OLD PAINS AND PENALTIES--FROM THE STOCKS TO THE GALLOWS.
All the old punishments, from the Ducking Stool to the Stocks,
proceeded upon the appeal to the moral sense of the community, and up
to the middle, or probably nearer to the end of last century, the
summary punishment of offenders took place, both in village and town,
in the most public manner possible. Near the Old Prison House,
standing a little eastward of the summit of the Cave, in Melbourn
Street, which did duty for both civil parishes of Herts. and Cambs.,
stood the Royston pillory and also the stocks, but towards the end of
the century the pillory disappeared, and stocks had to be set up in
each parish. I can find no record of any actual punishments by the
Melbourn Street pillory, but one of the last cases of punishment by
pillory took place at Hertford, and was witnessed by Mr. Henry Fordham.
Closely connected with, and as a part of the stocks was the whipping
post, and this was very freely used until about 1800. In 1804 a
prisoner was sentenced at Ely to be publicly whipped, besides
imprisonment. In 1786, I find that George Rose was brought from
Cambridge to Royston and whipped at the stocks. What his offence was
is not stated, but that whipping was no trifle may be inferred from the
following laconic entry in the Royston parish books:---
"Relieved William C----, his back being sore after whipping him."
The offender had his wrists put through the rings on the upright posts
of the stocks, which formed the whipping posts, and in this position he
was flogged on his naked back "till his body was bloody." Vagrants had
no small share of this kind of punishment. The following entry occurs
in the Barkway parish papers:--
Hertfordshire to Witt.
To the Keeper of the House of correction at Buntingford.
This is to require you to Whip Elizabeth Matthewson upon her
naked Body, and for so doing this shall be your warrant.
G. Jennings.
In 1798 an item in the accounts for the same parish is charged for "the
new iron for the whipping post."
{84} The stocks for Royston, Cambs., stood in the middle of the broad
part of Kneesworth Street, nearly opposite the yard entrance of King
James' Palace, and just in front of some dilapidated cottages then
occupying the site of Mr. J. R. Farrow's shop. Here they remained as a
warning to evil doers till about 1830 or 1840. In Royston, Herts.,
after the abolition of the central prison-house in Melbourn Street, a
cage was erected with stocks attached on the Market Hill, on the east
side nearly opposite the Green Man, but they were removed at a later
date to the Fish-hill, when an addition was made to the west side of
the Parish-room, for the purpose, where the fire engines are now
placed. An estimate in the parish books for the erection of a cage and
stocks in Royston, Herts., at a cost of L10, in the year 1793, may
perhaps fix the date at which each parish provided its own means of
punishment of wrong-doers.
Though drunkenness was a vice infinitely more prevalent than it is
to-day, it was not because local authorities did not at least show the
form of their authority, but simply because they had no very efficient
police system to back it up. It was customary for instance for the
publican to have a table of penalties against "tippling" actually
posted up in his licensed house, so that both he and his customers
might see what might be the consequences, but as they often could not
read they were probably not much the wiser, except for a common idea
that the Parish Stocks stood outside on the village green, or in the
town street. The common penalty for tipplers continuing to drink in an
alehouse, was that such persons should forfeit 3s. 4d. for the use of
the Poor, and if not paid to be committed to the stocks for the space
of four hours; for being found drunk 5s., or six hours in the stocks.
As to swearing, a labourer was liable to be fined 1s. for every oath, a
person under the degree of a gentleman 2s., and for a gentleman 5s.
In times of disturbance, as at village feasts, it was no uncommon thing
to see the stocks full of disorderly persons--that is, with two or
three at once--and occasionally the constable's zeal in the use of this
simple remedy outran his discretion. At the Herts. Assizes in 1779,
before Sir Wm. Blackstone, a Baldock shoemaker, named Daniel Dunton,
obtained a verdict and L10 damages against the chief and petty
constable of Baldock for illegally putting him in the stocks.
There was, of course, an odd and comic side about the stocks as an
instrument of punishment, which cannot belong to modern methods. An
instance of this was brought home to the writer in the necessary
efforts at ransacking old men's memories for the purpose of some parts
of these Glimpses of the past. I was, for instance, inquiring of an
old resident of one of our villages as to what he remembered, and
ventured to ask him, in the presence of one or two other inhabitants,
the innocent question--"I suppose you have seen men put in the stocks
in your {85} time!" but before the old man could well answer, a younger
man present interposed, with a merry twinkle of the eye--"Yes, I'll be
bound he has, he's been in hi'self!" I am bound to say that, from the
frank manner in which my informant proceeded to speak of persons who
had been in the stocks, the younger man's interruption was only a joke,
but it taught me to be cautious in framing questions about the past to
be addressed to the living, lest I should tread upon some old corns!
There was this virtue about the Parish Stocks, that it was a wholesome
correction always ready. It was not necessary to caution a man as to
what he might say, before clapping him in the stocks. Nor was much
formality needed--he was drunk, quarrelling, fighting, or brawling, it
was enough; and the man who could not stand was provided with a seat at
the expense of the parish. Indeed, I am told that in one parish, near
Royston, a farmer, who was himself generally in the same condition,
finding one of his men drunk, would remark that one drunken man was
enough on a farm, and would bundle the other drunkard off to the stocks
without the least respect for, or care about, informing a magistrate
thereof!
The Parish Stocks were, as may be supposed, sometimes tampered with,
and became the medium of practical jokes, of which, perhaps, the best
story on record is that of a Chief Justice in the stocks. The story is
as follows:--
Lord Camden, when Chief Justice, was on a visit to Lord Dacre, his
brother-in-law, at Alely in Essex, and had walked out with a gentleman
to the hill where, on the summit by the roadside, were the Parish
Stocks. He sat down upon them, and asked his companion to open them,
as he had an inclination to know what the punishment was. This being
done the gentleman took a book from his pocket and sauntered on until
he forgot the Judge and his situation, and returned to Lord Dacre. The
learned Judge was soon tired of his situation, but found himself
unequal to open the stocks! He asked a countryman passing by to assist
him in obtaining his liberty, who said "No, old gentleman, you were not
placed there for nothing"--and left him until he was released by some
of the servants who were accidentally going that way! Not long after
he presided at a trial in which a charge was brought against a
magistrate for false imprisonment and setting the plaintiff in the
stocks. The counsel for the defendant made light of the charge and
particularly of setting in the stocks, which, he said, everybody knew,
was no punishment at all! The Lord Chief Justice rose, and, leaning
over the Bench, said, in a half whisper--"Brother, were you ever in the
stocks?" The Barrister replied, "Really, my Lord, never."--"Then, I
have been," rejoined his Lordship, "and I do assure you, brother, it is
not such a trifle as you represent!"
{86}
One cannot refrain from expressing a lingering sense of regret over the
last of its kind, whether of the last of the Mohicans, or the last
minstrel. The parish of Meldreth, I relieve, stands alone in the
Cambridgeshire side of the Royston district as still possessing the
visible framework of its old Parish Stocks, thanks to the commendable
interest taken in the preservation of old time memorials by Mr. George
Sandys, of Royston, by whom the Meldreth Stocks were some time ago
"restored," or, rather, the original pieces were brought more securely
together into one visible whole. The parish of Meldreth, too, affords,
I believe, one of the latest, if not the latest, instances of placing a
person in the stocks, when, some forty or fifty years ago, a man was
"stocked" for brawling in Church or some such misbehaviour. These
stocks, when they were renovated by Mr. Sandys, had lost the upper part
which completed the process of fastening an offender in them, but such
as they then were will be seen in the illustration on the opposite
page, which is reproduced from an excellent photograph taken by Mr. F.
R. Hinkins, of Royston. The original upper part has since been found
and placed in position by Mr. A. Jarman, of Meldreth.
[Illustration: THE OLD PARISH STOCKS AT MELDRETH.]
Some other things deserve to be mentioned as old penalties besides
actual punishment for crimes. One of these was the penalty for _felo
de se_, so well described by Hood in his punning verses on Faithless
Nelly Gray and Ben Battle, the soldier bold, who hung himself, and--
A dozen men sat on his corpse,
To find out how he died;
And they buried Ben at four cross-roads,
With a stake in his inside.
In 1779, John Stanford, who hung himself at the Red Lion, Kneesworth,
was found to be a _felo de se_, and was "ordered to be buried in a
cross-road."
In 1765, the coroner's inquest who sat upon the body of one, Howard, a
schoolmaster of Litlington, who, "after shooting Mr. Whedd, of
Fowlmere, cut his own throat," found a verdict of _felo de se_, upon
which he was ordered to be buried in the high cross-way, but whether a
stake was placed through the body, either in this or the Kneesworth
case, is not stated. The custom of burying a _felo de se_ at four
cross-roads continued long after the barbarous and senseless indignity
of driving a stake through the body was discontinued, and persons still
living remember burials at such spots as the entrance to Melbourn, and
at similar spots in other villages. Another penal order was for the
body to be "anatomised" after execution, as in the case of a man named
Stickwood for murdering Andrew Nunn, at Fowlmere, in 1775.
Sometimes as an alternative penalty for crimes was the system of
enlistment for the Army and Navy, with which may be coupled the
high-handed proceedings of the "Press-gang." The Press-gang {88} was
practically a recognised part of the machinery of the State. The law,
as to recruiting, sanctioned what would now be considered most
tyrannical proceedings; justices of the peace were directed to make "a
speedy and effectual levy of such able-bodied men as are not younger
than seventeen nor more than forty-five, nor Papists." The means for
enforcing this, not only along river-sides, but often in inland country
villages, was often brutal, and led to determined resistance and
sometimes loss of life. There is a story in Cornwall of a bevy of
girls dressing themselves up as sailors, and acting the part of the
Press-gang so well that they actually put their own sweethearts to
flight from the quarries in which they were working!
The dread of compulsory service was so great that the lot might fall
upon men to whom the name of war was a terror. One case of this kind
occurred in a village near Royston in which two men were drawn to
proceed to Ireland for service, and one of them actually died of the
shock and fright and sudden wrench from old associations, after
reaching Liverpool on his way to Ireland!
On the subject of pressing for the services, the following
characteristic entry occurs in the Royston parish books for the year
1790:--
"Ordered that the Wife of March Brown be permitted to leave the House
as she says her husband is Pressed and gone to sea, and that she came
to the parish for a few clothes only, as she can get her living in
London by earning two shillings a Day by making Breeches for Rag fair."
Though the stocks and the gallows may seem a long way apart, yet they
were really very near in the degrees of crime which linked them, and
what now would appear a minor offence, had inevitably linked with it
the "awful sentence of the law."
At the Bury St. Edmunds Assizes, in 1790, 14 persons received sentence
of death. The extraordinary number of persons who were hung as the
Assizes came round will be best understood by some figures of death
sentences for the March Assizes, 1792:--Hertford 2, Cambs. 4, Bedford
4, Northampton 5, Chelmsford 4, Oxford 2, Thetford 2, Bury 6, York 17,
Exeter 16, East Grinstead 3, Derby 2, Nottingham 2, Leicester 2,
Gloucester 6, Taunton 3, Kingston 12. At one only of the above Assizes
the number of prisoners of all kinds for trial was 85. In June, 1785,
twenty-five persons were sentenced to death at the Old Bailey, and 15
of them were hung together the next week. In 1788 there were 81
capital convicts awaiting execution in Newgate, and in 1792 thirteen
prisoners were sentenced to death for horse-stealing and lesser
offences at a single sessions in London!
At the Herts. Assizes in 1802, John Wood, a carpenter, of Royston, was
ordered to be transported for fourteen years for having some forged
bank notes concealed in his workshop. In the same year, {89} at the
Cambs. Assizes, William Wright, a native of Foxton, was sentenced to
death and executed at Cambridge, for uttering forged Bank of England
notes. At the Hertford Assizes, in 1801, William Cox, for getting fire
to a hovel of wheat at Walkern, was sentenced to death. Among other
oddly sounding capital offences, I find that a man named Horn was
sentenced to death at the Hertfordshire Assizes in 1791 for stealing
some money from the breeches pocket of a man with whom he had slept.
At the Cambs. Assizes, in 1812, Daniel Dawson was tried for an offence
of poisoning a mare the property of William Adams, of Royston, and was
sentenced to death, and executed at Cambridge about a fortnight
afterwards.
Sheep-stealing, horse-stealing and highway robberies, were the chief
offences with which capital punishment was connected, and associations
were formed to prosecute offenders. The parishes of North Herts. were
especially notable for sheep-stealing cases. In 1825, at the Herts.
Spring Assizes, a man named Hollingsworth was indicted for stealing 55
sheep and 17 lambs, the property of William Lilley, at Therfield. The
jury found the prisoner guilty and "the awful sentence of the law was
pronounced upon him," so says the Chronicle--and at the July Assizes in
the same year, Francis Anderson, for stealing one ewe lamb, the
properly of Edward Logsden, at Therfield, was found guilty and
"sentence of death was recorded." At the Cambs. Assizes in 1827,
George Parry was indicted for sheep-stealing at Hauxton, and the judge
"passed the awful sentence of death," remarking that the crime of
sheep-stealing had so increased that it was necessary to make a severe
example.
One of the most remarkable adventures of the pursuit of horse-stealers
in this district occurred in 1822, and actually formed the subject of a
small book [now before me] bearing the following curious title:--
"The Narrative of the persevering labours and exertions of the late Mr.
Owen Cambridge, of Bassingbourn, Cambs., during his search for two
horses, stolen from his stable in October and November, 1822; during
which search he very unexpectedly found a pony which had been stolen
from the stable of his neighbour, Mr. Elbourne; Printed by particular
request. The Royston Press: Printed, published, and sold by J. Warren."
If the reader is inclined to smile at a book with the strangest title
that perhaps was ever put upon a title page, it should be said that the
adventure recorded in this little book of thirty-two pages is really a
most remarkable one, than which no "Bow Street Runner" of those days,
to say nothing of the modern police officer with the advantages of
railways and telegraphs, had a stiffer task of detective work, or ever
more distinguished himself for perseverance, energy and resource, than
did Mr. Owen Cambridge in this memorable affair with its innumerable
{90} journeys by coach to London, and to almost all the fairs in the
home counties, at a cost of upwards of L200. The result was that many
other crimes were brought to light, and a gang of horse-stealers was
broken up; two of them were sentenced to death at the Beds. Assizes,
and the one who stole Mr. Cambridge's horses was sentenced to death at
Cambridge, but, upon Mr. Cambridge's plea for mercy for the prisoner,
sentence was commuted. It is perhaps worth placing on record that
after the extraordinary searches, covering several weeks in London and
elsewhere, Mr. Cambridge found the thief at home in his garden in
Oxfordshire, passing as a respectable horse-dealer.
Perhaps the most interesting case of a local character of capital
punishment for highway robbery with violence and sheep-stealing
combined, was one which occurred to a Royston gentleman, for which it
is necessary to travel a dozen years beyond the reign of George III.
At the Cambridge Summer Assizes in 1832 was tried a case of highway
robbery and sheep-stealing, which was one of the last cases of sentence
of death being inflicted for these offences. The accused were John
Nunn, Simeon Nunn, the younger, and Ephraim Litchfield, labourers, of
Whittlesford. The facts as deposed to at the Assizes were briefly
these:--The late Mr. Henry Thurnall, of Royston, was in that year an
articled clerk to Messrs. Nash and Wedd, solicitors, Royston, and was
frequently in the habit of going from Royston to his then home at
Whittlesford, to spend the Sunday. On this occasion business in the
office had detained him later than usual, and he started from Royston
to drive home in a gig about 11 p.m. on the Saturday night. Near the
plantation between Thriplow and Whittlesford parish two men rushed out,
seized the reins and said, "We want all you have," and just as he
jumped out of the gig to defend himself a third man struck him and
knocked him down and stunned him. A further struggle, however, and
more blows ensued, and he was able in the struggle to identify the
three men, who did not leave him till they had made him stand up with
his arms extended, rifled his pockets, and then, left him covered with
blood and fainting on the road, not knowing who it was that they had
been robbing. Mr. Thurnall was able to walk home, though bleeding very
much, and after dressing his wounds, he, his father and others, watched
for the accused, and seeing them returning at dawn to their homes, the
men dropped sacks they were carrying, and these sacks were found to
contain each a fresh-killed sheep from the fold of Mr. Faircloth. At
the next Cambs. Assizes, as stated above, all three were found guilty
and sentenced to be hung. Mr. Thurnall pleaded for the lives of the
men, who belonged to his own parish, but the Home Secretary, Lord
Melbourne, wrote that their case was too bad to admit of any mitigation
of the punishment, and the day was appointed for their execution. The
poor fellows were desirous {91} of seeing Mr. Thurnall, and he went to
Cambridge gaol to take leave of them, and they thanked him for his
exertions on their behalf, and assured him that had they known him on
the night of the robbery nothing would have induced them to attack him!
Shortly afterwards their sentence was commuted to that of penal
servitude for life. The counsel for the prosecution in this painful
case was Mr. Gunning, a well-known name in Cambridgeshire, and it may
be of interest to add that I have gleaned the above facts from the
brief used by counsel on that occasion, which has been kindly placed at
my disposal by Mr. H. J. Thurnall.
One of the most painful cases of capital punishment for small offences
occurred in Royston about 1812-14, when quite a young girl from
Therfield, living in service in a house now let as an office in the
High Street, Royston, robbed her employer of some articles in the
house, and was sentenced to death at Hertford, and hung. This case
created a profound impression in the town, and for many years
afterwards the case "of the poor girl who was hung" was remembered as
an instance of the severity of the law.
The time came when this wholesale sentence of death for various
offences became more a question of the letter of the law than a
satisfaction of the public sense of justice, and out of a batch of
prisoners receiving sentence of death the Judge often reprieved the
majority, and some of them before leaving the Assize town. The result
was that though in many cases there was hope when under sentence of
death, there was a large number of persons, often young people, placed
under dreadful suspense. The most striking case of the kind in this
district was that of the fate of a Melbourn gang of lawless young men.
About 1820, several desperate young fellows linked themselves together
and became so bold in terrorising the inhabitants as to openly express
their intention to provide themselves with fire-arms and use them
rather than be taken. Eventually their time came, when they broke into
the house of a man named Tom Thurley, a higgler, living near the mill
stream. The properly they stole was nothing of great value--chiefly
some articles of clothing, &c.--and they were disturbed at their game
and had to bolt. In order to get rid of the evidence against them they
hid the stolen things in the spinney which then grew where the
gas-house now stands, just by the mill stream bridge. They were
arrested, and at the Cambridge Assizes five or six of them were
sentenced to death! The result of the trial produced a deep impression
in the village. The sentence was afterwards respited and they were
transported for life; their last appearance in the village being when
they rode through on the coach bound for London, and thence to the
convict settlement. One or two others were transported for other
offences soon after, and the gang was completely broken up. {92} Of
the convicts, two sons were out of one house--one of the old parish
houses which then stood in the churchyard.
Forgery was an offence punished with death, and one of the latest cases
was that of a young man from Meldreth parish, who went up in 1824 as
clerk in Mr. Mortlock's warehouse in Oxford Street, forged his master's
signature to a cheque, was sentenced to death and hung at Newgate,
despite the exertions of his employer to save his life.
We sometimes hear, in these days of advanced education, that we are
educating young people beyond the station they can possibly attain, and
that we may find the cleverness expend itself in forging other people's
names and signatures to obtain money without that honest labour by
which their parents were content to earn a livelihood. The evidence,
however, is altogether the other way. The number of forgeries
committed before national education began, notwithstanding the fear of
being hung for the offence, was incalculably greater than it has ever
been since. In the matter of bank notes alone, the number of forged
motes presented at the Bank of England in 1817 was no less than 31,180.
By 1836, the number of forged notes presented had dwindled down to 267.
The number of executions for the whole country for the three years,
ending 1820, were 312; for the same period, ending 1830, only 176; and
by 1840 they had decreased to 62. Many of these sentences were the
results of crimes committed in the revolt against the introduction of
machinery.