Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison. English-only reading by default; switch among English, Chinese, and Spanish, or compare languages side by side.
This chapter develops the memoir’s account of Chapter XXXV. RUNNING THE GAUNTLET., connecting personal narrative with the financial, legal, and prison-world setting of the period. The chapter’s opening perspective is: My life at Newgate was an ordeal such as I hope no reader of this will ever undergo. Day by day I saw the world slipping from under my feet, and the net drawing its deadly folds closer around me.
This chapter is for readers following Bidwell’s memoir chapter by chapter, especially the section titled “Chapter XXXV. RUNNING THE GAUNTLET..” It is most useful for readers interested in financial crime history, nineteenth-century banking culture, criminal justice, prison memoir, and the social setting of the period.
Read “Chapter XXXV. RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.” as a historical memoir rather than guidance. The banking procedures, legal assumptions, public reputation, social judgments, travel conditions, and prison practices described belong to Bidwell’s nineteenth-century setting and may not match modern institutions.