In the condemned ward Boz found "five-and-twenty or thirty prisoners, all under sentence of death, awaiting the result of the recorder's report--men of all ages and appearances, from a hardened old offender with swarthy face and grizzly beard of three days' growth, to a handsome boy not fourteen years old, and of singularly youthful appearance even for that age, who had been condemned for burglary." It must be remembered that they hanged men for all sorts of offenses in England then, which made the population of the condemned ward abundant around sessions time, when the trials were on. The death penalty was as common then as it is now rare in its infliction. "The room was large, airy and clean. One or two decently dressed men were brooding with a dejected air over the fire; several little groups of two or three had been engaged in conversation at the upper end of the room, or in the windows; and the remainder were crowded around a young man seated at a table, who appeared to be engaged in teaching the younger ones to write. On the table lay a Testament, but there were no tokens of its having been in recent use. In the press-room below were the men, the nature of whose offense rendered it necessary to separate them, even from their companions in guilt. It is a long sombre room, with two windows sunk in the stone wall, and here the wretched men are pinioned on the mornings of their execution, before moving toward the scaffold."
"A few paces up the yard," he goes on, "and forming a continuation of the building, lie the condemned cells. The entrance is by a narrow and obscure staircase, leading to a dark passage, in which a charcoal stove casts a lurid light over the objects in its immediate vicinity, and diffuses something like a warmth around. Prior to the recorder's report being made, all the prisoners under the sentence of death are removed from the day room at five o'clock in the afternoon, and locked up in these cells, where they are allowed a candle until ten o'clock; and here they remain until seven the next morning. When the warrant for the prisoner's execution arrives, he is removed to the cells, and confined in one of them until he leaves it for the scaffold. He is at liberty to walk in the yard; but both in the walks and in his cell, he is constantly attended by a turnkey, who never leaves him on any pretence." The cell was "a stone dungeon eight feet long by six feet wide, with a bench at the upper end, under which were a common rug, a Bible and a prayer-book. An iron candle-stick was fixed into the wall at the side; and a small high window at the back admitted as much air and light as could struggle in between a double row of heavy, crossed iron bars." It was in one of these dens ("Oliver Twist," Chapter 52) that Fagin spent his last hours.