The execution of these three murderers attracted quite a bit of public interest,
and an estimated 40,000 people turned up outside Newgate Prison and the Old Bailey.
Blake's first biographer, Alexander Gilchrist, records that in June 1780 Blake was walking towards Basire's shop in Great Queen Street when he
was swept up by a rampaging mob that stormed Newgate Prison in London.
The“novels of Newgate” were similarly attacked in the specialized press,
with Jack Sheppard described in the magazine Athenæum as“one more of a kind of bad books, supported by bad readers”, and the humorous magazine Punch publishing a satirical«Literary Recipe»For a shocking romance(…).