The Recorder's report generally reached Newgate late at night. Its receipt was immediately followed by the promulgation of its contents to the persons most closely concerned, which was done with a sort of ceremony intended to be impressive. The whole of the convicts were assembled together in one ward, and made to kneel down. To them entered the chaplain or ordinary of Newgate in full canonicals, who in solemn tones communicated to each in turn the fate in store for him. The form of imparting the intelligence was generally the same. "So-and-so, I am sorry to tell you that it is all against you;" or, "A. B., your case has been taken into consideration by the king in council, and His Majesty has been mercifully pleased to spare your life." The fatal news was not always received in the same way. The men who were doomed often fell down in convulsions upon the floor. Sometimes any who had had a narrow escape fainted, but the bulk of those respited looked on with unfeeling indifference. The concluding part of the ceremony was, for those who had been pardoned, to recite a thanksgiving to God and the king.
It is satisfactory to be able to record that some consideration was shown the capital convict actually awaiting execution. Even so severe a critic as Mr. Wakefield states that "a stranger to the scene would be astonished to observe the peculiar tenderness, I was going to add respect, which persons under sentence of death obtain from all the officers of the prison. Before sentence a prisoner has only to observe the regulations of the gaol in order to remain neglected and unnoticed. Once ordered to the cells, friends of all classes suddenly rise up; his fellow-prisoners, the turnkeys, the chaplain, the keepers, and the sheriffs all seem interested in his fate, and he can make no reasonable request that is not at once granted by whomsoever he may address. This rule has some, but very few, exceptions; such as where a hardened offender behaves with great levity and brutality, as if he cared nought for his life, and thought every one anxious to promote his death." Mr. Wakefield goes on to remark that persons convicted of forgery "excited an extraordinary degree of interest in all who approached them." This was noticeable with Fauntleroy, who, on account of his birth and antecedents, was allowed to occupy a turnkey's room, and kept altogether separate from the other prisoners until the day of his death. It cannot be denied, however, that the ordinary's treatment was somewhat unfeeling, and in proof thereof I will quote an extract from the reverend gentleman's own journal. He seems to have improved the occasion when preaching the condemned sermon before Fauntleroy, by pointing a moral from that unhappy man's own case. For this the chaplain was a few days later summoned before the gaol committee of aldermen, and informed that the public would not in future be admitted to hear the condemned sermon. "I was also informed," writes Mr. Cotton, "that this resolution was in consequence of their (the aldermen's) disapproving of the last discourse delivered by me, previous to the execution of Henry Fauntleroy for uttering a forged security, in which it was said I had enlarged upon the heinous nature of his crime, and warned the public to avoid such conduct. I was informed that this unnecessarily harassed his feelings, and that the object of such sermons was solely to console the prisoner, and that from the time of his conviction nothing but what is consolatory should be addressed to a criminal. One of the aldermen, moreover, informed me that the whole court of aldermen were unanimous in their opinion on this subject. As to the exclusion of strangers on these occasions, the experience I have had convinces me that one, and perhaps the only, good of an execution, _i. e._ the solemn admonition to the public, will thereby be lost."