Dr. Johnson and the Old Bailey

Extract

We all know the Old Bailey—now, by statute, the Central Criminal Court—in Newgate Street. The Old Bailey as Dr. Johnson knew it is no more, and the present building is still in its infancy—blooded, it is true, but an infant. Its predecessor—a gloomy and forbidding structure—had had a long, busy and unwholesome career before its disappearance some twenty years ago.