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Entering this motley pack as a team afforded influence, particularly in a fluctuating prison society like Newgate. A duo could cover two places at once. Agnes ran for the food while Janet guarded the spot staked out for bedding. Two sets of eyes were more attentive to scams, schemes, and allegiances, which often incited unpleasant initiations. Bullies and troublemakers targeted the weak. Appearances mattered. In such close confinement, emotions escalated and mutated when the intoxicated or the deranged lashed out with pent-up fury and frustration, pulling hair or indiscriminately attacking with teeth and dirty fingernails. Insanity and the unpredictability of madness proved intimidating to even the most street-hardened. One careless move might provoke a deadly attack from someone possessed with what seemed like superhuman strength.

Elizabeth Fry spent thirty-five years devoted to prison reform, but even divine prayer and activism couldn’t purify this den of disease and corruption. Newgate seemed beyond God’s reach. Outbreaks of typhus, or “gaol fever,” spread by fleas and lice, killed countless women and children awaiting transport in the filthy, overcrowded cells. Seemingly contrary to common sense, prisoners were allowed to drink as much liquor as they could afford. Two taprooms conveniently adjoined the prison. Gaol keepers earned a hefty bonus keeping their charges drunk, docile, and “quite free from rioting.”8 The guards were often drunk themselves. Like hungry wolves in charge of sheep, some gaolers also turned a profit by smuggling prostitutes into the male ward.

Mrs. Fry and her association were disgusted to learn that even Newgate’s governor made a habit of selecting female prisoners as domestic servants whom he moved into his home. The high-principled Quakers were particularly taken aback when he handpicked one “young rosy-cheeked girl” to work in his kitchen and then overturned her transport sentence without bothering to consult the judge.9

A bustling economy, regulated by favors and bribery, thrived where justice lay inert. “Extortion was practised right and left.”10 Word traveled quickly about which guards could be bribed. Shillings or spirits paid for visits with loved ones and for contraband from the outside. Money bought better food and a cleaner cell. Gaolers sold hungry prisoners bread far above cost, collecting two pence halfpenny for a loaf.11 Entrepreneurial prisoners charged cell mates who awaited trial a few shillings to prepare their slipshod version of a legal brief. As a ruse to visit the women’s ward on Sundays and Wednesdays, male inmates claimed to be relatives and fraternized inappropriately.

Rather fluid contact with the outside world fueled an illicit, albeit tolerated, black market. Sellers of tobacco, playing cards, newspapers, and scandalous books wandered freely about the prison and hawked their wares. There was profit to be made in every part of Newgate, even the chapel. Gaolers charged the public a fee to attend the final sermon delivered to those awaiting execution. Some of the chaplains sold sad tales, confessed by the condemned, to broadsheet publishers, who marketed them to the crowds gathered on execution day.

Amid the madness and mayhem of Newgate, renegades quickly gained admiration. Prisoners took great joy in taunting their captors, and in defiance, mateship blossomed. Any girl who thumbed her nose at the authorities became a welcome addition to this pack of rabble-rousers and malcontents. Being a ballad singer, Agnes McMillan made the perfect rebel and certainly expanded her repertoire with new tunes from the bawdy company she now kept. To pass the long nights, the women often entertained one another and turned captivity into theater featuring inspired and risqué performances.

The talented Scottish lass sang fearlessly at the top of her lungs. Well-worn melodies were often parodied with original words belted out in heartfelt disdain toward the guards and the turnkeys.