Last year I came across a category of novels I hadn’t previously heard of – the charmingly named ‘silver-fork‘ novel. Everyday is a learning day as they say, so I was pleased to further expand my knowledge of obscure literary categories when as part of my background reading into Oliver Twist I came across another category – The Newgate Novel.

Newgate novels are an early example of what we know think of as true crime fiction. They were also known as Old Bailey novels and had their heyday in the UK in the 1820s to 1840s. Newgate was London’s principal prison for centuries, and the courtrooms built on the side of the prison slowly expanded into a complex that eventually became (and is today) the Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court. The stories of the criminals tried there were told in The Newgate Calendar, The Malefactors’ Bloody Register. Originally a monthly bulletin of executions, produced by the prison administration, the calendar’s title and content was copied by other publishers.

Newgate novels were widely seen as glamorising the lives of the criminals and were therefore as well as being hugely popular were also controversial, in that they made heroes of murderers. That still happens to this day of course – criminal behaviour is romanticised by the passage of time, and the horror of murders such as the Jack the Ripper crimes can one day be treated as light entertainment or a merchandising opportunity. very few of the Newgate Novels remain in publication to this day, although that it hardly surprising – they never pretended to be anything other than popular entertainment.

I think Oliver Twist has a strong case for not being classified as a Newgate novel. Firstly there’s no indication that it drew its inspiration from a real or reported case. Secondly the principal character is not a criminal but a victim, albeit one that is drawn into the ambit of the criminal fraternity. Finally the glamorisation of the criminals portrayed in the novel is largely missing – Sikes is a monster, Fagin not much better, and the only characters with any redeeming features are Charlie Bates, who turns in Sikes and eventually abandons a life of crime, and the Artful Dodger, who it is easy to forget is only thirteen, a pickpocket rather than a house-breaker or fence, and is clearly highly intelligent.

Newgate Novels