New Newgate Prison

"They built the Fifth City's prison in a stalactite the size of a fair-sized village. Food and prisoners come and go from the city far below in a dirigible. Any corpses reckoned beyond recovery are weighted with dripstone and allowed to plummet into the Unterzee, far below."

New Newgate Prison is London's foremost penal institution, suspended from the Roof of the Neath.

Welcome, Delicious Friend!

"New Newgate Prison uses a vast number of candles. It is rumoured that prisoners who can arrange for candles to be delivered can gain privileges or even an early release. It's almost as if they eat the things."

A gaoler

New Newgate Prison is a foreboding fortress carved into a colossal stalactite, suspended far above the Unterzee and accessible via airship. Built around 1875 to replace Old Newgate, it now serves as London’s primary correctional facility. Among its stores of supplies, one can be found in curiously vast quantities: candles. New Newgate burns through candles at an astonishing rate (it is dark, after all), and it is whispered among inmates that those who can secure their own supply might earn privileges or even an early release.

Conditions at New Newgate are shabby: fights are a daily occurrence, and bitter gruel is the standard meal if food is provided at all. The walls are scratched with the writings of inmates, despite the overseers' best attempts to suppress any resultant creative freedoms. The lower levels of the prison are filthy, disease-ridden, and crawling with strange vermin; prisoners may volunteer or be assigned to clean them. The tip of the stalactite contains the worst of the dungeons, but is principally used as a solitary confinement chamber for someone who has a vast network of intelligence and knows many deep, dark secrets.

The facility is overseen by tight-lipped, hunched gaolers in sackcloth hoods, who warn the inmates that should they ever riot, the stalactite will fall off the Roof into the Unterzee.^{[citation needed]} Priests are allowed to visit and take confessions, though this apparent mercy may be intended to incriminate the population further. Permanently dead prisoners are given a brief funeral and cast into the zee below, weighed down by stones — though some bold and clever inmates have managed to escape by faking their own deaths and exploiting this result. Perhaps the strangest thing about New Newgate's customs, however, is that all prisoners are required to wear satin masks. On an unpleasant and slightly related note, prisoners have been found with their masks missing and swaths of the skin beneath torn away, causing rumors to run rampant (though fights can get brutal, mind you).

The Masks Come Off

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"It is said she was the first prisoner to be cast into New Newgate. That her crime is unspeakable. You know her only through her letters, which are neatly-written, filled with lurid detail about her fellow inmates, and stained with candle-wax."

New Newgate's first prisoner

New Newgate has a Snuffer on the loose (ah yes... that explains that), which is elusive enough and has extensive enough knowledge of the prison to not have been caught to date. Though it remains hidden in the forgotten corners of the facility, this creature is the primary consumer of the prison's candles. The satin masks the inmates wear are designed to protect them from having their faces ripped off, but this is about as effective as one might expect (i.e. not at all), and the Snuffer sometimes preys on the gaolers as well.

The first inmate taken to New Newgate apparently did something so horrible that it took a secret convention of judges to lay out her sentence.

Upper New Newgate, which consists of the prison's upper levels, is currently under Admiralty control due to an invasion by a band of Starved Men. The Starved come through the windows and perform the Shapeling Arts on inmates, leading the prisoners and guards to use anything they can find to board up the windows and keep the marauders out. They are slowly losing ground, floor by floor, forcing them to retreat downward and resulting in a minor overpopulation problem in the remaining segments. News of this invasion has been prevented from reaching London, in an attempt to functionally pretend it does not exist and ostensibly avoid causing mass hysteria.

Historical Inspiration

Commissioned by King Henry II, Newgate Prison was initially integrated into the city's defensive walls. Over the centuries, it underwent numerous reconstructions, notably after being destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The prison was rebuilt in 1672 by architect Sir Christopher Wren, and later expanded in the 18th century to accommodate a growing inmate population.

Newgate was notorious for its deplorable conditions. Overcrowding, disease, and violence were rampant. Prisoners often had to pay for basic necessities, and corruption among jailers was common. The prison housed a wide range of inmates, from debtors to murderers, and was a site for public executions until 1868 (after which executions were conducted within the prison walls). Newgate's grim reputation permeated literature and public consciousness, and the term "Newgate novel" even emerged to describe a genre focusing on criminal lives and prison experiences. The facility featured in works by authors like Charles Dickens, used as a symbol for the harsh realities of the justice system.