noon
There were some broken men among these debtors who had been in jail so long , and were so miserable and destitute of friends , so dead to the world , and utterly forgotten and uncared for , that they implored their jailers not to set them free , and to send them , if need were , to some other place of custody . But they , refusing to comply , lest they should incur the anger of the mob , turned them into the streets , where they wandered up and down hardly remembering the ways untrodden by their feet so long , and crying -- such abject things those rotten-hearted jails had made them -- as they slunk off in their rags , and dragged their slipshod feet along the pavement . Even of the three hundred prisoners who had escaped from Newgate , there were some -- a few , but there were some -- who sought their jailers out and delivered themselves up : preferring imprisonment and punishment to the horrors of such another night as the last . Many of the convicts , drawn back to their old place of captivity by some indescribable attraction , or by a desire to exult over it in its downfall and glut their revenge by seeing it in ashes , actually went back in broad noon , and loitered about the cells . Fifty were retaken at one time on this next day , within the prison walls ; but their fate did not deter others , for there they went in spite of everything , and there they were taken in twos and threes , twice or thrice a day , all through the week . Of the fifty just mentioned , some were occupied in endeavouring to rekindle the fire ; but in general they seemed to have no object in view but to prowl and lounge about the old place : being often found asleep in the ruins , or sitting talking there , or even eating and drinking , as in a choice retreat . Besides the notices on the gates of the Fleet and the King 's Bench , many similar announcements were left , before one o'clock at noon , at the houses of private individuals ; and further , the mob proclaimed their intention of seizing on the Bank , the Mint , the Arsenal at Woolwich , and the Royal Palaces .