The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 187: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XVI THE GIBBET BETWEEN nine and ten o’clock on Sunday evening several eroups of persons began to collect in the Old Bailey, but chiefly in the wide open space opposite Newgate. During the past week the recorder had made his report to the prince regent relative to the state of the prison, and in that report one individual was named as being under sentence of death. In the case of this person it appeared as if the law was to be allowed to take its course, for a warrant had been issued for his execution, and hence the assembling of the groups of idlers on the eve of the fatal. Monday. The person thus alluded to was Paul Dysart. Chill and misty was this Sunday evening, dark, sombre, and awe-inspiring was the aspect of Newgate through the deepening gloom. Shivering, ragged, half-starved wretches gathered near the debtor’s door, whispering, as they pointed to it, “‘ That’s the place the man who’s to be hung will come out of to-morrow morning!’ Others posted themselves on the very spot close by where the scaffold would be placed, Saying, in subdued voices, “ It is just here that the drop will fall beneath his feet! ’’ Farther on, other groups were collected near the entrance of the press-yard, observing amongst themselves, ‘‘ The gibbet will be wheeled out of this place!’”’ In fact, there was not a scene, a spot, nor a detail connected with the awful tragedy of a public execution that escaped comment or explanation on the part of the idlers who were already gathering to the theatre of the forthcoming spectacle. Soon after ten o’clock on this same Sunday evening a private carriage drove up to the Saracen’s Head on Snow Hill, and six gentlemen alighted. 169 (COMMUC 9)(6\(0) <S (C(O) mM