented themselves as a mirror, a looking glass for young Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, a seamark to all the readers so that they could avoid the fatal rocks of Sin, because even the best of men could find himself deep amidst death-threatening dangers.
They stressed their manly fortitude and the firm manner in which they confronted the most hardened malefactors, repeatedly reminding the reader of their constant visits to the condemned in spite of their poor health and of the epidemic typhus which was common in 18th century prisons.
But he had other opportunities of profit beside his salary and usual gifts: several Ordinaries exploited their position to publish religious guides and individual recounts of lives of notorious malefactors.
Ordinaries were often accused on the newspapers by competing writers of criminal lives of fabricating the last dying speeches of the condemned and of manipulating their position to extract confessions from them.
Even if some of the condemned were really compelled to confess sins which laid heavily on their conscience, most of them did so only to qualify for the sacrament, acknowledging a catalogue of general misdeeds and stopping short of admitting to more serious crimes, especially the one of which they were accused of for fear of jeopardising their chances of a reprieve.
[4] 19th and 20th century commentators characterised him as morally lax, drunken and dissolute, an incompetent minister, weak and ineffectual, unable to exert any control over the condemned.
We have proof of the corruption of some Ordinaries as well: Samuel Smith and John Allen were discharged by the Court of Aldermen for undue practices, such as fabricating false confessions and dying speeches, pocketing charitable donations and money sent to the condemned, soliciting bribes under the pretext of obtaining reprieves for the criminals.
[4] The older Calvinistic emphasis on free grace was given new life in Methodist publications, preaching God's wonderful method of saving even the worst of sinners.
It was viewed with suspicion and distrust by mid and late 18th century Anglican priests, since it carried with it the belief that salvation could be obtained without adherence to the moral law as delivered in the Ten Commandments.
At the same time, by the early 18th century, Anglican clergymen had increasingly more difficulty in justifying the traditional notion that one's final moments were of critical significance and that a good death could outweigh a less than exemplary life.
Because of that, Ordinaries found themselves unable to give any report of the lives of criminals who were under the care of another priest, especially in the case of Catholics, who didn't want the secrets of their confessions to be promulgated.
[3] The same information regarding the trial (such as the nature of the offence, the date, the verdict and the sentence of the Court, specification of the goods stolen and their value in cases of theft) can be found in The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, in the Middlesex or London City's record offices and in parishes registers.
The enjoyment in exposing techniques and in explaining particular types of thieving and the way in which the repenting tone that appears everywhere else in the Accounts is minimised are other characteristics which could point to a different author than the Ordinary.
