As the eighteenth century wore on, and as capital statutes proliferated, blossoming into what became known as the Bloody Code, more and more prisoners in Newgate would be awaiting trial for crimes for which the punishment was death, and more and more spent their last days in the condemned cell. Judges in black caps passed the death sentence; chaplains ministered to the doomed; hangmen duly dispatched them; governors kept busts of their more prominent executees as macabre trophies.

In the few days between sentence and execution the condemned were left to the tender care of the Newgate chaplain, the ‘ordinary’ or ‘the great bishop of the cells’ as he was called. The title ‘ordinary’ dates from 1544 when one of the four chaplains at St Bartholomew's Hospital was delegated to ‘visit all the poor and miserable captives … and minister unto them such ordinary service at time convenient, as is appointed by the King's majesty’. In 1620 the first resident ordinary was appointed. Newgate was unusual in this provision. It was not until an Act of 1773 that justices of the peace were permitted, but not compelled, to appoint chaplains to their prisons and to pay them from the local rates, and not until 1824 that they had to. Before that, county gaols and town lock-ups made do with such visitations as the local clergy cared to make. Of these, Dissenters were the most dedicated and diligent.