Take care of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave the

law to take care of itself. I give you that advice.”

“It’s the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and voice,” said

Jerry. “I leave you to judge what a damp way of earning a living

mine is.”

“Well, well,” said the old clerk; “we all have our various ways of

gaining a livelihood. Some of us have damp ways, and some of us

have dry ways. Here is the letter. Go along.”

Jerry took the letter, and, remarking to himself with less

internal deference than he made an outward show of, “You are a

lean old one, too,” made his bow, informed his son, in passing, of

his destination, and went his way.

They hanged at Tyburn in those days, so the street outside

Newgate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that has since

attached to it. But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of

debauchery and villainy were practised, and where dire diseases

were bred, that came into court with the prisoners, and sometimes

rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief Justice himself,

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

and pulled him off the bench. It had more than once happened,

that the Judge in the black cap pronounced his own doom as

certainly as the prisoner’s, and even died before him. For the rest,

the Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard, from

which