distance were three of these hideous instruments of death on the
highway, in addition to gibbets erected in lonely bylanes and secluded
spots where crimes had been committed. "Hangman's Lanes" were by no
means uncommon. He was a brave man who ventured alone at night on the
highways and byways when the country was beset with highwaymen, and the
gruesome gibbets were frequently in sight.
Hanging was the usual mode of capital punishment with the Anglo-Saxons.
We give a representation of a gallows (_gala_) of this period taken from
the illuminations to Alfric's version of Genesis. It is highly probable
that in some instances the bodies would remain _in terrorem_ upon the
gibbet. Robert of Gloucester, _circa_ 1280, referring to his own times,
writes:--
"In gibet hii were an honge."
[Illustration: ANGLO-SAXON GALLOWS.]
"The habit of gibbeting or hanging in chains the body of the executed
criminal near the site of the crime," says Dr. Cox, "with the intention
of thereby deterring others from capital offences, was a coarse custom
very generally prevalent in mediaeval England. Some early assize rolls of
the fourteenth century pertaining to Derbyshire that we have consulted
give abundant proof of its being a usual habit in the county at that
period. In 1341 the bodies of three men were hung in chains just
outside Chapel-en-le-Frith, who had been executed for robbery with
violence. In the same year a woman and two men were gibbeted on Ashover
Moor for murdering one of the King's purveyors."[8]
An early record of hanging in chains is given in Chauncy's "History of
Hertfordshire." It states, "Soon after the King came to Easthampstead,
to recreate himself with hunting, where he heard that the bodies hanged
here were taken down from the gallowes, and removed a great way from the
same; this so incensed the King that he sent a writ, tested the 3rd day
of August, Anno 1381, to the bailiffs of this borough, commanding them
upon sight thereof, to cause chains to be made, and to hang the bodies
in them upon the same gallowes, there to remain so long as one piece
might stick to another, according to the judgment; but the townsmen, not
daring to disobey the King's command, hanged the dead bodies of their
neighbours again to their great shame and reproach, when they could not
get any other for any wages to come near the stinking carcases, but they
themselves were compelled to do so vile an office." Gower, a
contemporary poet, writes as follows:--
"And so after by the Lawe
He was unto the gibbet drawe,
Where he above all other hongeth,
As to a traitor it belongeth."
Sir Robert Constable was gibbeted above the Beverley-gate, Hull, in
1537, for high treason. "On Fridaye," wrote the Duke of Norfolk, "beying
market daye at Hull, suffered and dothe hange above the highest gate of
the toune so trymmed in cheynes that I thinke his boones woll hang there
this hundrethe yere."
According to Lord Dreghorn, writing in 1774:--"The first instance of
hanging in chains is in March, 1637, in the case of Macgregor, for
theft, robbery, and slaughter; he was sentenced to be hanged in a
chenzie on the gallow-tree till his corpse rot."[9]
Philip Stanfield, in 1688, was hung in chains between Leith and
Edinburgh for the murder of his father, Sir James Stanfield. In books
relating to Scotland, Stanfield's sad story has often been told, and it
is detailed at some length in Chambers's "Domestic Annals of Scotland."
Hanging in chains was by no means rare from an early period in the
annals of England, but according to Blackstone this was no part of the
legal judgment. It was not until 1752, by an Act of 25 George II., that
gibbeting was legally recognised. After execution by this statute,
bodies were to be given to the surgeons to be dissected and anatomized,
and not to be buried without this being done. The judge might direct the
body to be hung in chains by giving a special order to the sheriff. This
Act made matters clear, and was the means of gibbeting rapidly
increasing in this country.
A gravestone in the churchyard of Merrington, in the county of Durham,
states:--
Here lies the bodies of
John, Jane, and Elizabeth, children of John and Margaret Brass,
Who were murdered the 28th day of January, 1683,
By Andrew Mills, their father's servant,
For which he was executed and hung in chains.
Reader, remember, sleeping
We were slain:
And here we sleep till we must
Rise again.
"Whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed."
"Thou shalt do no murder."
Restored by subscription in 1789.
The parents of the murdered children were away from home when the awful
crime was committed by their farm servant, a young man aged about
nineteen, inoffensive, but of somewhat deficient intellect. It is quite
clear from the facts which have come down to us that he was insane, for
in his confession he stated the devil suggested the deed to his mind,
saying, "Kill all, kill all, kill all." The eldest of the family, a
daughter, struggled with him for some time, and he was not able to
murder her until after her arm was broken. She had placed it as a bolt
to a door to secure the safety of the younger members of the family who
were sleeping in an inner room. The full particulars of the horrible
crime may be found in the pages of Dodd's "History of Spennymoor,"
published in 1897, and are too painful to give in detail. Some troopers
marching from Darlington to Durham seized the culprit, and conveyed him
with them. He was tried at Durham, and condemned to be gibbeted near the
scene of the murders. Many stories which are related in the district
are, we doubt not without foundation in fact. It is asserted that the
wretch was gibbeted alive, that he lived for several days, and that his
sweetheart kept him alive with milk. Another tale is to the effect that
a loaf of bread was placed just within his reach, but fixed on an iron
spike that would enter his throat if he attempted to relieve the pangs
of hunger with it.
His cries of pain were terrible, and might be heard for miles. The
country folk left their homes until after his death. "It is to be
hoped," says Mr. Dodd, the local historian, "that the statement about
the man being gibbeted alive is a fiction." Some years ago, a local
playwright dramatised the story for the Spennymoor theatre, where it
drew large audiences.
Long after the body had been removed, a portion of the gibbet remained,
and was known as "Andrew Mills's Stob," but it was taken away bit by bit
as it was regarded a charm for curing toothache.
Robert and William Bolas were gibbeted on Uckington Heath, near
Shrewsbury, in 1723. They had murdered Walter Matthews and William
Whitcomb, who had resisted their entering a barn to steal wheat. A
popular saying in Shropshire is "Cold and chilly like old Bolas." Its
origin is referred back to the time the body of Robert Bolas was hanging
in chains. At a public-house not far distant from the place one dark
night a bet was made that one of the party assembled dare not proceed
alone to the gibbet and ask after the state of Bolas's health. The
wager was accepted, and we are told the man undertaking it at once made
his way to the spot. Immediately upon this, another of the company, by a
short cut, proceeded to the gibbet, and placed himself behind it, and a
third, carrying a number of chains, concealed himself in a hedge
adjoining the road. Upon arriving at the gibbet, the person undertaking
to make the enquiry, screwed up his courage, and timidly said in a low
voice, "Well, Bolas, how are you?" Immediately, in a shaky voice, as
from a tomb, came the response from the person behind the gibbet, "Cold
and chilly, thank you." This unlooked-for reply completely upset the
valour of the enquirer, and turning tail he fled for the inn with all
possible speed. Upon passing the place where the person with the chains
was lying, he was followed with a loud rattling and reached his comrades
in a most exhausted and frightened condition. Tradition has it that the
event terminated in the bold adventurer becoming, and continuing ever
afterwards, a lunatic.
When Robert Bolas was awaiting his trial he believed that it would
result in an acquittal, and that he would thus be permitted to go home
for the corn harvest and get his barley. He was a man of immense
strength, and a great source of amusement to his fellow prisoners
awaiting trial, before whom, although loaded with heavy chains, he would
sing and dance with the most perfect ease. It was upon one of these
occasions, when he was in a particularly happy and hopeful mood, that he
is reported to have made use of the saying, which is known even to the
present day, "I would that these troublesome times were over as I want
to go home and get my barley."
A curious story is told to the effect that the corpse of Bolas was taken
down from the gibbet by some of his companions and thrown into the river
Tern, but that it would not sink. Weights were then tied to it, but
still it floated upon the top of the water, and subsequently was again
placed upon the gibbet. The part of the river into which it was thrown
is still called "Bolas's hole."
[Illustration: BREEDS'S GIBBET-IRONS, RYE.]
In the Town Hall, Rye, Sussex, is preserved the ironwork used in 1742
for gibbeting John Breeds, a butcher, who murdered Allen Grebble, the
Mayor of Rye. It appears that Breeds had a dispute about some property
with Thomas Lamb, and learning that he was about to see a friend off by
a ship sailing to France on the night of March 17th planned his murder.
Mr. Lamb, for reasons not stated, changed his mind, and induced his
neighbour Mr. Grebble to take his place. On returning home and passing
the churchyard, Breeds rushed upon him and mortally wounded him with a
knife. The unfortunate man was able to walk home, but shortly expired
while seated in his chair. His servant was suspected of murdering him,
but Breeds's strange conduct soon brought the crime home to him. He was
tried, found guilty, and condemned to death, and to be hung in chains.
The gibbet was set up on a marsh situated at the west end of the town,
now known as "Gibbet Marsh." Here it stood for many years; but when all
the mortal remains had dropped away from the ironwork with the exception
of the upper part of the skull, the Corporation took possession of it,
and it is now in their custody.
Mr. Lewis Evans, has given, in his article on "Witchcraft in
Hertfordshire," an account of the murder of John and Ruth Osborn,
suspected of witchcraft. Notice had been given at various market towns
in the neighbourhood of Tring that on a certain day the man and his wife
would be ducked at Long Marston, in Tring Parish. On the appointed day,
April 22nd, 1757, says Mr. Evans, Ruth Osborn, and her husband John,
sought sanctuary in the church, but the "bigotted and superstitious
rioters," who had assembled in crowds from the whole district round, not
finding their victims, smashed the workhouse windows and half destroyed
it, caught its governor, and threatened to burn both him and the town,
and searched the whole premises, even to the "salt box," for the reputed
witches in vain. However, they were found at last, dragged from the
vestry, and their thumbs and toes having been tied together, they were
wrapped in sheets, and dragged by ropes through a pond; the woman was
tried first, and as she did not sink, Thomas Colley, a chimney sweep,
turned her over and over with a stick. John Osborn, the husband, was
then tested in the same way, and the trial was made three times on each
of them, with such success, that the woman died on the spot, and the
man a few days later. When the experiment was over, Colley went round
and collected money from the crowd for his trouble in shewing them such
sport.
The coroner's verdict, however, declared that the Osborns had been
murdered, and Colley was tried at Hertford Assizes, before Sir William
Lee, and having been found guilty of murder, was sent back to the scene
of the crime under a large escort of one hundred and eight men, seven
officers, and two trumpeters, and was hung on August 24th, 1751, at
Gubblecote Cross, where his body swung in chains for many years.[10]
A Salford woolcomber named John Grinrod (or Grinret), poisoned his wife
and two children in September, 1758, and in the following March was
hanged and gibbeted for committing the crime. The gibbet stood on
Pendleton Moor. It was a popular belief in the neighbourhood:--
"That the wretch in his chains, each night took the pains,
To come down from the gibbet--and walk."
As can be easily surmised, such a story frightened many of the simple
country folk. It was told to a traveller staying at an hostelry
situated not far distant from where the murderer's remains hung in
chains. He laughed to scorn the strange stories which alarmed the
countryside, and laid a wager with the publican that he would visit at
midnight the gibbet. The traveller said:--
"To the gibbet I'll go, and this I will do,
As sure as I stand in my shoes;
Some address I'll devise, and if Grinny replies,
My wager of course, I shall lose."
We are next told how, in the dark and dismal night, the traveller
proceeded without dismay to the gibbet, and stood under it. Says
Ainsworth, the Lancashire novelist and poet, from whom we are quoting:--
"Though dark as could be, yet he thought he could see
The skeleton hanging on high;
The gibbet it creaked; and the rusty chains squeaked;
And a screech-owl flew solemnly by.
"The heavy rain pattered, the hollow bones clattered,
The traveller's teeth chattered--with cold--not with fright;
The wind it blew hastily, piercingly, gustily;
Certainly not an agreeable night!
"'Ho! Grindrod, old fellow,' thus loudly did bellow,
The traveller mellow--'How are ye, my blade?'--
'I'm cold and I'm dreary; I'm wet and I'm weary;
But soon I'll be near ye!' the skeleton said.
"The grisly bones rattled, and with the chains battled,
The gibbet appallingly shook;
On the ground something stirr'd, but no more the man heard,
To his heels, on the instant, he took.
"Over moorland he dashed, and through quagmire he plashed,
His pace never daring to slack;
Till the hostel he neared, for greatly he feared
Old Grindrod would leap on his back.
"His wager he lost, and a trifle it cost;
But that which annoyed him the most,
Was to find out too late, that certain as fate
The landlord had acted the Ghost."
The tragic story of Eugene Aram has received attention at the hands of
the historian, poet, and novelist, and his name is the most notable in
the annals of crime in the North of England. In the winter of 1744-5 a
shoemaker, named Daniel Clarke, who had recently married, and was
possessed of money and other valuables, as it subsequently transpired
not obtained in an honourable manner, was suddenly missing, and two of
his associates, Richard Houseman and Eugene Aram, were suspected of
knowing about his disappearance, and even at their hands foul play was
suspected, but it could not be brought home to them. Aram left the town,
and in various places followed his calling--that of a school teacher.
The mystery of Daniel Clarke remained for some years unsolved, but in
1758 a labourer found at Knaresborough some human bones, and it was
suspected that they were Clarke's, and were shown to Houseman, who was
supposed to have a knowledge of the missing man, and in an unguarded
moment said that they were not those of Clarke. His manner aroused
suspicion, and on being pressed he confessed that Clarke was murdered
and buried in St. Robert's Cave, and that Aram and himself were
responsible for his death. The cave was explored, and the skeleton of
the murdered man was found. Aram was arrested at Lynn, where he was an
usher in a school, and was esteemed alike by pupils and parents. He
stoutly protested his innocence, and undertook his own defence. He read
it in court, and it was regarded as a masterpiece of reasoning. It was,
however, made clear from the statements of Houseman, who was admitted as
king's evidence, that Aram had murdered Clarke for gain when he was in
indigent circumstances. The jury returned a verdict of guilty against
Aram, and he was condemned to death, and his body to be afterwards hung
in chains.
It appears quite clear from a careful consideration of the case that
Aram was guilty of the crime.
He attempted, after his trial, to commit suicide by cutting his arm
with a razor in two places, but when discovered, with proper remedies,
his failing strength was restored. On the table was found a document
giving his reasons for attempting to end his own life. On the morning of
his execution he stated that he awoke about three o'clock, and then
wrote the following lines:--
"Come, pleasing rest, eternal slumber fall,
Seal mine, that once must seal the eyes of all;
Calm and composed, my soul her journey takes,
No guilt that troubles, and no heart that aches;
Adieu! thou sun, all bright like her arise;
Adieu! fair friends, and all that's good and wise."
On August 6th, 1759, he was hanged at York, and afterwards his body was
conveyed to Knaresborough Forest, where it was gibbeted.
Hornsea people are sometimes called "Hornsea Pennels," after a notorious
pirate and smuggler, named Pennel, who murdered his captain and sunk his
ship near to the place. He was tried and executed in London for the
crimes, and his body, bound round with iron hoops, was sent to Hornsea,
in a case marked "glass." The corpse, in 1770, was hung in chains on the
north cliff. Long ago the cliff with its gibbet has been washed away by
the sea.
On the night of June 8th, 1773, a man named Corbet, a rat-catcher and
chimney-sweep, living at Tring, entered down the chimney the house of
Richard Holt, of Bierton, Buckinghamshire, and murdered him in his
bed-chamber. For this crime Corbet was hanged and gibbeted in a field
not far distant from the house where the murder was committed. The
gibbet served as a gallows. A correspondent of the _Bucks Herald_ says
in 1795 he visited Bierton Feast, and at that period the gibbet was
standing, with the skull of the murderer attached to the irons. Some
years later the irons were worn away by the action of the swivel from
which they were suspended, fell, and were thrown into the ditch, and
lost sight of. Francis Neale, of Aylesbury, blacksmith, made the gibbet,
or as he calls it in his account the gib, and his bill included entries
as follow:--
L s. d.
"July 23, A.D. 1773. To 6lb. Spikes 0 2 3
" " Iron for Gib-post 0 16 4
" " Nails for the Gib 0 4 0
" " 3 hund'd tenter Hooks 0 3 0
" " The Gib 5 0 0"
These figures were copied from the original accounts by the late Robert
Gibbs, the painstaking local chronicler of Aylesbury. This is
understood to have been the last gibbet erected in Buckinghamshire.[11]
Terror and indignation were felt by the inhabitants of the quiet midland
town of Derby on Christmas day, in the year 1775, as the news spread
through the place that on the previous evening an aged lady had been
murdered and her house plundered. An Irishman named Matthew Cocklain
disappeared from the town, and he was suspected of committing the foul
deed. He was tracked to his native country, arrested, and brought back
to Derby. At the following March Assizes, he was tried and found guilty
of the crime, sentenced to be hanged, and afterwards gibbeted. His body
was for some time suspended in the summer sun and winter cold, an object
of fright to the people in the district.
Christmas eve had come round once more, and at a tavern, near the
gibbet, a few friends were enjoying a pipe and glass around the cheerful
burning yule-log, when the conversation turned to the murderer, and a
wager was made that a certain member of the company dare not venture
near the grim gibbet at that late hour of night. A man agreed to go, and
take with him a basin of broth and offer it to Matthew Cocklain. He
proceeded without delay, carrying on his shoulder a ladder, and in his
hand a bowl of hot broth. On arriving at the foot of the gibbet, he
mounted the ladder, and put to Cocklain's mouth the basin, saying, "Sup,
Matthew," but to his great astonishment, a hollow voice replied, "It's
hot." He was taken by surprise; but, equal to the occasion, and at once
said, "Blow it, blow it," subsequently throwing the liquid into the face
of the suspended body.
He returned to the cosy room of the hostelry to receive the bet he had
won. His mate, who had been hid behind the gibbet-post, and had tried to
frighten him with his sepulchral speech, admitted that the winner was a
man of nerve, and richly entitled to the wager.
It has been asserted by more than one local chronicler that John
Whitfield, of Coathill, a notorious north country highwayman, about
1777, was gibbeted alive on Barrock, a hill a few miles from Wetherell,
near Carlisle. He kept the countryside in a state of terror, and few
would venture out after nightfall for fear of encountering him. He shot
a man on horseback in open daylight; a boy saw him commit the crime, and
was the means of his identification and conviction. It is the belief in
the district that Whitfield was gibbeted alive, and that he hung for
several days in agony, and that his cries were heartrending, until a
mail-coachman passing that way put him out of his misery by shooting
him.
On the night of July 3rd, 1779, John Spencer murdered William Yeadon,
keeper of the Scrooby toll-bar, and his mother, Mary Yeadon. The brutal
crime was committed with a heavy hedge-stake. The culprit was soon
caught, and tried at Nottingham. It transpired that the prisoner was
pressed for money, and that the murders were committed to obtain it. He
was found guilty, and condemned to be executed at Nottingham, and then
his body was to be hung in chains near Scrooby toll-bar. In his hand was
placed the hedge-stake with which he had committed the murders. After
the body had been suspended a few weeks the body was shot through by the
sergeant of a band of soldiers passing that way with a deserter. For the
offence he was followed and reported, tried by court-martial, and
reduced to the ranks. This disturbance of the body caused its rapid
decomposition, and the odour blown over the neighbouring village was
most offensive.[12]
Several instances of persons being gibbeted for robbing the mails have
come under our notice. In the columns of the _Salisbury Journal_ for
August 18th, 1783, it is stated:--"The sentence of William Peare for
robbing the mail near Chippenham stands unreversed.... He will be
executed at Fisherton gallows, on Tuesday morning, about 11 o'clock, and
his body will then be inclosed in a suit of chains, ingeniously made by
Mr. Wansborough and conveyed to Chippenham, and affixed to a gibbet
erected near the spot where the robbery was committed." The allusion to
"unreversed" has reference to the common practice of condemning people
to death, and shortly afterwards granting a pardon. The issue of the
paper for the following week records that: "On Tuesday morning Peare was
executed at Fisherton gallows.... The remaining part of the sentence was
completed on Wednesday, by hanging the body in Green Lane, near
Chippenham, where it now is; a dreadful memento to youth, how they
swerve from the paths of rectitude, and transgress the laws of their
country." The body of Peare was not permitted to remain long on the
gibbet. We see it is stated in a paragraph in the same newspaper under
date of November 10th, 1783, that on the 30th of October at night, the
corpse was taken away, and it was supposed that this was done by some of
his Cricklade friends.
Near the Devil's Punch Bowl, at Hind Head, an upright stone records the
murder of a sailor, and the inscription it bears is as under:--
ERECTED
IN DETESTATION OF A BARBAROUS MURDER
committed here on an unknown sailor,
On September 24th, 1786,
BY EDWD. LONEGON, MICHL. CASEY, AND JAS. MARSHALL,
WHO WERE TAKEN THE SAME DAY,
AND HUNG IN CHAINS NEAR THIS PLACE.
"_Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed_."
--Gen. chap. 9, ver. 6.
And on the back:--
THIS STONE WAS ERECTED BY ORDER AND AT
THE COST OF
JAMES STILWELL, ESQ., OF COSFORD, 1786.
CURSED BE THE MAN WHO INJURETH OR REMOVETH
THIS STONE.
The stone was removed from its original position on the old Portsmouth
road, which ran at a higher level, and placed where it now stands some
years since.