He was so good as to take me into a yard and show me where the gallows was kept, and also where people were publicly whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors’ Door, out of which culprits came to be hanged; heightening the interest of that dreadful portal by giving me to understand that “four on ’em” would come out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and gave me a sickening idea of London; the more so as the Lord Chief Justice’s proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots and up again to his pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes which had evidently not belonged to him originally, and which I took it into my head he had bought cheap of the executioner.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 20. Pip’s first introduction to London involves a “drunken minister of justice” providing him with a tour of a yard where criminals are publicly hanged and whipped. Pip is horrified by his encounter with London-style rough justice. And even more so at the shocking ironic sight of a high ranking law officer wearing the damp clothes of executed prisoners bought from the executioner.