Newgate novel such as Wilkie Collins's "The Woman in White" (1859); an early example of the latter is "The Moonstone" (1868), again by Collins. All were often serialised in a form that gave rise to the penny dreadful magazines. Newgate novel The Newgate novels (or Old Bailey novels) were novels published in England from the late 1820s until the 1840s that were thought to glamorise the lives of the criminals they portrayed. Most drew their inspiration from the "Newgate Calendar", a biography of famous criminals published at various times during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but usually rearranged or embellished
Newgate Prison whose incomes partially depended on extorting their wards, charged the prisoners for food, bedding, and to be released from their shackles. To earn additional money, guards blackmailed and tortured prisoners. Among the most notorious Keepers in the Middle Ages were the 14th-century gaolers Edmund Lorimer, who was infamous for charging inmates four times the legal limit for the removal of irons, and Hugh De Croydon, who was eventually convicted of blackmailing prisoners in his care. Indeed, the list of things that prison guards were not allowed to do serve as a better indication of the conditions in Newgate than the