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 LONDON 611 of George III., to which Buckingham house has been added. The naval department has been managed in the admiralty, Whitehall, since 1626. Somerset house, in the Strand, forming a quadrangle with over 3,000 windows and with rooms for nearly 1,000 offices, con- tains the branch offices of the admiralty, the audit office, and the registrar general's offices ; Somerset House. nearly one half of the vast building is occupied by the inland revenue office, or the excise, stamp, legacy, duty, and property -tax offices ; and the W. wing, fronting Wellington square, added in 1856, belongs to the latter bureaus. The four inns of court, which have been de- scribed as palladiums of English liberty, con- sist of the Inner Temple, Middle Temple, Lin- coln's Inn, and Gray's Inn ; and affiliated with them are 19 inns of chancery. (See INNS OF COUKT.) The stately new hall of the Inner Temple was opened May 14, 1870. The great civil tribunals are the courts of queen's bench, common pleas, and exchequer, the high court of chancery and of admiralty, and the courts of probate and divorce and of bankruptcy. The new palace of justice, intended to con- tain all the great law courts, for which a site was purchased near Temple Bar several years ago, was recently commenced after various de- lays and controversies. It is expected that the eastern block of buildings will be finished in 1877, and the larger western block in 1880 or 1881. The ground includes an area of eight acres, of which an acre and a half is to be laid out as a garden. The buildings will form an irregular square, having a front of about 500 ft. on the Strand, and a depth nearly as great from the Strand to Carey street. Mr. Street is the architect. The central criminal court holds its periodical sessions in the Old Bailey, a street running from Ludgate hill to Newgate street; other sessions are held at the guild- hall, Tower Liberty, Westminster, and else- where. Newgate, at the corner of Old Bailey and Newgate street, is the oldest London pris- on, and derives its name from that of a gate of which the original building was the tower. Penn, Defoe, and other celebrated persons, as well as notorious criminals like Jack Shep- pard, were lodged in old Newgate, which was destroyed by fire during the "no popery" riots in 1780. The present building was com- pleted a few years afterward, and made the scene of public executions instead of Tyburn, the first taking place Dec. 9, 1783. The in- terior was remodelled in 1858 on the cellular system. Executions are no longer public, having since 1868 been performed within the walls, a black flag being hoisted as the only outward sign. The building holds about 200 prisoners. Millbank, on the left bank of the Thames, close to Yauxhall bridge, has the as- pect of a citadel, and is the largest London prison, with room for 1,100 prisoners, but gen- erally contains about 700 ; its inmates are sen- tenced to penal servitude, and hence it was originally called the penitentiary. Horsemon- ger lane jail, Southwark, is the county jail for Surrey, where the Mannings were hanged in 1849; but now, as at Newgate, executions take place only within the walls. Bridewell prison was demolished in 1862, and among numerous buildings named bridewells after it is the new police station in Brick lane, Fleet street (1874). The great City of London prison at Hollo way (1855) is a castellated building in mediaeval style, averaging about 350 in- mates. The model prison at Pentonville was completed in 1842 with 1,000 separate cells ;