explained by either of two suppositions: either the prisoner refused to
recognise the authority of the tribunal, or he desired to save his family
from the reproach of a public execution of one of its members. This was
the reason alleged to the ordinary of Newgate by Spiggott. A few years
earlier, in 1721, Nathaniel Hawes, a highwayman, refused to plead because
a handsome suit of clothes had been taken from him, and he was resolved
not to go to the gallows in a shabby suit. He gave in when he had borne a
weight of 250 lbs. for about seven minutes.[63]
Spiggott, as has been said, bore 350 lbs. for half an hour, and gave way
when a further weight of 50 lbs. was put upon him. These cases show that
the judges had reverted to the old view that the punishment was inflicted
for the purpose of inducing the prisoner to plead.
Another milder form of torture was practised in connection with the peine
forte et dure. It is first revealed in the report of a case which was
tried at the Newgate Sessions in 1663:—
“At the same Sessions, George Thorely, being indicted for
Robbery, refused to plead, and his two Thumbs were tyed
together with Whipcord, that the pain of that might compel
him to Plead, and he was sent away so tyed, and a Minister
perswaded to go to him to perswade him: And an Hour after he
was brought again and pleaded. And this was said to be the
constant practice at Newgate.”[64]
There was no legal authority whatsoever for this punishment.
By 12 George III. (1772), c. 20, it was enacted that persons thereafter
arraigned for felony or piracy, standing mute, should be convicted of the
crime charged against them. Such a case occurred in 1777.
Francis Mercier was arraigned at the Old Bailey sessions, beginning on
December 3, 1777, for the murder of David Samuel Moudrey. He stood mute.
A jury was immediately impannelled by the sheriff to inquire whether he
stood mute fraudulently, wilfully, and obstinately, or by the providence
and act of God. This jury found that he stood mute fraudulently, upon
which Mr. Justice Aston (in the absence of the Recorder) at once passed
sentence upon him that he should be executed and his body be afterwards
dissected and anatomised. He was hanged at the end of Princes Street,
Swallow Street (now Princes Street, Hanover Square).
By 7 and 8 George IV. (1827), c. 28, it was enacted that if a prisoner
refused to plead, the court might order a plea of “Not Guilty” to be
entered.
It had taken five and a half centuries to discover this simple solution
of the difficulty.
THE HANGMAN.
Something must be said about that useful public servant, the executioner.
Selected by the State to carry out its decrees, it would seem that
he should have been invested with a dignity but little inferior to
that of the judges who pronounced the sentence carried out by him in
co-partnership. Without the practical assistance of the executioner, the
solemn sentence of the robed, ermined, and full-bottom-wigged judge would
be of no effect. Nevertheless, this officer of the State, practically
inculcating on the scaffold the great truths of morality impressed
on the public from the bench, this great public officer has never
received the homage due to him. In France the executioner is—or was—“the
executor of high works,” with us he has always been merely “the common
hangman.” Of the many instances of public ingratitude, this is perhaps
the most scandalous. Nor have posthumous honours in the smallest degree
compensated for want of respect during life. The statues of London are,
with few exceptions, and these recent, almost wholly devoted to royal
personages, to soldiers, and to ground landlords. Among them we seek
in vain monuments to the executive officer, without whose aid law and
order would have been mere empty names. That great work, the Dictionary
of National Biography, has done something to redeem this neglect by
recording such rare facts as may be discovered in the biographies of
hangmen. For this we may be grateful: it is at least a beginning.
Cunningham, in his “Handbook of London,” a compilation displaying
marvellous industry, says that “the earliest hangman whose name is known
was called Derrick.” This is a mistake. There are two, or perhaps three,
predecessors whose names have been recorded. Of these predecessors of
Derrick, the first is Cratwell, whose execution was witnessed by the
chronicler Hall in 1538. Then comes an officer whose name a careless
country has omitted to preserve, “the hangman with the stump-leg,” who,
alas! was also hanged, reaching this end to his career in 1556.[65] A
third possible predecessor of Derrick is known only by name. At the
trial of Garnet, in 1606, the Earl of Northampton made a speech of which
he thought so highly that he afterwards amplified and enlarged it for
publication. Here is a specimen of what he would have liked to say had he
been permitted:—
“The bulls which by the practice of you and your Catiline, the
lively image of your heart, should by loud lowing, have called
all his calves together with a preparation to band against our
sovereign, at the first break of day, and to have cropped those
sweet olive-buds that environ the regal seat, did more good
than hurt, as it happened, by calling in a third bull, which
was Bull the hangman, to make a speedy riddance and dispatch of
this forlorn fellowship.”[66]
Bull is also mentioned in “Tarlton’s Jests.”
Either before or after Bull came Derrick, hangman in the reign of James
I. He is mentioned in Dekker’s “Bellman of London,” 1608, and was famous;
for half a century later his name was a term of abuse.[67] It is said
that in some way, not clear, he gave his name to the form of crane known
as a derrick.
According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Derrick was succeeded
by Gregory Brandon. When Cunningham wrote there was a tradition that
Brandon was of good family, and had a grant of arms. But it has since
been found that the story had no better foundation than a practical joke:—
=January, 1617.= “York Herald played a trick on Garter
King-at-Arms, by sending him a coat of arms drawn up for
Gregory Brandon, said to be a merchant of London, and
well-descended, which Garter subscribed, and then found that
Brandon was the hangman; Garter and York are both imprisoned,
one for foolery, the other for knavery.”[68]
Gregory was succeeded by his son Richard, famous as the executioner of
Charles I.
After him came Lowen, an obscure hangman, known only by mention in the
account of an execution.[69]
Later came Edward Dun, known as “Esquire Dun,” mentioned in Butler’s
“Hudibras” (pt. iii. c. ii. l. 1534). He was followed by the most famous
of all the hangmen of Tyburn, Jack Ketch, hangman from about 1663 to
1686. In January of this year he was for a time superseded by Pascha
Rose, a butcher, who was hanged at Tyburn, on May 28th, when Ketch
resumed office. Ketch is twice mentioned in Dryden, in the epilogue to
the Duke of Guise:—
“Jack Ketch, says I’s, an excellent physician,”
and again in “The Original and Progress of Satire”:—
“A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch’s wife said of his
servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging: but to make
a malefactor die sweetly, was only belonging to her husband.”
Dr. Murray’s Dictionary attributes something of Ketch’s fame to his
introduction into the “puppet-play of Punchinello introduced from Italy
shortly after his death”: but Cunningham quotes from the Overseers’
Books of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields entries of sums “received of
Punchinello the Italian popet player, for his Booth at Charing-cross,”
in March, 1666. But something of his notoriety was due to his bungling
in the executions of Lord Russell in 1683, and of the Duke of Monmouth
in 1685. As to Lord Russell, “Ketch the executioner severed his head
from his body at three strokes, very barbarously.”[70] It was worse with
Monmouth:—
“He sayd to the executioner, ‘Here are six guinies for you.
Pray doe your business well: don’t serue me as you did my Lord
Russell. I haue heard you strooke him three or fower tymes.
Here (to his seruant), take these remaininge guinies, and giue
them to him if he does his worke well.’ And to the executioner
he sayd, ‘If you strike me twice I cannot promise you not to
stirr.’ Then he lay downe, and soone after raised himselfe vpon
his elbowe, and sayd to the executioner, ‘Prithee, let me feele
the ax.’ He felt the edge, and sayd, ‘I feare it is not sharpe
enough.’ Then he lay downe, the Diuines prayinge earnestly for
the acceptance of his repentance, his imperfect repentance, and
commended to God his soule and spirit. Soe the executioner did
his work: but I heare he had fiue blowes. Soe he died.”[71]
As recorded in the Annals, John Price, the Tyburn hangman, was executed
in Bunhill-Fields for murder in 1718.
In August, 1721, John Meff was executed at Tyburn. At a previous date,
not mentioned, he had been condemned to death for housebreaking, but, as
he was going to Tyburn, the hangman, bearing the generic name of “Jack
Ketch,” was arrested. What became of him is not told, but he probably
came to a bad end.
In May, 1736, “Jack Ketch,” on his return from doing his office at
Tyburn, robbed a woman of 3s. 6d., for which he was committed to Newgate.
History is silent as to his fate.
In 1750, the hangman, John Thrift, was condemned for killing a man in a
quarrel. His sentence was commuted to one of transportation for fourteen
years. He was finally pardoned, and in September “resumed the exercise
of his office.” “‘Old England,’ September 22, hints, that having become
obnoxious to the Jacobites, for his celebrated operations on Tower-Hill
and Kennington-Common, he was pardoned _in terrorem_, and to mortify
them.”[72]
In 1780, Edward Dennis, the hangman, was condemned for taking part in
the No Popery riots. He was respited. Dickens has introduced Dennis as a
personage in his story of “Barnaby Rudge.”
It will be seen that out of the few hangmen of Tyburn whose names have
come down to us, several ended their useful lives on the gallows, having
failed to profit personally by the lessons they were employed by the
State to teach.
There was a strange superstition connected with the gallows: what it was
will be understood from the following:—
A man having been hanged at Tyburn, on May 4, 1767, “a young
woman, with a wen upon her neck, was lifted up while he was
hanging, and had the wen rubbed with the dead man’s hand, from
a superstitious notion that it would effect a cure.”
This case is not the only one of its kind on record.[73]
Tyburn is responsible for a few slang expressions. “A Tyburn ticket” was
a certificate exempting from parish duties the successful prosecutor of a
malefactor. “A Tyburn blossom” was a young pickpocket. “A Tyburn check”
was a rope. “A Tyburn tippet” was a halter. Latimer did not disdain to
use this word in his great sermons.
The gallows was known as “Deadly Never-green,” the “Three-legged Mare,”
the “Three-legged Stool.”
AFTER TYBURN.
What became of the bodies of those done to death at Tyburn? Some were
quartered, parboiled, and stuck up on the gates of the city or elsewhere,
as the king might direct. These would be but few out of the great total.
For two centuries there was regular provision for the decent burial of
executed persons, in the circumstances mentioned by Stow.
Stow tells how, in 1348, Ralph Stratford, Bishop of London, bought a
piece of ground, called “No Man’s Land,” which he enclosed with a wall of
brick, and dedicated for burial of the dead: this was Pardon churchyard.
In the following year Sir Walter Manny bought thirteen acres of land
adjoining, and here were buried more than fifty thousand persons who died
of the frightful pestilence then raging, known as the Black Death. In
1371 Sir Walter founded here the Charterhouse, giving to the monastery
the thirteen acres, and also the three acres adjoining, which “remained
till our time by the name of Pardon churchyard, and served for burying
of such as desperately ended their lives, or were executed for felonies,
who were fetched thither usually in a close cart, bailed over and covered
with black, having a plain white cross thwarting, and at the fore end a
St. John’s cross without, and within a bell ringing by shaking of the
cart, whereby the same might be heard when it passed: and this was called
the friary cart, which belonged to St. John’s, and had the privilege of
sanctuary.”[74]
“It remained till our time,” says Stow, and this is one of those passages
telling what Stow had seen—passages that give so vivid an interest to his
story of London.
In the Grey Friars’ Chronicle we find an instance of the burial in Pardon
churchyard of persons executed at Tyburn:—
“=1537.= Also this yere the xxv day of Marche the Lyncolnechere
men that was with bishoppe Makerelle was browte owte of Newgate
vn-to the yelde-halle [Guildhall] in roppys, and there had
their jugment to be drawne, hongyd, and heddyd, and qwarterd,
and soo was the xxix of Marche after, the wyche was on Maundy
Thursdaye, and alle their qwarteres with their heddes was
burryd at Pardone churche-yerde in the frary.”[75]
From Stow’s account of the execution, quoted in the Annals, we learn that
the number of Lincolnshire men executed on this occasion was twelve.
The priory of St. John’s was dissolved in 1540, and with it went the
friary cart.
After this, and also before the suppression of the friary cart, bodies
were brought back by friends for interment in the parish churchyard. Here
is a case in which a body so brought back was refused burial:—
One Awfield had been condemned and executed at Tyburn for “sparcing
abrood certen lewed, sedicious, and traytorous bookes. His body was
brought into St. Pulchers to be buryed, but the parishioners would not
suffer a Traytor’s corpes to be layed in the earthe where theire parents,
wyeffs, chyldren, kynred, maisters, and old neighbors did rest: and so
his carcase was retourned to the buryall grounde neere Tyborne, and there
I leave yt.”[76]
But many of the poor wretches hanged had no friends who would be at the
charge of interment. The demands of the surgeons would be soon satisfied;
with how little ceremony the residue would be treated we may learn from
the narrative of Richardson, given in the Annals (1741).
We read of two priests and sixteen felons executed at the same time, in
1610, being all thrown together into a pit. The stories of bones found in
the neighbourhood of the gallows may probably be referred to forgotten
burial places or to pits into which, after a busy day’s work, a score of
bodies would be tumbled.[77]
Strype, in his edition of Stow’s “Survey,” has a weird story of the
finding of four embalmed heads in Blackfriars, in clearing away rubbish
after the Great Fire of 1666:—
“They came to an old Wall in a Cellar, of great thickness,
where appeared a kind of Cupboard. Which being opened, there
were found in it four Pots or Cases of fine Pewter, thick,
with Covers of the same, and Rings fastened on the top to take
up or put down at pleasure. The Cases were flat before, and
rounding behind. And in each of them were reposited four humane
Heads [he means one in each case; the margin has “Four Heads”],
unconsumed, reserved as it seems, by Art; with their Teeth and
Hair, the Flesh of a tawny Colour, wrap’d up in black Silk,
almost consumed. And a certain Substance, of a blackish Colour,
crumbled into Dust, lying at the bottom of the Pots.
“One of these Pots, with the Head in it, I saw in October,
1703, being in the Custody of Mr. Presbury, then Sope-maker
in Smithfield. Which Pot had inscribed in the inside of the
Cover, in a scrawling Character (which might be used in the
times of Henry VIII) J. CORNELIUS. This Head was without any
Neck, having short red Hair upon it, thick, and that would not
be pulled off; and yellow Hair upon the Temples; a little bald
on the top (perhaps a Tonsure) the forepart of the Nose sunk,
the Mouth gaping, ten sound Teeth, others had been plucked out;
the skin like tanned Leather, the Features of the Face visible.
There was one Body found near it buried, and without an Head;
but no other Bodies found. The other three Heads had some of
the Necks joined to them, and had a broader and plainer Razure:
which shewed them Priests. These three Heads are now dispersed.
One was given to an Apothecary; Another was intrusted with the
Parish Clerk; who it is thought got Money by shewing of it. It
is probable they were at last privately procured, and conveyed
abroad; and now become Holy Relicks.
“Who these were, there is no Record, as I know of; nor had any
of them Names inscribed but one. To me they seem to have been
some zealous Priests or Friers, executed for Treason; whereof
there were many in the Rebellion in Lincolnshire, An. 1538, or
for denying the King’s Supremacy, And here privately deposited
by these Black Friers” (book iii. p. 191).
Through the later researches of Dr. Challoner, we now know the story
relating to one of these heads. John Cornelius, or Mohun, was born of
Irish parents in Bodmin. He studied at Oxford, but not adopting the new
religion, went afterwards to Rheims, and later to Rome. He was sent
upon the English mission, in which he laboured for about ten years. He
was apprehended in April, 1594, in the house of the widow of Sir John
Arundel, on the information of a servant of the house. Mr. Bosgrave, a
kinsman of Sir John Arundel, seeing him hurried away without a hat, put
his own hat on the priest’s head; for this he was arrested. Two servants
of the family, Terence Carey and Patrick Salmon, were also arrested.
Cornelius was sent to London, and there racked to make him give up the
names of Catholics who had harboured him. Refusing to make any discovery,
he was sent back into the country, tried, and, with his three companions,
executed at Dorchester on July 2, 1594. The three were simply hanged:
Cornelius, as guilty of high treason, was drawn, hanged, and quartered.
His head was nailed to the gallows, but afterwards removed at the
instance of the town. His quarters were buried together with the bodies
of his companions. Dr. Challoner does not tell how the head of Cornelius
was recovered by friends, nor does he say anything more of the others. It
is probable that the three other heads of Strype’s account were those of
the companions of Cornelius (“Memoirs of Missionary Priests,” part i.,
pp. 157-60).
The _Times_ of May 9, 1860, contained a letter from Mr. A. J. Beresford
Hope, living in the house at the south-west corner of Edgware Road,
stating that in the course of excavations made close to the foot-pavement
along the garden of his house, “numerous human bones” were discovered. He
says: “These are obviously the relics of the unhappy persons buried under
the gallows.” If this was so, they must have been the bones of Cromwell,
Ireton, or Bradshaw, buried under the gallows.
ORIGIN AND SITE OF THE TYBURN GALLOWS
As has already been said, the earliest mention of Tyburn in connection
with executions is in 1196, when William FitzOsbert, known as
“Longbeard,” was hanged here: with probability we can refer to the site
an execution taking place a few years earlier. How far back can we, in
the absence of records, conjecturally place the dedication of Tyburn to
executions? We can say, with a high degree of probability, that Tyburn
was not established till after the Conquest, and, further, not till after
the death of the Conqueror.
Hanging was not greatly in favour with those whom we must, in spite of
objections, call the Anglo-Saxons. Various fanciful definitions of Time
have been given. According to Goethe, it is on the roaring loom of Time
that the Earth-Spirit weaves the living garments of God. According to
Carlyle, Time is the outer veil of Eternity. These poetical definitions
seem to have little or no practical value. They would convey nothing,
for instance, to the time-keeper of a wharf or great warehouse. It has
been reserved for our race to give a definition of real solid value:
“Time is money.” The phrase, revealing in three words the soul of a
people, has gone the round of the world in its native tongue, hailed
from pole to pole as the final definition of Time. We might look with
confidence to find in the origins of a people alone capable of making
this supreme discovery instances of this practical outlook on the
universe. We shall not be disappointed. The laws of our forefathers,
based on this commercial view, were administered, with a strict eye to
business, on the joint-stock or co-operative principle. To kill a man
was mere waste, if money could be screwed out of him or out of those who
could be made responsible for him. “Business is Business.” Every man—in
a sense different from that in which Walpole used the words—every man
had his price. Men, according to rank, were carefully appraised: a man’s
“were” was so much, his “wite” so much. A murderer must pay these sums,
or they must be paid by those responsible for him. And not only every
man, but every part of each man had its price. One sees in encyclopædias
of domestic economy, prepared for the instruction of young and thrifty
housekeepers, diagrams setting out the differences in value of such and
such parts of an ox, a sheep, or of “a side” of bacon. Such a chart for
use by an Anglo-Saxon dispenser of justice would have had to be executed
on a large scale. The human body was divided into thirty-four parts, upon
each of which was placed a fixed value. It is needless to give here all
the thirty-four categories; it will be sufficient to set out the prices
to be paid for injuries to the arm and hand:—
“If the arm-shanks be both broken, the bōt is xxx shillings.
If the thumb be struck off, for that shall be xxx shillings as
bōt. If the nail be struck off, for that shall be v shillings
as bōt.
If the shooting (_i.e._, fore-) finger be struck off, the bōt
is xv shillings: for its nail it is iv shillings.
If the middlemost finger be struck off, the bōt is xii
shillings, and its nail’s bōt is ii shillings.
If the gold (_i.e._, ring-) finger be struck off, for that
shall be xvii shillings as bōt, and for its nail iv shillings
as bōt.
If the little finger be struck off, for that shall be as bōt
ix shillings, and for its nail one shilling, if that be struck
off.”[78]
The authors of a code so thoroughly commercial in spirit naturally
regarded theft as the worst of crimes, and hanging was probably common
for this offence, if the thief could not redeem himself. Thus we read in
the laws of Æthelstan: “That no thief be spared over xii pence, and no
person over xii years, who we learn, according to folk-right, that he is
guilty, and can make no denial: that we slay him and take all that he
has.”[79]
William the Conqueror abolished capital punishment. For this he has been
highly eulogised by Mr. J. R. Green, who writes of “strange touches of
a humanity far in advance of his age,” of “his aversion to shed blood
by process of law.” But he omits to tell us that for the punishment
of death William substituted punishments which, as Mr. Freeman justly
says, “according to modern ideas were worse than death.” It is indeed
“a strange touch of humanity” which prescribed the tearing out of a
man’s eyes and the lopping off of his limbs. A terrible picture of a
land haunted by sightless and maimed trunks is conjured up by the words
of William’s law, “so that the trunk may remain alive as a sign of its
crimes.”[80]
The penalty for breach of this law, confiscation of all the offender’s
property, was so severe that we may well believe that capital punishment
was actually abolished during the reign of William.
It appears that capital punishment was re-instituted by Henry I. in
1108, and there seems no reason for doubting the statement, though the
evidence was not wholly accepted by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen.
“The English king, Henry, established his peace and settled
law, by which, if any one was taken in theft or robbery, he
should be hanged.”[81]
The institution of the gallows of Tyburn probably dates from this time.
The origin of Tyburn is certainly Norman; its early name, “The Elms,”
testifies to this, for among the Normans the elm was the tree of justice.
Here is the record of a symbolic elm so famous that its fall awakened an
echo in the distant scriptorium of Peterborough:—