treason. A late instance, and the last in the provinces, occurred at
Derby in 1817. At this period distress prevailed to an alarming extent
in many parts of the country, but no where was it more keenly felt than
in the Midland counties. At the instigation of paid government spies,
the poor, suffering people were urged to overthrow the Parliament. The
plot was planned in a public house called the White Horse, at Pentrich,
Derbyshire. A few half-starved labouring men took part in the rising,
being assured by the perjured spies that it would simultaneously occur
throughout the breadth and length of the land, and that success must
crown their efforts. The deluded men had not advanced far before they
were scattered by the Yeomanry, and the chief movers taken prisoners. It
was the object of the government to terrify the public and cripple all
attempts at obtaining reform. Four judges were sent to Derby to try the
poor peasants for rebellion, and commenced their duties on the 15th and
ended them on October 25th. Three of the ringleaders, Jeremiah
Brandreth, William Turner, and Isaac Ludlam, were found guilty of high
treason, and the capital sentence passed upon them; the greater part of
the other prisoners were condemned to transportation. Little time was
lost in carrying out the sentence; the death warrant for the execution
was signed on November 1st by the Prince Regent, and it remitted only
quartering, and directed that the three men be hung, drawn, and
beheaded. It appears that the High Sheriff, after consultation with the
surgeon of the prison and other officials, proposed taking off the heads
of the unfortunate men with a knife, and the operation to be performed
by a person skilled in anatomy. On this being brought under the notice
of the authorities in London, it was, however, decided that the
execution should be carried out according to old usage with the axe.
Bamford, a blacksmith, of Derby, was entrusted with an order for two
axes, to be made similar to the one used at the Tower. They measured
eight and a half inches across the edge and were one foot long. On the
morning of November 7th, before execution, the three men received
Sacrament. The town blacksmith knocked off the irons by which they were
loaded, and substituted others that were fitted with locks, so that they
might easily be removed. A simply made hurdle was then brought in the
prison-yard, and on it they were pulled by a horse to the gallows. It
was so roughly constructed that the poor fellows had to be held to keep
them on it. "On mounting the scaffold in front of the gaol," says Dr.
Cox, to whom we are indebted for many details in this chapter,
"Brandreth exclaimed, 'It is all Oliver and Castlereagh;' Turner,
following him, also called out, 'This is all Oliver and the Government;
the Lord have mercy on my soul.' They hung from the gallows for
half-an-hour. On the platform, in front of the gallows, was placed the
block and two sacks of sawdust, and on a bench two axes, two sharp
knives, and a basket. The block was a long piece of timber supported at
each end by pieces a foot high, and having a small batten nailed across
the upper end for the neck to rest upon. The body of Brandreth was first
taken down from the gallows, and placed face downwards on the block. The
executioner, a muscular Derbyshire coal miner, selected by the sheriff
for his proficiency in wielding the pick, was masked, and his name kept
a profound secret. Brandreth's neck received only one stroke, but it was
not clean done, and the assistant (also masked) finished it off with a
knife. Then the executioner laid hold of the head by the hair, and
holding it at arm's length, to the left, to the right, and in front of
the scaffold, called out three times--'Behold the head of the traitor,
Jeremiah Brandreth.' The other two were served in like manner. Turner's
neck received one blow and the knife had to be applied, but Ludlam's
head fell at once. The scaffold was surrounded by a great force of
cavalry with drawn swords, and several companies of infantry were also
present. The space in front of the gaol was densely packed with
spectators."[19] "When the first stroke of the axe was heard," says an
eye-witness, "there was a burst of horror from the crowd, and the
instant the head was exhibited, there was a terrifying shriek set up,
and the multitude ran violently in all directions, as if under the
influence of a sudden frenzy."[20]
The poet Shelley is said to have witnessed the painful spectacle. On the
previous day had passed away in childbirth the Princess Charlotte. The
two circumstances formed the subject of an able pamphlet, drawing a
contrast between the deaths, and furnishing a description of the scene
within and without the prison at Derby. "When Edward Turner (one of
those transported)," says Shelley, "saw his brother dragged along upon
the hurdle, he shrieked horribly, and fell in a fit, and was carried
away like a corpse by two men. How fearful must have been their agony
sitting in solitude that day when the tempestuous voice of horror from
the crowd told them that the head so dear to them was severed from the
body! Yes, they listened to the maddening shriek which burst from the
multitude; they heard the rush of ten thousand terror-stricken feet, the
groans and hootings which told them that the mangled and distorted head
was then lifted in the air." The title of Shelley's pamphlet is "We pity
the Plumage, but forget the Dying Bird. An Address to the People on the
Death of the Princess Charlotte. By the Hermit of Marlow."
On the same night the three executed men were buried without any
religious service in one grave in the churchyard of St. Werburgh, Derby.
When Dr. Cox was preparing for the press his "Three Centuries of
Derbyshire Annals," he saw the block on which these men were beheaded
and supplies a description of it as follows: "It consists of two two and
a half inch planks fastened together; it is six feet six inches long by
two feet wide. Six inches from one end a piece of wood is nailed across
three inches high. The whole is tarred over, but the old warder drew our
attention to the fact that, though the cell where it is kept is very
dry, the wood is still in places damp. It is a gaol tradition that the
blood of these unhappy men shed in 1817 has never and will never dry."
On May 1st, 1820, the Cato Street Conspirators were, after death by
hanging, beheaded. This is the latest instance of the ancient custom
being maintained in this country. In connection with this subject we may
perhaps be permitted to draw attention to a chapter by us in "England in
the Days of Old" (1897), entitled "Rebel Heads on City Gates;" it
includes much curious information bearing on this theme.
We must not omit to state that the great agitator against the
continuance of the barbarities of hanging, drawing and quartering was
Sir Samuel Romilly, who in the reign of George III., brought upon
himself the odium of the law-officers of the Crown, who declared he was
"breaking down the bulwarks of the constitution." By his earnest
exertions, however, the punishment was carried out in a manner more
amenable to the dictates of mercy and humanity.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Cox's "Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals," 1888.
[20] The Examiner.
Pressing to Death.
One of the most barbarous and cruel of the punishments of our English
statutes was that distinguished by the name of _Peine forte et dure_, or
pressing to death with every aggravation of torture. It was adopted as a
manner of punishment suitable to cases where the accused refused to
plead, and was commuted about the year 1406 from the older method of
merely starving the prisoner to death. At that time the alteration was
considered to be decidedly according to the dictates of humanity and
mercy, as the sooner relieving the accused from his sufferings. Such was
the small value set upon human life in those dark days of British
justice.
The manner in which this exceedingly great torture was inflicted was as
follows: "That the prisoner shall be remanded to the place from whence
he came, and put in some low, dark room, and there laid on his back,
without any manner of covering except a cloth round his middle; and that
as many weights shall be laid upon him as he can bear, _and more_; and
that he shall have no more sustenance but of the worst bread and water,
and that he shall not eat the same day on which he drinks, nor drink the
same day on which he eats; and he shall so continue till he die." At a
later period, the form of sentence was altered to the following: "That
the prisoner shall be remanded to the place from whence he came, and put
in some low, dark room; that he shall lie without any litter or anything
under him, and that one arm shall be drawn to one quarter of the room
with a cord, and the other to another, and that his feet shall be used
in the same manner, and that as many weights shall be laid on him as he
can bear, and more. That he shall have three morsels of barley bread a
day, and that he shall have the water next the prison, so that it be not
current, and that he shall not eat," etc. The object of this protracted
punishment was to allow the victim, at almost every stage of the
torture, to plead, and thus allow the law to take its ordinary course.
The object of the persons who have refused to plead was, that any person
who died under the _Peine forte et dure_ could transmit his estates to
his children, or will them as he desired; whereas, if he were found
guilty, they would be forfeited to the Crown. In connection with this,
it may be mentioned that when the practice of pressing to death had
become nearly extinct, prisoners who declined to plead were tortured, in
order to compel them to do so, by twisting and screwing their thumbs
with whipcord.
In 1721, a woman named Mary Andrews was subjected to this punishment.
After bearing with fortitude the first three whipcords, which broke from
the violence of the twisting, she submitted to plead at the fourth.
Baron Carter, at the Cambridge Assizes, in 1741, ordered a prisoner, who
refused to plead, to have his thumbs twisted with cords, and when that
was without avail, inflicted the higher penalty of pressing. Baron
Thompson, about the same time, at the Sussex Assizes, treated a prisoner
in a precisely similar manner.
A like method was pursued in 1721, with Nathaniel Hawes, a prisoner who
refused to plead; when the cord proved inefficacious, a weight of 250
pounds was laid upon him, after which he decided to plead. The same year
seems prolific of cases of this character, there being particulars of an
instance in the _Nottingham Mercury_ of January 19th, 1721. They are
included in the London news, and are as follow: "Yesterday the sessions
began at the Old Bailey, where several persons were brought to the bar
for highway robbery, etc. Among them were the highwaymen lately taken at
Westminster, two of whom, namely, Thomas Green, _alias_ Phillips, and
Thomas Spiggot, refusing to plead, the court proceeded to pass the
following sentence upon them: 'that the prisoner shall be,' etc. [the
usual form, as given above]. The former, on sight of the terrible
machine, desired to be carried back to the sessions house, where he
pleaded not guilty. But the other, who behaved himself very insolently
to the ordinary who was ordered to attend him, seemingly resolved to
undergo the torture. Accordingly, when they brought cords, as usual, to
tie him, he broke them three several times like a twine-thread, and told
them if they brought cables he would serve them after the same manner.
But, however, they found means to tie him to the ground, having his
limbs extended; but after, enduring the punishment for an hour, and
having three or four hundredweight put on him, he at last submitted to
plead, and was carried back, when he pleaded not guilty."
The Rev. Mr. Willette, the ordinary of the prison, in 1776, published
the "Annals of Newgate," and from these we learn further particulars of
the torture of the highwayman, Thomas Spiggot. "The chaplain found him
lying in the vault upon the bare ground, with 350 pounds weight upon his
breast, and then prayed with him, and at several times asked him why he
should hazard his soul by such obstinate kind of self-murder. But all
the answer that he made was, 'Pray for me; pray for me.' He sometimes
lay silent under the pressure as if insensible to the pain, and then
again would fetch his breath very quick and short. Several times he
complained that they had laid a cruel weight upon his face, though it
was covered with nothing but a thin cloth, which was afterwards removed
and laid more light and hollow; yet he still complained of the
prodigious weight upon his face, which might be caused by the blood
being forced up thither and pressing the veins so violently as if the
force had been externally on his face. When he had remained for
half-an-hour under this load, and fifty pounds weight more laid on,
being in all four hundred, he told those who attended him he would
plead. The weights were at once taken off, the cords cut asunder; he was
raised up by two men, some brandy put into his mouth to revive him, and
he was carried to take his trial." The practice of _Peine forte et dure_
gave the name of "Press-yard" to a part of Newgate, and the terrible
machine above referred to was probably in the form of a rack.
We require to go further back to find instances of a fatal termination
to the punishment. Such a case occurred in 1676. One Major Strangeways
and his sister held in joint possession a farm, but the lady becoming
intimate with a lawyer named Fussell, to whom the Major took a strong
dislike, he threatened that if she married the lawyer he would, in his
office or elsewhere, be the death of him. Surely, Fussell was one day
found shot dead in his London apartments, and suspicion at once fell
upon the officer, and he was arrested. At first he was willing to be
subjected to the ordeal of touch, but when placed upon trial, resolved
not to allow any chance of his being found guilty, and so refused to
plead, in order that his estates might go to whom he willed. Glynn was
the Lord Chief Justice on this occasion, and in passing the usual
sentence for _Peine forte et dure_, used instead of the word "weights,"
as above, the words "as much iron and stone as he can bear," doubtless
to suit the prison convenience, and make the sentence perfectly legal.
He was to have three morsels of barley bread every alternate day, and
three draughts of "the water in the next channel to the prison door, but
of no spring or fountain water," the sentence concluding, "and this
shall be his punishment till he die." This was probably on the Saturday,
for on the Monday morning following, it is stated, the condemned was
draped in white garments, and also wore a mourning cloak, as though in
mourning for his own forthcoming death. It is curious to notice that his
friends were present at his death, which was so much modified from the
lengthy process that his sentence conveys as to be in fact an execution,
in which these same friends assisted. They stood "at the corner of the
press," and when he gave them to understand that he was ready, they
forthwith proceeded to pile stone and iron upon him. The amount of
weight was insufficient to kill him, for although he gasped, "Lord
Jesus, receive my soul," he still continued alive until his friends, to
hasten his departure, stood upon the weights, a course which in about
ten minutes placed him beyond the reach of the human barbarity which
imposed upon friendship so horrible a task.
In 1827, an Act was passed which directs the court to enter a plea of
"not guilty," when a prisoner refuses to plead. It is surprising that
the inhuman practice of pressing to death should have lingered so long.
In this chapter we have only given particulars of a few of the many
cases which have come under our notice in the legal byways of old
England.
Drowning.
Among the nations of antiquity, drowning was a very common mode of
execution. Four-and-a-half centuries before the birth of Christ, the
Britons inflicted death by drowning in a quagmire. In Anglo-Saxon times
women found guilty of theft were drowned. For a long period in the
Middle Ages, the barons and others who had the power of administering
laws in their respective districts possessed a drowning pit and a
gallows.
Drowning was a punishment of King Richard of the Lion Heart, who
ordained by a decree that it should be the doom of any soldier of his
army who killed a fellow-crusader during the passage to the Holy Land.
The owner of Baynard's Castle, London, in the reign of John, had the
power of trying criminals, and his descendants long afterwards claimed
the privilege, the most valued of which was the right of drowning, in
the Thames, traitors taken within the limits of his territory.[21]
Bearing on this subject the annals of Sandwich supply some important
information. It is recorded, that in the year 1313, "a presentment was
made before the itinerant Justices at Canterbury, that the prior of
Christ Church had, for nine years, obstructed the high road leading from
Dover Castle to Sandwich by the sea-shore by a water-mill, and the
diversion of a stream called the Gestlyng, where felons condemned to
death within the hundred should be drowned, but could not be executed
that way for want of water. Further, that he raised a certain gutter
four feet, and the water that passed that way to the gutter ran to the
place where the convicts were drowned, and from whence their bodies were
floated to the river, and that after the gutter was raised the drowned
bodies could not be carried into the river by the stream, as they used
to be, for want of water."[22]
Drowning was not infrequently awarded as a matter of leniency, and as a
commutation of what were considered more severe forms of death. We have
an instance of such a case in Scotland in 1556, when a man who had been
found guilty of theft and sacrilege was ordered to be put to death by
drowning "by the Queen's special grace." At Edinburgh, in 1611, a man
was drowned for stealing a lamb; and in 1623 eleven gipsey women were
condemned to be drowned at Edinburgh in the Nor' Loch. On the 11th May,
1685, Margaret M'Lachlan, aged sixty-three years, and Margaret Wilson, a
girl of eighteen years, were drowned in the waters of Blednoch, for
denying that James VII. of Scotland was entitled to rule the Church
according to his pleasure. Six years prior to this, namely, on the 25th
August, 1679, a woman called Janet Grant was tried for theft, in the
baronial court of Sir Robert Gordon, of Gordonston, held at Drainie, and
pleaded guilty. She was sentenced to be drowned next day in the Loch of
Spynie.
In France, drowning was a capital punishment as late as 1793, but in
Scotland we do not trace it later than 1685, and in England it was
discontinued about the commencement of the seventeenth century.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] Pike's "History of Crime in England," 1873.
[22] Boys's "History of Sandwich."
Burning to Death.
Burning to death was a frequent method of punishment in the barbarous
days of many nations. In our own country it was used by the Anglo-Saxons
as the penalty of certain crimes, and, as the ordinary punishment of
witchcraft, it was maintained throughout the Middle Ages.
Burning alive was from early times the recognised method of uprooting
heretical notions of religious belief of every class. The first to
suffer from this cause in England was Alban, who died at the stake in
the year A.D. 304. Since his day, thousands have suffered death on
account of their religious belief, through intolerance; but that is not
a subject we intend dealing with at the present time.
We desire to direct attention to some of the cases of the burning alive
of women for civil offences. This practice was considered by the framers
of the law as a commutation of the sentence of hanging, and a concession
made to the sex of the offenders. "For as the decency due to the sex,"
says Blackstone, "forbids the exposing and publicly mangling their
bodies, their sentence (which is to the full as terrible to sensation as
the other) is, to be drawn to the gallows, and there to be burnt alive;"
and he adds: "the humanity of the English nation has authorised, by a
tacit consent, an almost general mitigation of such part of these
judgments as savours of torture and cruelty, a sledge or hurdle being
usually allowed to such traitors as are condemned to be drawn, and there
being very few instances (and those accidental and by negligence) of any
persons being disemboweled or burnt till previously deprived of
sensation by strangling."
We gather from the annals of King's Lynn that, in the year 1515, a woman
was burnt in the market-place for the murder of her husband. Twenty
years later, a Dutchman was burnt for reputed heresy. In the same town,
in 1590, Margaret Read was burnt for witchcraft. Eight years later, a
woman was executed for witchcraft, and in the year 1616, another woman
suffered death for the same crime. In 1791, at King's Lynn, the landlady
of a public-house was murdered by a man let into the house at the dead
of night by a servant girl. The man was hanged for committing the
crime, and the girl was burnt at the stake for assisting the murderer to
enter the dwelling.
There is an account of a burning at Lincoln, in 1722. Eleanor Elsom was
condemned to death for the murder of her husband, and was ordered to be
burnt at the stake. She was clothed in a cloth, "made like a shift,"
saturated with tar, and her limbs were also smeared with the same
inflammable substance, while a tarred bonnet had been placed on her
head. She was brought out of the prison barefoot, and, being put on a
hurdle, was drawn on a sledge to the place of execution near the
gallows. Upon arrival, some time was passed in prayer, after which the
executioner placed her on a tar barrel, a height of three feet, against
the stake. A rope ran through a pulley in the stake, and was placed
around her neck, she herself fixing it with her hands. Three irons also
held her body to the stake, and the rope being pulled tight, the tar
barrel was taken aside and the fire lighted. The details in the "Lincoln
Date Book" state that she was probably quite dead before the fire
reached her, as the executioner pulled upon the rope several times
whilst the irons were being fixed. The body was seen amid the flames
for nearly half-an-hour, though, through the dryness of the wood and the
quantity of tar, the fire was exceedingly fierce.
An instance in which the negligence of the executioner caused death to
be unnecessarily prolonged is found in the case of Catherine Hayes, who
was executed at Tyburn, November 3rd, 1726, for the murder of her
husband. She was being strangled in the accustomed manner, but the fire
scorching the hands of the executioner, he relaxed the rope before she
had become unconscious, and in spite of the efforts at once made to
hasten combustion, she suffered for a considerable time the greatest
agonies.
Two paragraphs, dealing with such cases, are in the _London Magazine_
for July, 1735, and are as follow: "At the assizes, at Northampton, Mary
Fawson was condemned to be burnt for poisoning her husband, and
Elizabeth Wilson to be hanged for picking a farmer's pocket of thirty
shillings."
"Among the persons capitally convicted at the assizes, at Chelmsford,
are Herbert Hayns, one of Gregory's gang, who is to be hung in chains,
and a woman, for poisoning her husband, is to be burnt."
In the next number of the same magazine, the first-mentioned criminal is
again spoken of: "Mrs. Fawson was burnt at Northampton for poisoning her
husband. Her behaviour in prison was with the utmost signs of
contrition. She would not, to satisfy people's curiosity, be unveiled to
anyone. She confessed the justice of her sentence, and died with great
composure of mind." And also: "Margaret Onion was burnt at a stake at
Chelmsford, for poisoning her husband. She was a poor, ignorant
creature, and confessed the fact."
We obtain from Mr. John Glyde, jun., particulars of another case of
burning for husband murder (styled petty treason). In April, 1763,
Margery Beddingfield, and a farm servant, named Richard Ringe, her
paramour, had murdered John Beddingfield, of Sternfield. The latter
criminal was the actual murderer, his wife being considered an
accomplice. He was condemned to be hanged and she burnt, at the same
time and place, and her sentence was that she should "be taken from
hence to the place from whence you came, and thence to the place of
execution, on Saturday next, where you are to be burnt until you be
dead: and the Lord have mercy on your soul." Accordingly, on the day
appointed, she was taken to Rushmere Heath, near Ipswich, and there
strangled and burnt.[23]
Coining was, until a late period, an offence which met with capital
punishment. In May, 1777, a girl of little more than fourteen years of
age had, at her master's command, concealed a number of whitewashed
farthings to represent shillings, for which she was found guilty of
treason, and sentenced to be burnt. Her master was already hanged, and
the fagots but awaiting the application of the match to blaze in fury
around her, when Lord Weymouth, who happened to be passing that way,
humanely interfered. Said a writer in the _Quarterly Review_, "a mere
accident saved the nation from this crime and this national disgrace."
In Harrison's _Derby and Nottingham Journal_, for September 23rd, 1779,
is an account of two persons who were several days previously tried and
convicted for high treason, the indictment being for coining shillings
in Cold Bath Field, and for coining shillings in Nag's Head Yard,
Bishopsgate Street. The culprit in the latter case was a man named John
Fields, and in the former a woman called Isabella Condon. They were
sentenced to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, the man to
be hanged and the woman burnt.
Phoebe Harris, in 1786, was burnt in front of Newgate. The _Chelmsford
Chronicle_ of June 23rd, 1786, gives an account of her execution. After
furnishing particulars of six men being hanged for various crimes, the
report says:
"About a quarter of an hour after the platform had dropped, the female
convicted" (Phoebe Harris, convicted of counterfeiting the coin called
shillings) "was led by two officers of justice from Newgate to a stake
fixed in the ground about midway between the scaffold and the pump. The
stake was about eleven feet high, and, near the top of it was inserted a
curved piece of iron, to which the end of the halter was tied. The
prisoner stood on a low stool, which, after the ordinary had prayed with
her a short time, being taken away, she was suspended by the neck (her
feet being scarcely more than twelve or fourteen inches from the
pavement). Soon after the signs of life had ceased, two cart-loads of
fagots were placed round her and set on fire; the flames presently
burning the halter, the convict fell a few inches, and was then
sustained by an iron chain passed over her chest and affixed to the
stake. Some scattered remains of the body were perceptible in the fire
at half-past ten o'clock. The fire had not completely burnt out at
twelve o'clock."
The latest instance on record is that of Christian Murphy, _alias_
Bowman, who was burnt on March 18th, 1789, for coining.
The barbarous laws which permitted such repugnant exhibitions were
repealed by the 30th George III., cap. 48, which provided that, after
the 5th of June, 1790, women were to suffer hanging, as in the case of
men.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] Glyde's "New Suffolk Garland," 1866.
Boiling to Death.