In November 1835 Charles Dickens visited Newgate’s condemned cell, coming face to face with James Pratt and John Smith, who were convicted under a sodomy law only fully repealed in England in 1967.1 Dickens recounted this encounter in a short sketch, ‘A Visit to Newgate’, which he published in Sketches by Boz in 1836: ‘In the pressroom below were three men, the nature of whose offence rendered it necessary to separate them, even from their companions in guilt.’2 The third prisoner, a guardsman committed on robbery with menaces, awaited a reprieve with some confidence; the other two men, Pratt and Smith, stood dejectedly at the far end of the room: ‘[These] two had nothing to expect from the mercy of the crown; their doom was sealed; no plea could be urged in extenuation of their crime, and they well knew that for them there was no hope in this world. [download]
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