Sketches by Boz

Chapter 25

A VISIT TO NEWGATE

'The force of habit' is a trite phrase in everybody's mouth; and it

is not a little remarkable that those who use it most as applied to

others, unconsciously afford in their own persons singular examples

of the power which habit and custom exercise over the minds of men,

and of the little reflection they are apt to bestow on subjects

with which every day's experience has rendered them familiar. If

Bedlam could be suddenly removed like another Aladdin's palace, and

set down on the space now occupied by Newgate, scarcely one man out

of a hundred, whose road to business every morning lies through

Newgate-street, or the Old Bailey, would pass the building without

bestowing a hasty glance on its small, grated windows, and a

transient thought upon the condition of