HISTORICAL SOUNDS | LONDON STREETS 1909
A collection of descriptions and references to sounds drawn mainly from primary sources such as autobiographies, diaries and statutes, as well as novels written around the times they depict.
| Sub-category | 1st to 10th |
11th to 15th |
16th to 17th |
18th | Early 19th |
Late 19th |
Early 20th |
Late 20th |
| General sounds of street and town | 7 | 2 | 10 | 4 | 1 | |||
| Open-air markets | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| Road traffic | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| Communal living and confinement | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | ||||
| River traffic and related sounds | 5 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Plague, war and disaster | 1 | 6 | 1 | 3 | ||||
| Sound qualities of buildings | 1 | |||||||
| Sounds of crowds | 1 |
Period referred to: 1720s
Sound category: Ambient > Sounds of communal life and confinement
Title of work: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders
Type of publication: Novel
Author: Daniel Defoe
Year of publication: 1722
Page/volume number: n/a
The morning of a Newgate execution in Moll Flanders
But I go on with my relation. The next morning there was a sad scene indeed in the prison. The first thing I was saluted with in the morning was the tolling of the great bell at St. Sepulchre's, as they call it, which ushered in the day. As soon as it began to toll, a dismal groaning and crying was heard from the condemned hole, where there lay six poor souls who were to be executed that day, some from one crime, some for another, and two of them for murder.
This was followed by a confused clamour in the house, among the several sorts of prisoners, expressing their awkward sorrows for the poor creatures that were to die, but in a manner extremely differing one from another. Some cried for them; some huzzaed, and wished them a good journey; some damned and cursed those that had brought them to it—that is, meaning the evidence, or prosecutors—many pitying them, and some few, but very few, praying for them.