HANGMAN'S HIGHWAY: THE ROAD TO TYBURN
TYBURN:
_That most celebrated place,
Where angry justice shows her awful face;
Where little villains must submit to fate,
That great ones may enjoy the world in state._
Let us now see something of that road—that _Via Dolorosa_, as we may in
all fitness call it—along which the condemned, highwaymen and others,
went to Tyburn Tree. I shall style it "Hangman's Highway." It is not a
pretty name, and it was never its official designation; but it is an
apt one. Since 1783, when it lost that unenviable notoriety, its social
status has continually risen, and there is now not a more respectable
three-miles stretch of thoroughfare in London.
It had in remote ages been "Hangman's Highway," for from the west
gateway in the wall of Roman _Londinium_, from the spot in after-years
known as "Newgate," the malefactors of the Roman period were marched
out and done to death. But in mediæval times, the citizens of London,
not then so easily moved at the sight of executions, were content
to allow criminals to be put to death in their midst, and we read
of executions on Cornhill. A little later, and we find Smithfield
chosen; a spot called "The Elms," apparently situated opposite where
St. Bartholomew's Hospital stands, being the place where, not only
criminals of low degree, but many of high rank suffered. Here the
Scottish patriot, Wallace, was hanged in 1305, and here Mortimer was
executed in 1330.
Holinshed, indeed, deriving his information from Adam Murimuth, tells
a different tale. He says, of Mortimer: "He was at London drawne and
hanged at the commen place of execution called in those daies The
Elmes, and now Tiborne, as in some bookes we find."
But there is some confusion of ideas here: Tyburn did not become a
place of execution until long after, and St. Giles's was the next site
of the gallows.
It was a little less than a hundred years later, that the newer
choice was made, for about 1413 we read that the gallows was set up
at the northern boundary of the Leper Hospital of St. Giles, half-way
to Tyburn. It is referred to in ancient documents as the "Novelles
furches," _i.e._ the "new forks": in allusion to the arms of the
gallows-tree. There, in 1417, Sir John Oldcastle was hanged and his
body afterwards burnt.
But Smithfield was still occasionally the scene of executions, and
there, also, the fires that consumed the Protestant martyrs in the
Marian persecution were lighted. Even so late as 1693, the celebrated
highwayman, Captain James Whitney, was executed at Smithfield, on a
spot known as "Porter's Block," near Cowcross Street. The equally
celebrated, or notorious, John Cottington, called "Mulled Sack," was
hanged at "Smithfield Rounds," some years earlier.
"The Elms" was also the name of the earlier Tyburn, and much confusion
has naturally arisen over this duplicating of names. The original
Tyburn appears to have been established on the banks of a stream,
which long ago ran across what is now Oxford Street, near Stratford
Place. Here, then, were those other elms, distinct from the fatal
elms of Smithfield.[2] To this place the executions were remitted, no
doubt following upon the remonstrance of some aggrieved person, who
found the gallows of St. Giles injuring his property.[3] The continued
westward progression of Tyburn Tree is, indeed, a sign of the growth
of London in that direction, and a proof of the very natural objection
entertained by residents and owners of property to executions conducted
in front of their windows.
The Tye Bourne obtained its name from the two branches, in which it
flowed down from the Hampstead heights towards the Thames. The two
streams were something over half a mile apart: the easterly branch
crossing Oxford Street just below Stratford Place, and the westerly—the
"West Bourne," that has itself also disappeared, but has given its
name to Westbourne Grove and Westbourne Terrace—flowing across the
Bayswater Road into Kensington Gardens. Its course lay along what is
now Kensington Gardens Terrace, and does so still: underground, and
enclosed in a pipe.
A Roman road went due west out of the West Gate of _Londinium_ to
join the Watling Street (which ran from Stangate, Lambeth, across the
Thames at Westminster, in a north-westerly direction to Edgware) at
the present junction of Oxford Street, Bayswater Road, and the Edgware
Road, occupying the line of the existing Oxford Street. It crossed the
eastward branch of the Tye Bourne by a paved ford: the "strat-ford"
_i.e._ "street ford," that long, long ago suggested a name for
Stratford Place. Even the great modern borough of St. Marylebone owes
its name to this bourne, and to the original church of St. Mary, built
not far from its bank. The present Marylebone Lane owes its curious
windings to the fact that it was once a country lane that followed the
twists and turns of the little river.
St. Marylebone gets its name in a manner worth describing. The original
church of St. John, Tyburn, that had stood from time immemorial
beside the banks of the Tye Bourne, between the Oxford Street end of
what are now Marylebone Lane and Stratford Place, was situated in a
very lonely, yet exposed situation, on the great road from the City
of London to the west. The village centred about where High Street,
Marylebone, is now to be found, and the church and the village pound
stood apart. So often was this original place of worship broken
into and desecrated by thieves and vagabonds that it became at last
necessary to remove it altogether. Accordingly, a licence was obtained
in 1440 from the Bishop of London, Robert Braybrooke, to demolish
the building and to erect a new church in the village itself, to be
dedicated to St. Mary. Hence the disuse of "Tyburn" and the rise of
"St. Mary-le-bourne."
The old Court House and vestry offices of Marylebone, in Marylebone
Lane, built in 1829, occupy the site of the ancient vestry and that of
the old pound for strayed cattle; and skeletons, found there in plenty
at the building of it, were ascribed to the criminals anciently hanged
and gibbeted on the spot, rather than thought to be the bones of the
respectable inhabitants.
But, however dangerous the neighbourhood for three hundred and
sixty-four days of the year, it was on one summer's day, annually, the
scene of a gay civic festival. Ever since 1239 there had been conduits
established here for the supply of water to London—that one square mile
of London known as the City—and to this spot on that annual occasion
repaired my Lord Mayor and aldermen, to feast in a building called the
"Banqueting House," that then stood in the pleasant country meadows.
It may be found, distinctly marked, on old maps, on the site of
Stratford Place, which itself is of considerable age, having been begun
in 1744.
A record is still preserved of that civic junketing in 1562,
when, after lunch, the Lord Mayor and the other guests hunted the
hare through the woods of St. Marylebone. Then they dined, and,
the huntsman having unearthed a fox, the hunt tailed away to St.
Giles-in-the-Fields, where at last he was killed, "with great hollowing
and blowing of horns at his death."
There should never have been the slightest doubt as to the real meaning
of the word "Tyburn." It clearly means "the two streams." Somewhat
similar derivations of place-names are found in the numerous "Twyfords"
throughout the country, and in the name of Tiverton: the meanings
being, of course, respectively, "Two Fords," and "Two Ford Town." But
we find such derivations as "t'Ay Bourne," and the quaint passage
written in 1617, "Teyborne, so-called of bornes and springs and of
tying men up there." Fuller, at any rate, if not prepared to suggest an
origin, was not, on the other hand, content to accept the popular view.
He adopted a mildly critical attitude when he wrote his _Worthies_, and
said: "Some will have it from Tie and Burne, because the poor Lollards
for whom this instrument (of cruelty to them, though of justice to
malefactors) was first set up, had their necks tied to the beame, and
their lower parts burnt in the fire. Others will have it that it is
called from Twa and Burne; that is, two rivulets, which it seems meet
near to the place."
But the earliest mention of the stream, or streams, in A.D. 951, when
it was called "Teoburne," seems to settle the point, beyond reasonable
doubt.
The valley of this vanished stream can still most clearly be perceived,
in the very marked dip in the road at this point, and its course onward
towards the Thames may be traced by Brook Street and Half Moon Street,
to Piccadilly (where a similar dip in the road will be found) and so
into the Green Park.
The westward march of London in course of time moved on the Tyburn
"Elms," to a site midway between the two branches of the Tye Burn, and
fixed the scene of execution for some two centuries at what was later
known as "Tyburn Gate," until at last "Tyburn," as a Golgotha, ceased
to be, in 1783.
There was probably an excellent reason for this selection. The spot
was certainly not near either of the bournes, but it was, as already
pointed out, at a junction of roads, and it was then a place where
the greatest publicity could be given to the ways of justice—or what
passed for such—with the breakers of laws. It was not, according to
ancient accounts, a nice place, even before the gallows was erected
there; being nothing but a barren heath, standing rather high above the
surrounding country, and with no houses near.
The road to this last Golgotha of London, before executions took place
outside Newgate prison, is known by many names to-day: Holborn, High
Holborn, New Oxford Street, and Oxford Street, along whose course it
would now be difficult to point out many historical survivals. The
church of St. Sepulchre still stands, as of yore, immediately without
the site of the ancient City wall, and seems to many well versed in
the gloomy memories of the spot, to bear an ominous name, until it is,
with a little thought, recognised to be really dedicated in memory of
the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. An ironic fate, indeed, it was that
for so many centuries associated its name with the last moments of the
capitally convicted.
Its tower is prominent even now, but it was even more striking—though
more closely hemmed in with houses—before the Holborn Viaduct, in 1867,
superseded the road that in the old days plunged down into the deep
valley of the Fleet River, that Old Bourne, or Hole Bourne, so greatly
in dispute among antiquaries, and crossed here by Holborn Bridge, until
the improvements of the viaduct-building age overbuilt the valley, and
swept away the bridge and the surrounding streets into the limbo of
forgotten things.
"All, all are gone, the old familiar faces," sighed the poet; and the
thing remains just as true and as sad when we substitute "places" to
suit our own present needs. Newgate prison is gone and Skinner Street
is abolished, that once stood immediately adjoining St. Sepulchre
church, and the only vestige remaining of it is a very plain tablet
dated 1802, that may be found by the diligent and the quick-sighted
in the dungeon-like crypt of the Guildhall Museum. The dirty alleys
are gone too, and that is no loss—and gone also is what was known to
Cockneys as "'Obun 'ill." Holborn Hill, which, it need perhaps hardly
be explained, was the true name of this eminence, was not an Alp,
nor even a Plinlimmon, but it remained to the very last a terror to
London drivers, especially of heavy vehicles. It was a great thing when
Holborn Viaduct was built, to have abolished those exceeding-steep
gradients which faced all eastward—and westward—going traffic, and were
terribly exacting to horses, especially in damp, greasy weather.
[Illustration:
SKINNER
STREET,
1802.]
"'It 'im on the raw, mister!" suggested a countryman in the old days
to the omnibus driver, as the vehicle toiled up the steep, towards the
City.
Alas! poor horse.
"Not yet," returned the driver, who knew his business; "we saves that
for 'Obun 'ill!" That was the supreme effort!
The descent of Holborn Hill was the first thing that lay before those
old-time melancholy processions to the Elms in very ancient days, and
to Tyburn, about half a mile further westward, in later ages; and
something of what it was in the way of a descent we may still judge
by looking down over the parapet of the Viaduct, on to Farringdon
Street, far below. Before the procession fairly started on its way
down this declivity, it halted by the porch of St. Sepulchre, and the
criminal, so soon to die, received a large nosegay from the clergyman,
for all the world as though he were a _débutante_ upon the concert
platform, instead of his being about to make a painful and humiliating
entry into the next world. The nosegay was generally tied in the best
fashion, with white silken ribbons; and indeed, the thing was done in
style by all present, not excepting the central figure, the condemned
man, who was almost always, when he could afford it, dressed gaily
and fashionably, as though he were going to a wedding. He went to his
death like a gentleman, no matter how he had lived his life. The only
derogatory circumstance about it was that, while the sheriff rode in
his carriage, the real hero of the day was obliged to go the journey in
a cart. For the rest, if he were a good-plucked one, the highwayman,
forger, murderer, or pickpocket—whatever was his crime—went his way in
receipt of a continual ovation. He held the centre of the stage all the
way. No one wanted to deprive him of this pre-eminence; be sure of that.
Of these scenes Swift wrote in 1727:
As clever Tom Clinch, while the rabble was bawling,
Rode stately through Holborn to die at his calling,
He stopt at the "Bowl" for a bottle of sack,
And promised to pay for it when he came back.
His waistcoat and stockings and breeches were white,
His cap had a new cherry ribbon to tie't.
The maids to the doors and the balconies ran,
And said, "Lack-a-day, he's a proper young man!"
And as at the windows the ladies he spied,
Like a beau in a box, he bowed low on each side,
And when his last speech the loud hawkers did cry,
He swore from the cart, "It was all a damn'd lie!"
The hangman for pardon fell down on his knee:
Tom gave him a kick in the guts for his fee:
Then said, "I must speak to the people a little;
But I'll see you all damn'd before I will whittle!
My honest friend Wild (may he long hold his place),
He lengthen'd my life with a whole year of grace.
Take courage, dear comrades, and be not afraid,
Nor slip this occasion to follow your trade;
My conscience is clear, and my spirits are calm,
And thus I go off, without prayer-book or psalm;
Then follow the practice of clever Tom Clinch,
Who hung like a hero, and never would flinch."
The original of this savage satire was, no doubt, Tom Cox, the
younger son of a gentleman of Blandford, who, resenting his meagre
fortune under that old fetish of the English landowner, the law of
primogeniture, came to London for the purpose of adding to it in what
was then the conventional manner. His career was ended, too, by
the authorities with an equally slavish regard to precedent, for when
convicted at the Old Bailey of highway robbery, he was sentenced to
be hanged; and if, as a matter of fact, his actual ending at Tyburn
on June 3rd, 1691, was marked by an incident of striking originality,
it was his own pluck and resource that provided the piquant sensation
created, and nothing officially contributed.
[Illustration: CLEVER TOM CLINCH GOING TO EXECUTION.]
He had been heedless in the extreme while in prison of the
ministrations of the Ordinary, and, being well provided with money,
lived his last days riotously. Even when beneath the gallows at Tyburn
he remained unmoved, and when the Ordinary asked if he would not join
with his fellow-sufferers in prayer, he swore and kicked both him and
the hangman out of the cart. He was but twenty-six years of age when he
died.
But good humour generally prevailed on the way: "The heroes of the day
were often on excellent terms with the mob, and jokes were exchanged
between the men who were going to be hanged, and the men who deserved
to be."
Not only the "mob" enjoyed these occasions: people who, by position and
education ought to have known better, made a point of either witnessing
the start, or, better still, of being present at the actual execution.
Those were not constituent items of the "mob" who, for example, paid
their half-crowns for seats in the grand stand that was a permanent
structure at Tyburn, to witness the final scene; but they had all the
ferocity of mobs, and showed it one day in 1758, when, having paid
their money to see Dr. Henesey hanged, he was not hanged, but reprieved
instead. Enraged at this shameful breach of faith—and not at all glad
that one fellow-mortal had at the eleventh hour escaped a shameful
end—they wrecked the seats and departed in a by no means appeased
ill-humour.
Some enthusiastic sightseers walked all the way: they could not have
too much of a good thing. Happy were those who could not only do that,
but could by favour secure a place next the criminal himself! T. J.
Smith, who wrote the well-known volume called _A Book for a Rainy
Day_, tells how, as a little boy, he was nearly given such a treat. He
did, at any rate, witness the start, under the care of Nollekens, and
saw the clergyman give the condemned malefactor the nosegay: but the
greater treat was, by a mere accident, not to be his.
"Tom, my little man," whispered Nollekens, "if my father-in-law, Mr.
Justice Welch, had been high constable, we could have walked beside the
cart all the way to Tyburn."
Where Holborn Viaduct ends westward in the Circus, graced in these
latter days of ours with that polite equestrian statue of the Prince
Consort, lifting his cocked hat so high to omnibus passengers, the
Tyburn procession arrived at the summit of Holborn Hill; passing to
it beneath the tall tower of St. Andrew's church. The respectable
inhabitants of Thavies' Inn—that demure row of red-brick houses on
the left hand, built late in the seventeenth century, or early in the
eighteenth—were, we may be sure, as eager to view the passing show as
were the "lower orders." The windows of the "Old Bell" inn, last but
one of the ancient galleried inns of London, demolished so recently
as 1897, were, no doubt, in great demand; and indeed, at all the many
hostelries on the line of march the sightseers gathered, and at one
and the same time satisfied their curiosity and quenched the thirst it
provoked. But gone are all the relics of the coaching days, and most
others. Holborn is not what it was. Nothing is.
The weirdest jokes were current of the doomed criminals' behaviour on
this melancholy way. Thus Thomas Witherington, executed in 1635, when
going up Holborn Hill, requested that the cart might be stopped, for
he desired to speak to the sheriff's deputy, who was conducting the
affair. "Sir," he is reported to have said, when the deputy asked what
it was he wanted, "I owe a small matter at the 'Three Cups' inn, a
little further on, and I am afraid I shall be arrested for debt as I go
by the door. So I shall be much obliged to you if you will be pleased
to carry me down Shoe Lane and bring me up Drury Lane again, so that we
don't pass it, and perhaps lose my appointment at Tyburn."
The deputy, entering into the humour of it, said he could not alter the
route, but, if they were stopped, he would certainly go bail for him;
and so Witherington, "not thinking he had such a good Friend to stand
by him in time of need, rid very contentedly to Tyburn."
As these cavalcades progressed, they came gradually into the country.
They passed the ultimate boundaries of the City at Holborn Bars, where
the ancient timbered and gabled buildings of Staple Inn still look
across the road to what is now Gray's Inn Road, but was then merely a
lane. Near by is Furnival Street, formerly Castle Street, as a tablet
dated 1785 proclaims.
[Illustration:
Castle Street
1785]
"Holborn Bars" is a name that but mildly stimulates the curiosity of
modern Londoners, who, seeing no bars here, wonder idly about the
name, resolve to inquire about it, and then in the busy life they
lead, forget their passing interest. There were toll-bars here in the
highwaymen's days, and those who care to seek for themselves may still
determine the exact boundary of the City of London, for a granite
obelisk on either side of the road, bearing the City arms, still
marks the spot. London had reached thus far early in the seventeenth
century, but it went little further westward for another hundred years.
The names of Great Turnstile, Little Turnstile, and New Turnstile,
now narrow side streets, giving upon Lincoln's Inn Fields, are
reminiscences of the time when the land westward of Lincoln's
Inn really was meadow-land, instead of a London square garden
surrounded by houses. These various "Turnstile" streets still keep
the ancient narrowness of the country lanes they once were, when the
"kissing-gates," or turnstiles, led into green fields spangled with
butter-cups and daisies; but such things are things of long ago: the
old wall-tablet at the Holborn end of New Turnstile, dated 1688,
showing when the rustic pathways were first exchanged for streets, and
the wayside hedges for bricks and mortar. Until quite recent years
Tichborne Court remained near by, with its fine tablet bearing the
Tichborne arms and the date 1685.
[Illustration:
NEW
TURN
STYLE
1688]
Kingsway, London's new street, immediately westward, has been driven
along the line of Little Queen Street since 1903; its name in some
fashion intended to perpetuate the route taken by Charles the Second
between Whitehall and Newmarket. When His Majesty shed the light of
his countenance upon the races, or when he merely wished to visit his
palace at Theobalds, near Cheshunt, his way would lie along what is
now Kingsway, across Holborn, along the now vanished Kingsgate Street
(demolished in 1903, in the Holborn to Strand street-improvements),
and into the Theobald's Road. Kingsgate Street derived the second
part of its name from it having been a private road for the King's
own use: barred and locked against the passage of meaner folk, except
in the case of a privileged few, fortunate enough to obtain passes.
Less influential people, passing on foot, on horseback, or by carriage
towards Cheshunt and Newmarket, in the wake of the Court, had to
struggle as best they might through a network of peculiarly evil
and muddy lanes, infested with highwaymen, who, nothing daunted by
witnessing the dismal processions of their brethren going westward,
robbed with celerity and an exquisite assurance those who, repairing to
the races, would in all likelihood have lost their guineas on Newmarket
Heath.
[Illustration:
TICHBORN COURT
ANNO DNI. 1685]
Thus we read in one of the "News Letters" of Charles the Second's
time, under date of 1666: "Last Monday week in Holborn Fields, while
several gentlemen were travelling to Newmarkett, to the Races there,
a Highway Man very politely begg'd their Purses, for he said he was
advis'd that he should win a great Sum if he adventur'd some guineas
with the Competers at New-Market on a certain horse call'd 'Boopeepe,'
which my Lord Excetter was to run a match. He was so pressing that they
resign'd their Money to his keeping (not without sight of his pistols);
he telling them that, if they would give him their names and the names
of the places where they might be found, he would return to them that
had Lent, at usury. It is thought that his Venture was not favourable,
for the Gentlemen have not receiv'd neither Principle nor Interest. It
is thought that it was Monsieur Claud Du Vall, or one of his knot, that
Ventur'd the Gentlemen's money for them."
Not only have all those lanes disappeared in the long ago, but even
such comparatively late landmarks as Kingsgate Street are no more:
Kingsgate Street, the home of Sairey—"which her name is well beknownst
is S. Gamp."
A little distance further westward, the Londoner not deeply versed in
the ancient lore of the metropolis is greatly surprised at finding High
Holborn curving boldly to the left and departing in the most marked
manner from that straight line to the west traced nowadays by New
Oxford Street. He does not know, or does not stop to consider, that
New Oxford Street really is new, as newness in streets goes. It is,
in fact, not older than 1847. Before it was made, there was no good
through-route between the City and Tyburn, and the line of road went by
a circuitous course, still easily traced—by High Holborn, Broad Street,
and High Street, Bloomsbury. Passing under the very shadow of the
Church of St. Giles—anciently "St. Giles-in-the-Fields"—the road again
fell into the straight line opposite Tottenham Court Road.
The reason for this curious departure from the direct course is thought
to have been the existence in ancient times of a lake, or marsh—a
certain "Rugmere" mentioned in old records—covering the site of what is
now New Oxford Street. However that may have been, this marsh must in
course of centuries have dried up, for the site was built upon in later
ages.
It was not an idyllic village that by degrees came into existence
here. It formed an annexe to St. Giles's, a village itself associated
from remote times with undesirables. A leper hospital was one of the
early features of the place, and poverty and crime in later years came
to roost by natural selection there; until, in fact, the proverbial
conjunction of St. James's and St. Giles's, indicating the opposite
extremes of aristocratic elegance and unredeemed vulgar squalor,
was coined out of its flagrant raggedness and dirt. The particular
spot through which New Oxford Street runs, was the deepest deep
of that foul slum. Drink and depravity met there and flourished.
It was generally known, this very microcosm of criminal life, as
"The Rookery," but satirists called it, in obvious contrast with
its real character, the "Holy Land." None dared venture into that
select purlieu, except under police protection; and London breathed
more freely when, in 1844, it was at last decided to remove this
long-threatened plague-spot. Three years later, the new thoroughfare
was opened; the improvement had cost no less a sum than £290,227 4s.
10d., of which £113,963 went to the Duke of Bedford, as compensation,
although the work had the effect of increasing the value of his
adjoining property. The transaction is an eloquent instance of the
marvellous and continued success of the Russell family in feeding fat
upon the body politic, like lice upon the corporeal body. It does not
appear that, although His Grace was advantaged thus enormously, both by
betterment and by compensation, the unfortunate owners and occupiers of
houses and business premises in those highways suddenly converted into
byways received any of the much-needed compensation for the "worsement"
they suffered. For when New Oxford Street was made, the fortunes of
High Street, Bloomsbury, of Broad Street, and of the circuitous part of
High Holborn were at once shattered, and they at one stroke became the
byways they have ever since remained.
Swift, in his ballad of "Clever Tom Clinch," mentions the "Bowl"
inn, at which the convict called "for a bottle of sack." This was
a house that stood at the corner of what is now Endell Street and
Broad Street. For "sack," which Swift probably used for the sake of
the rhyme with "come back," read ale, and the verse is true to facts;
for the processions halted at the "Bowl" ale house, and the criminals
were offered a drink of ale; and it does not seem ever to be recorded
of them that they refused it. Perhaps they took with them memories of
the old saying, that "the saddler of Bawtry was hanged for leaving
his ale": an unfortunate occurrence directly attributable to his
ill-humour. No one knows what the saddler had done, but he was to die
for it, and being led out to York's execution place, on Knavesmire,
turned from the drink offered him on the way. He had been effectually
hanged only a minute or two, when an unexpected reprieve came by a
hurried messenger; too late.
All the good-plucked ones on their way to Tyburn, were not only
expected to take their ale, but to make that joke about "coming back"
to pay for it. It was as essential and as conventional as the clown's,
"Here we are again!" Some surly ruffian might be moved, once in a way,
to drain the bowl, fling it empty at the landlord, and bid him "wait
for payment till he met him in H—ll"; but that was ungentlemanly, and
the assignation not certain of fulfilment. Sometimes it would happen
that one of these travellers going on to dance upon nothing at Tyburn
would make variations upon the old theme; but nothing seems to have
been quite so neat as the last remark of an atrocious villain, Tom
Austin, who, when he stood with the rope round his neck, replied to the
Ordinary's query if he had anything to say before he died: "Nothing:
only there's a woman yonder with some curds and whey, and I wish I
could have a pennyworth of them before I am hanged, because I don't
know when I shall see any again."
[Illustration: AT THE "BOWL."]
Leaving the "Bowl" and threading the narrow passage of High Street,
Bloomsbury, the processions, passing St. Giles's Pound, came into
the "Tyburn Road," called sometimes "the Oxford Road," and now, and
since about 1718, styled Oxford Street. Lysons, in his _Environs of
London_, says the row of the first few houses on the north side of
Tyburn Road westward of the Tottenham Court Road, was completed in
1729, and then it was first called Oxford Street; but he is clearly
in error, for until about 1888 there remained built into the wall of
No. 1, Oxford Street, on the south side, at the first-floor level, an
oval tablet inscribed, "This is Oxford Streete, 1725." When the houses
were rebuilt, this simple relic disappeared. But a still earlier tablet
remains to disprove Lysons. This is one built into the wall of a house
at the corner of Rathbone Place, which announces "Rathbones Place in
Oxford Street 1718." The omission of the possessive case apostrophe
has a somewhat gruesome effect, when we consider the old story of
Oxford Street; but the side street was then the property of a certain
Captain Rathbone. Oxford Street then had a very unenviable reputation.
Pennant's description of it in his own youthful days forms interesting
reading.
[Illustration:
THIS IS
OXFORD STREETE
1725]
"I remember Oxford Street," he says, "a deep hollow road, and full
of sloughs; with here and there a ragged house, the lurking-place of
cut-throats: insomuch that I was never taken that way by night in my
hackney-coach, to a worthy uncle's, who gave me lodgings in his house
in George Street, but I went in dread the whole way."
[Illustration:
RATHBONES
PLACE IN
OXFORD
STREET
1718]
Rathbone Place did not long remain the most westerly street. By 1725 a
good deal of the parish of St. George, Hanover Square, on the opposite
side of the road, was in existence, and was at once fashionable; and
Thomas Street, with its tablet dated 1725, shows that, originally as
"Bird Street," it had carried the bricks and mortar tide still further.
It can easily be understood that the stigma of the Tyburn route was
at this period of development beginning to be resented by these new
settlers, who glanced with loathing at the crowds who came to give the
condemned a good send-off.
[Illustration:
BIRD
STREET
1725]
It was said that 200,000 persons visited Tyburn to witness the
execution of Ferdinand, Marquis Paleotti, in 1718, for the murder of
his servant, named, by a curious coincidence, Jack Sheppard, and thus
by no means to be confounded with the famous Jack Sheppard, pickpocket
and burglar, who was executed here in 1724.
Henri Misson, one of the most entertaining and instructive of foreign
travellers in England, who travelled among us in 1718, and wrote
his experiences and impressions, says: "Hanging is the most common
Punishment in England. Usually this Execution is done in a great Road
about a quarter of a League from the Suburbs of London. The Sessions
for trying Criminals being held but Eight Times a Year, there are
sometimes twenty Malefactors to be hang'd at a time.
"They put five or six in a Cart (some gentlemen obtain leave to perform
this journey in a coach) and carry them riding backwards, with the
Rope about their Necks, to the fatal Tree. The Executioner stops the
Cart under one of the Cross Beams of the Gibbet, and fastens to that
ill-favoured Beam one End of the Rope, while the other is round the
Wretches Neck. This done, he gives the Horse a Lash with his Whip, away
goes the Cart, and there swings my Gentleman Kicking in the Air.
"The Hangman does not give himself the Trouble to put them out of their
Pain; but some of their Friends or Relations do it for them. They pull
the dying Person by the Legs, and beat his Breast, to dispatch him as
soon as possible. The English are People that laugh at the Delicacy of
other Nations, who make it such a mighty Matter to be hanged. Their
extraordinary Courage looks upon it as a Trifle, and they also make a
Jest of the pretended Dishonour that, in the opinion of others, fall
upon their Kindred.
"He that is to be hanged, or otherwise executed, first takes Care to
get himself shaved and handsomely dressed; either in Mourning, or in
the Dress of a Bridegroom. This done, he sets his Friends at Work to
get him Leave to be buried, and to carry his Coffin with him, which
is easily obtained. When his Suit of Clothes, his Night Gown, his
Gloves, Hat, Periwig, Nosegay, Coffin, Flannel Dress for his Corps,
and all those things are bought and prepared, the main Point is taken
Care of. His Mind is at Peace, and then he thinks of his Conscience.
Generally he studies a Speech, which he pronounces under the Gallows,
and gives in Writing to the Sheriff or the Minister that attends him
in his last Moments; desiring that it may be printed. Sometimes the
Girls dress in White, with great Silk Scarves, and carry Baskets full
of Flowers and Oranges, scattering these Flowers all the Way they go.
But, to represent Things as they really are, I must needs own that if a
pretty many of these People dress thus gaily, and go to it with such an
Air of Indifference, there are many others that go slovenly enough, and
with very dismal Phizzes."
[Illustration: AN EXECUTION AT TYBURN.]
Jonathan Wild, hanged May 24th, 1725, was a whimsical fellow at the
last of his career, for he picked the pocket of the Ordinary on the
way. It is perhaps most exquisitely characteristic of the race of
Newgate Ordinaries that the article stolen was a corkscrew. "Jonathan
Wild the Great," as Fielding calls him, "died with the eloquent trophy
in his hand."
Half a century later, those Newgate chaplains enjoyed an equally
bad—if, indeed, not a worse—reputation, and a slighting remark is made
in Storer's letter to George Selwyn, in describing the execution of Dr.
Dodd for forgery, on June 27th, 1777. He rode to Tyburn in exceptional
state, in a carriage, and as a heavy rain-shower was falling at the
moment of his entering the cart, an umbrella was held over him, so
that he might not be wetted. It was unfeelingly remarked at the time
that the precaution was entirely unnecessary, for he was going to a
place where he would soon be dried. John Wesley, who also witnessed the
execution, was of a different, and a more charitable, opinion. "I make
no doubt," he said, "but at that moment the angels were ready to carry
him into Abraham's bosom."
"He was a considerable time in praying," says Storer, "which some
people about seemed rather tired with; they rather wished for a more
interesting part of the tragedy. There were two clergymen attending
upon him, one of whom seemed very much affected. The other, I suppose,
was the Ordinary of Newgate, as he was perfectly indifferent and
unfeeling in every thing he said and did."
In Hogarth's print of the final scene in the life of the _Idle
Apprentice_, arrived at Tyburn to be hanged, we have a very painstaking
representation by that matter-of-fact artist of one of these fearfully
frequent executions. Hogarth was the most uncompromising realist; he
set down what he saw, and extenuated nothing. Thus, in this view, we
may be quite sure we see a typical execution in the middle of the
eighteenth century; the criminal seated in the cart, with his coffin
dolorously ready to receive his body, while with one eye upon the
prayer-book, and the other on the ribald crowd, he strives to pay
attention to the last exhortations of the Ordinary, who is seen with
uplifted hand and finger pointing to the sky, apparently comforting him
with the assurance that he shall find that mercy in the other world,
which man has denied him in this.
[Illustration: EXECUTION OF THE IDLE APPRENTICE AT TYBURN.
_After Hogarth._]
The sheriff's mounted guard, with their halberds, look unconcernedly
on, for this is an almost everyday business with them. One is seen
joking with a comrade. Drunken women are drinking gin, pickpockets are
at work, and a slatternly woman is crying the "Last Dying Speech and
Confession of Thomas Idle."
On the right hand is the permanent stand for those spectators who
were above mixing with the mob, and were prepared to pay well for the
comfortable circumstances in which they could witness a fellow-creature
publicly put to a shameful death. Close by, you perceive the
"three-legged mare" itself, at that time a fixed, and a very roomy
and most substantial structure, designed to accommodate as many as a
dozen or so criminals at one time; so plentiful then were the hangings.
The hangman himself is seen to be idly reclining on top, smoking a
contemplative pipe, until it shall please the clergyman to finish, and
hand over the doomed man to him. And there is the Sheriff's carriage,
and on the left hand the brick wall, which then enclosed Hyde Park. In
the far distance are seen the pleasant heights of Notting Hill, then in
the open country, and no doubt a spot where the innocent delights of
gathering hazel-nuts could still be enjoyed, as in the times when it
was first called the "nutting" hill.
[Illustration: QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA PRAYING AT TYBURN.]
So changed are the modern circumstances of the spot where Tyburn Gate
in later times, and Tyburn gallows in earlier years, stood, that vexed
controversies are continually arising as to the exact spot on which the
gallows was erected. It is not, really, a difficult point to settle.
The structure shown in Hogarth's engraving, and displayed in a still
earlier German print, in which Queen Henrietta Maria, the consort of
Charles the First, is seen to be making pilgrimage and praying for the
souls of her Roman Catholic servants hanged here, was erected exactly
in the middle of the road, where, as you go westward, the straight line
of Oxford Street and the Bayswater Road is met by the Edgware Road.
Old maps indisputably prove it, and the point is more particularly
settled by a large and very detailed plan of the parish of St. George,
Hanover Square, made in 1725, and until recently in the vestry. It is
now in the Buckingham Palace Road branch of the Westminster Public
Libraries, where an old engraving of it also hangs on the staircase.
This plan shows the parish boundary running up Park Lane to Oxford
Street, and there meeting the boundaries of Marylebone and Paddington,
at the junction of Oxford Street, the Bayswater Road, and the Edgware
Road. The three boundaries all meet in the middle of this confluence of
thoroughfares, and there the gallows is shown, one of its three legs in
each parish.
In its later years, Tyburn as a hanging place became more varied, and
the permanent gallows gave way to a temporary one, erected at different
points somewhat further west. Two circumstances suggested this:
firstly, the building of houses overlooking the scene, and the natural
wish of the tenants that such dreadful exhibitions should not be
displayed absolutely beneath their windows; and secondly, the even more
practical necessity of ridding the public highway of the obstruction
caused by the permanent scaffold. The key to this question of removal
is found in the _Gazetteer_, May 4th, 1771, which remarked that the
Dowager Lady Waldegrave was having a "grand house built near Tyburn,"
and added that, "Through the particular interest of her ladyship, the
place of execution will be removed to another spot."
The highwaymen who suffered so largely here had in their lives, been
a danger and a hindrance upon the highway, and they were now found,
oddly enough, in the circumstances of their taking off, to be an equal
nuisance. The road at this point had begun to be enclosed on all sides,
and traffic, no longer able to avoid that ominous timber framework,
would have actually been blocked by it. So, as with the passing of the
years it had been found that executions tended somewhat to decrease,
the permanent gallows was at last disestablished, and a new and movable
one was constructed. This was used practically all over the area
bounded by Tyburn Gate, at the junction of roads already described;
by Bryanston Street, Seymour Street, Connaught Square, Stanhope
Place, and so round by the Bayswater Road to Tyburn Gate again. The
site of No. 6, Connaught Place, has been particularly mentioned, and,
more particularly still, that of No. 49, Connaught Square, which the
original lease from the freeholder, the Bishop of London, declares to
have been the place where the gallows stood.
It was in 1783 that Dr. Johnson, that revered philosopher, declaimed
against the changes then being witnessed. Perhaps the novelty that most
angered him was the proposed abolition of the degrading processions
of condemned malefactors from Newgate to Tyburn. "The age is running
mad after innovation," he exclaimed to Sir William Scott, "and all the
business of the world is to be done in a new way; men are to be hanged
in a new way; Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of innovation."
It was timorously remarked that this change would, at any rate, be
an improvement upon the old order of things; but Johnson, like most
elderly men, thoroughly believed in what has been styled, "the gospel
of things as they are," and he vehemently retorted, "No, sir, it is
_not_ an improvement; they object that the old method drew together a
number of spectators. Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators.
If they do not draw spectators, they don't answer their purpose.
The old method was most satisfactory to all parties: the public was
gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why is all
this to be swept away?"
But the age was more progressive than Dr. Johnson, and 1783 did
actually witness the last execution at Tyburn. Unhappily, public
executions did not come to an end at the same time; such dismal
exhibitions continuing in London to draw huge and riotous crowds at
the Old Bailey until they were finally abolished in 1868. The old
excuse for public executions—that they were valuable as deterrents from
crime—had long been proved singularly ill-founded; and it was notorious
that these gruesome occasions, in some morbid fashion, attracted not
only a ruffianly and callous assemblage, but brought all the graduates
in crime to the spot to witness a scene in which themselves would,
in all probability, some day figure as chief actors. The last dying
speeches of the criminals were heard by few in the crowd, and were
aptly described as "exhortations to shun a vicious life, addressed to
thieves actually engaged in picking pockets." The hardened wretches
who looked on at these last scenes, and who had, many of them, already
qualified for a place in the cart, had a kind of perverted professional
pride. They applauded when a malefactor, with a curse and a jest, "died
game," and they howled disapproval when some poor nervous creature
broke down pitifully on the verge of eternity.
We observe in the rough but effective old woodcut which graces,
or at any rate, occupies, if it does not grace, the end of this
chapter, a criminal, not only dying game (in spite of the curious
black-faced, cheerful, parrot-like hangman above, who seems to be
thoroughly enjoying himself), but apparently distributing handbills;
very much to the astonishment of the sheriff's bodyguard, whose faces
exhibit a singular variety of emotions. Perhaps the criminal is so
unconcerned because he knows it impossible to hang him on so short
a gallows as that shown here. The illustration is one of the curious
seventeenth-century representations of current events that formed the
pictorial news of the age.
The last person actually to be executed at Tyburn was John Austin,
hanged there November 7th, 1783.
[Illustration: [++] MAN BEING HUNG.]