the Lord for the Salvation of your own Souls, thro’ the Merits, Death,
and Passion of Jesus Christ, who now sits at the Right-hand of God, to
make Intercession for as many of you as penitently return unto him.
Lord have Mercy upon you! Christ have Mercy upon you!
Which last Words the Bell-man repeats three times.
All the way up to Holborn the Croud was so great, as at every twenty
or thirty Yards to obstruct the Passage; and Wine, notwithstanding a
late good Order against that Practice, was brought to the Malefactors,
who drank greedily of it, which I thought did not suit well with their
deplorable Circumstances: After this, the Three thoughtless young Men,
who at first seemed not enough concerned, grew most shamefully daring and
wanton; behaving themselves in a manner that would have been ridiculous
in Men in any Circumstances whatever: They swore, laugh’d, and talk’d
obscenely, and wish’d their wicked Companions good Luck, with as much
Assurance as if their employment had been the most lawful.
At the Place of Execution, the Scene grew still more shocking; and the
Clergyman who attended was more the subject of Ridicule, than of their
serious Attention. The Psalm was sung amidst the Curses and Quarrelling
of Hundreds of the most abandon’d and profligate of Mankind: Upon whom
(so stupid are they to any Sense of Decency) all the Preparation of
the unhappy Wretches seems to serve only for Subject of a barbarous
Kind of Mirth, altogether inconsistent with Humanity. And as soon as
the poor Creatures were half dead, I was much surprised, before such
a number of Peace-Officers, to see the Populace fall to halling and
pulling the Carcasses with so much Earnestness as to occasion several
warm Rencounters, and broken Heads. These, I was told, were the Friends
of the Persons executed, or such as, for the sake of Tumult, chose to
appear so, and some Persons sent by private Surgeons to obtain Bodies
for Dissection. The Contests between these were fierce and bloody, and
frightful to look at: So that I made the best of my way out of the Crowd,
and, with some Difficulty, rode back among a large Number of People, who
had been upon the same Errand as myself. The Face of every one spoke a
kind of Mirth, as if the Spectacle they had beheld had afforded Pleasure
instead of Pain, which I am wholly unable to account for.
In other Nations, common Criminal Executions are said to be little
attended by any beside the necessary Officers, and the mournful Friends;
but here, all was Hurry and Confusion, Racket and Noise, Praying and
Oaths, Swearing and singing Psalms: I am unwilling to impute this
Difference in our own to the Practice of other Nations, to the Cruelty of
our Natures; to which Foreigners, however to our Dishonour, ascribe it.
In most Instances, let them say what they will, we are humane beyond what
other Nations can boast; but in this, the Behaviour of my Countrymen is
past my accounting for; every Street and Lane I passed through, bearing
rather the Face of a Holiday, than of that Sorrow which I expected to
see, for the untimely Deaths of five Members of the Community.
One of the Bodies was carried to the Lodging of his Wife, who not being
in the way to receive it, they immediately hawked it about to every
Surgeon they could think of; and when none would buy it, they rubb’d Tar
all over it, and left it in a Field hardly cover’d with Earth.
This is the best Description I can give you of a Scene that was no way
entertaining to me, and which I shall not again take so much Pains to
see. I am, dear Brother, Yours affectionately.
Mandeville, writing some years earlier, gives an account, even more
unfavourable, of the behaviour of the crowd.[212]
The batch of convicts whose execution is described by Richardson did not
happen to include a highwayman. Here is a portion of Swift’s account of
“Clever Tom Clinch, going to be hanged,” a piece written in 1727:—
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!’
But, as from the windows the ladies he spied,
Like a beau in the box, he bow’d low on each side.
Richardson’s long description may be supplemented by the chaplain’s
account of the last scene:—
The rev. Paul Lorrain, Ordinary of Newgate, as has been said elsewhere,
was in the habit of printing an account of the behaviour of criminals,
after condemnation. He gives long accounts of his sermons. In the
broadsheet relating to an execution at Tyburn on March 22, 1704, he
describes the proceedings at Tyburn. The Ordinary exhorts the criminals
to clear their consciences by making a free confession. The malefactors
then address the people praying them to take warning from the example
before them. Then the Ordinary proceeds to prayer: afterwards to the
rehearsal of the Articles of the Christian faith: then comes the singing
of penitential hymns[213]: then prayer again. “And so, taking my leave
of them, I exhorted them to cry to God for Mercy to the last Moment of
their Lives, which they did, and for which they had some time allow’d
them. Then the Cart drew away, and they were turn’d off, as they were
calling upon God.”
[Illustration: THE TRIPLE TREE IN 1747.]
=1743-1745.= At the Old Bailey sessions, September 7-12, were indicted
James Stansbury and Mary his wife, for the robbery of Mr. or Captain
George Morgan. The case is very interesting, as having furnished to
Hogarth the motive of one of his prints in the series of “The Effects of
Industry and Idleness.” Captain Morgan, going home in the early hours
of the morning of July 17, seeing a lady in the street, feared for her
safety, and gallantly offered to escort her home. He was taken into a
house where he was robbed and assaulted. The house, in Hanging-Sword
Alley, Fleet Street, bore an execrable reputation, in virtue of which
it was known as “Blood-Bowl House.” At the trial Mary Stansbury asked a
witness, “Have I not let you go all over the house, to see if there were
any trap-doors as it was represented?” The witness, Sharrock, replied
that he had looked all over the house and saw no trap-door. It will be
recollected that in Hogarth’s print the body of a murdered man is being
thrust through a trap-door. The same witness spoke of the house as
“Blood-Bowl House.” Stansbury asked him how he came to know of the Blood
Bowl, to which Sharrock replied that he had seen it in the newspapers.
(I have been less fortunate: I have not found accounts in contemporary
newspapers referring to the name or to the trap-door). Stansbury was
acquitted: his wife was sentenced to death, the sentence being afterwards
commuted to one of transportation.
Stansbury was afterwards convicted of burglary. He described himself
as a clockmaker, living in Whitechapel, from which we may infer that
Hanging-Sword Alley had become too hot for him. It would seem too that
he had not retired from Blood Bowl House with a fortune.
Mr. Nicholls in his notes on the print gives the name of Blood-Bowl to
the Alley, but there is no evidence that it was ever officially known
by this name. The alley is Hanging-Sword Alley in Rocque’s map of 1746;
it bears the same name in Hatton’s “New View,” 1708, and in Stow’s
“Survey of London” we read: “Then is Water Lane, running down by the
west side of a house called the Hanging Sword, to the Thames.” The alley
appears under this name in various books giving the names of streets:
it was Hanging-Sword Alley when Dickens wrote “Bleak House,” and it is
Hanging-Sword Alley to-day.
=1749.= _February 20._ Usher Gahagan was executed at Tyburn. Gahagan was
a scholar. He edited Brindley’s edition of the classics, and translated
into Latin verse Pope’s Essay on Criticism. He also, while in prison,
translated into Latin verse Pope’s “Temple of Fame,” and “Messiah”—“with
a Latin Dedication to his Grace the Duke of Newcastle.” His offence was
filing gold money. These verses were addressed to him:—
Who without rapture can thy verses read,
Who hear thy fate, and sorrow not succeed,
Who not condole thee betwixt fear and hope,
Who not admire thee, thus translating Pope?
Translating Pope in never-dying lays,
Bereft of books, of liberty and ease:
Translating Pope, beneath severest doom,
In numbers worthy old Augustan Rome:
Whose ablest sons might glory in thy strains,
Tho’ sung in Massy, Dire, incumb’ring chains.
The catalogue of the library of the British Museum includes ten works by
Usher Gahagan.
=1749.= _October 18._ Fifteen malefactors were executed at Tyburn. There
had been a riot in the Strand, where a number of sailors had wrecked a
house in which a sailor had been maltreated. There exists a well-known
print of the riot. The _London Magazine_ gives the following account of
the execution:—
About nine in the morning the criminals were put into the carts. Mr.
Sheriff Janssen, holding his white wand, and on horseback, attended
the execution, accompanied by his proper officers. At Holborn-bars Mr.
Sheriff dismissed very civilly the party of foot-guards, who otherwise
would have marched to Tyburn. The multitude of spectators was infinite.
Though a rescue had been threatened by many (on account of Wilson and
Penlez, the two ill-fated young rioters, both of whom were expected to
suffer) there yet was not the least disturbance, except during a moment
at the gallows, where a vast body of sailors, some of whom were armed
with cutlasses, and all with bludgeons, began to be very clamorous as
the unhappy sufferers were going to be turned off, which Mr. Sheriff
perceiving, he rode up to them and enquired in the mildest terms the
reason of their tumult. Being answered that they only wanted to save the
bodies of their brethren from the surgeons, and the Sheriff promising
that the latter should not have them, the sailors thanked the above
magistrate, wished every blessing to attend him, and assured him that
they had no design to interrupt him in the execution of his office. The
criminals seemed very penitent, and were turned off about twelve.
It would appear that in 1750 the immemorial custom of halting at St.
Giles’s, for “the bowl,” was abolished:—
=1750.= _February 7._ The criminals on their way to Tyburn were under
double guard. The procession closed with the two under-sheriffs, who did
not permit the carts to stop for the malefactors to drink by the way.
There were thirteen criminals.
=1750.= _May 16._ Thirteen executed at Tyburn.
=1750.= _July 6._ Three women were executed at Tyburn. They were drunk,
contrary to an express order of the Court of Aldermen against serving
them with strong liquor.
=1750.= _August 8._ Six executed at Tyburn. “It is remarkable that the
above six malefactors suffered for robbing their several prosecutors of
no more than six shillings” (_London Magazine_).
=1750.= _October 3._ Twelve malefactors executed at Tyburn. One of them
was the celebrated “Gentleman Highwayman,” Mr. Maclean. Another was
William Smith, the son of a clergyman in Ireland. Smith was convicted of
forgery. The _Universal Magazine_ of October, 1750, gave long accounts of
these worthies, and printed an ode by Smith on his melancholy condition.
This is one stanza:—
Justice has ranked me with the dead:
I bow, and own the just decree;
Yet, e’er each sense, each thought is fled,
How shall I front the fatal tree?
Hope, faith, the Christian world, inform me how
With resignation to embrace the blow.
But ah, Eternity! tremendous word!
There, there, I sink, I tremble! Help me Lord!
Smith had in an advertisement “entreated contributions for his decent
interment, and that his poor body might not fall unto the surgeons, and
perpetuate the disgrace of his family.” According to a newspaper of the
time the surgeons got possession of one body only (not Smith’s): the
rest were delivered to the friends. Smith edited several volumes of
“Classicks.” The publisher seized the opportunity to advertise them.
We have a full account of James Maclean, “The Gentleman Highwayman,”
given by Horace Walpole, who was robbed by him (Letters, ed. 1857,
i. lxvi. to lxvii., ii. pp. 218-9, 224, and in the _World_, No. 103,
December 19, 1754). This is the account in the _World_:
An acquaintance of mine was robbed a few years ago, and very near shot
through the head by the going off of the pistol of the accomplished
Mr. Maclean: yet the whole affair was conducted with the greatest good
breeding on both sides. The robber, who had only taken a purse _this
way_, because he had that morning been disappointed of marrying a great
fortune, no sooner returned to his lodgings than he sent the gentleman
two letters of excuses, which, with less wit than the epistles of
Voiture, had ten times more natural and easy politeness in the turn of
their expression. In the postscript, he appointed a meeting at Tyburn at
twelve at night, where the gentleman might _purchase again_ any trifle he
had lost, and my friend has been blamed for not accepting the rendezvous,
as it seemed liable to be construed by ill-natured people into a doubt
of the _honour_ of a man who had given him all the satisfaction in his
power, for having unluckily been near shooting him through the head.
The first Sunday after his condemnation three thousand people went to
see him. He fainted away twice with the heat of his cell. He was only
twenty-six when executed.
A long account of his behaviour in prison was given in a pamphlet by the
Rev. Dr. Allen. The rev. gentleman was greatly concerned to know whether
Maclean, by his association with “licentious young People of Figure
and Fortune,” who affected to despise “all the principles of Natural
and Revealed Religion, under the polite Name of Free-thinking,” had
not “fallen into the fashionable way of thinking and talking on these
Subjects.” Maclean was able to give his reverend monitor satisfactory
assurances on this point. Maclean’s brother was the minister of the
English church at The Hague. Maclean lived in fashionable lodgings in St.
James’s Street, and frequented masquerades, where he at times won or lost
considerable sums. The skeleton of Maclean appears in the fourth plate of
Hogarth’s “Stages of Cruelty,” showing the interior of Surgeons’ Hall.
=1750.= _December 31._ Fifteen executed at Tyburn.
=1751.= _February 11._ Three boy-burglars executed at Tyburn.
=1752.= In this year the State made a determined effort to “put down”
murder. It was a question that had long exercised the academic mind. So
far back as 1701 a writer, known only as “J. R., M.A.,” had published a
tract, “Hanging not Punishment enough for Murtherers, High-way Men and
House-Breakers.” J. R. inquired why, since at the last Great Day there
will be degrees of torment, we should not imitate the Divine Justice? He
invoked, not only the Divine example, but the practice of our own laws.
“If Death then be due to a Man, who surreptitiously steals to the Value
of Five Shillings (as it is made by a late Statute) surely he who puts me
in fear of my Life, and breaks the King’s Peace, and it may be murthers
me at last, and burns my House, deserves another sort of Censure: and if
the one must die, the other should be made _to feel himself die_.”
J. R. therefore proposed hanging alive in chains, the victim being left
to starve, or he might be broken on the wheel, or whipped to death.
[Illustration: THE BODY OF A MURDERER DISSECTED ACCORDING TO THE ACT OF
1752.]
About 1730 J. R., M.A., was followed by a writer who had no scruple in
revealing his name. George Ollyffe, M.A., published “An Essay humbly
offer’d for an Act of Parliament to prevent Capital Crimes, and the Loss
of many Lives, and to promote a desirable Improvement and Blessing in the
Nation.” Ollyffe argued that a swift death has no terrors. “An execution
that is attended with more lasting Torment, may strike a far greater
Awe, much to lessen, if not to put a stop to, their shameless Crimes.”
He, like J. R., speaks with approval (somewhat modified, indeed) of the
ancient practice of hanging men alive on gibbets. This plan has, however,
its disadvantages; it is “tedious and disturbing,” more than “the tender
and innocent part of mankind” can bear—as spectators. He recommends
breaking on the wheel, “by which the Criminals run through ten thousand
thousand of the most exquisite Agonies, as there are Moments in the
several Hours and Days during the inconceivable Torture of their bruised,
broken, and disjointed Limbs to the last Period.” Or the twisting of
a little cord hard about the arms or legs “would particularly affect
the Nerves, Sinews, and the more sensible Parts to produce the keenest
Anguish.”
Ollyffe recommended that these things should be done on gibbets about
twenty poles from the usual places of execution, so that “their cries may
not much disturb the common Passengers.”
The State followed J. R. and Ollyffe—at a distance—in the Act 25 George
II. (1752), c. 37, An Act for better preventing the horrid Crime of
Murder. The preamble runs: “Whereas the horrid Crime of Murder has of
late been more frequently perpetrated than formerly, and particularly in
and near the Metropolis of this Kingdom, contrary to the known Humanity
and natural Genius of the British Nation; and whereas it is thereby
become necessary, that some further Terror and peculiar Mark of Infamy be
added to the Punishment of Death now by Law inflicted on such as shall be
guilty of the said heinous Offence.…”
The Act directs that persons condemned for murder shall be executed on
the next day but one after sentence, unless Sunday intervenes, when the
execution shall take place on Monday.
Bodies to be given to the Surgeons’ Company at their Hall or where else
the Company may appoint, with a view to dissection; or the judge may
appoint that the body be hanged in chains (not alive as proposed by J.
R. and Ollyffe). In no case whatsoever is the body of a murderer to be
buried except after dissection. Incidentally, the Act mentions that
hanging in chains was already practised in case of “the most atrocious
Offences.”
In one point only did the State go beyond its two advisers. The words
of the Act show clearly that the interval between the passing of the
sentence and its execution was purposely abridged. The interval had
been allowed so that, with the aid of the ordinary, or other minister
of religion, the condemned man might have time to repent, and to make
his peace with Heaven. The abridgment of the interval must therefore be
regarded as intended to lessen the chances of repentance, and to send the
criminal to judgment still unrepentant. Thus regarded, the action of the
State denoted a daring attempt to prejudice the final award of the Day of
Doom; it was a distinct invasion of the jura regalia of the Most High.
The first to suffer under this Act was Thomas Wilford, a one-armed lad
of seventeen, who married on a Wednesday, and murdered his wife through
jealousy on the following Sunday. If we may trust the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_, Wilford, sentenced on June 30, was hanged, not on the next
day but one after sentence, but on the very next day, July 1: “Wilford
to be executed the next morning, and then his body to be dissected and
anatomised, according to the late Act.”
The fourth plate of Hogarth’s “Stages of Cruelty” shows the dissection
of a criminal at Surgeons’ Hall, but as the print was published in 1751,
Hogarth did not take the idea from the Act. Of course, the bodies of
criminals frequently found their way to Surgeons’ Hall before the passing
of this Act, but was the enactment suggested by Hogarth’s plate?
[Illustration: DRAWING TO TYBURN ON A SLEDGE, 1753.]
In 1725 Mandeville proposed that the bodies of the hanged should be
given to the surgeons for dissection, not as an aggravation of capital
punishment, but in order to supply a want felt by anatomists; Mandeville
was a doctor. He says: “Where then shall we find a readier Supply; and
what Degree of People are fitter for it than those I have named? When
Persons of no Possessions of their own, that have slipp’d no Opportunity
of wronging whomever they could, die without Restitution, indebted to
the Publick, ought not the injur’d Publick to have a Title to, and the
Disposal of what the others have left?” (“An Enquiry into the Causes of
the Frequent Executions at Tyburn,” 1725, p. 27.)
=1752.= _July 13._ Eleven executed at Tyburn.
=1753.= _June 7._ Dr. Archibald Cameron, condemned for high treason for
being concerned “in the late rebellion,” and not surrendering in time. It
might have been expected that vengeance would have been satiated by the
numerous executions that had already taken place: then, too, “the late
rebellion” was eight years old. Dr. Cameron was nevertheless sentenced
to be drawn, hanged, and quartered. The quartering was omitted. He was,
moreover, suffered to hang for twenty minutes, so that the burning of
his bowels was done before eyes closed in death. Dr. Cameron met death,
not so much with fortitude, which implies, in a way, an effort, as with
perfect equanimity.
=1754.= _February 4._ Twelve executed at Tyburn.
=1757.= _October 5._ Twelve executed at Tyburn.
=1758.= _December 18._ Some surgeons attempting to carry off the body
of a man executed at Tyburn, the mob opposed, a riot ensued, in which
several persons were wounded. In the end the mob was victorious, and
carried off the body in triumph.
=1759.= Between June 18 and October 3 in this year the old triangular
gallows, in use for nearly two hundred years, was removed, and the new
“movable” gallows took its place (see pp. 69, 70).
=1760.= _May 5._ Earl Ferrers had more than one relative of unsound
mind: he himself had given many proofs of madness. Without any cause,
he shot his steward, who had been for thirty years in his service. He
was undoubtedly a homicidal lunatic who would to-day be confined in an
asylum. On his trial by the House of Lords he produced witnesses to
prove his insanity, but “his lordship managed this defence himself in
such a manner as showed perfect recollection of mind, and an uncommon
understanding.” The plea was not accepted, the earl was sentenced to
death. Under the ferocious Act of 1752 the execution should have taken
place the next day but one, but, in consideration of the earl’s rank, the
execution was deferred to May 5. The sentence, however, bore that the
body should be anatomised.
On the appointed day the earl rejected the mourning coach provided by
his friends, and obtained permission to make the journey from the Tower
to Tyburn in his own landau, drawn by six horses. He was dressed in a
suit of light-coloured clothes, embroidered with silver, said to be his
wedding suit. To the sheriff he said: “You may perhaps, sir, think it
strange to see me in this dress, but I have my particular reasons for it.”
The procession was the grandest that had ever made that fatal journey.
First came a very large body of Middlesex constables, preceded by one of
the high constables: then a party of horse grenadiers, and a party of
foot soldiers.
Mr. Sheriff Errington in his chariot, accompanied by his under-sheriff.
The landau, escorted by two other parties of soldiers.
Mr. Sheriff Vaillant’s chariot, carrying the sheriff and under-sheriff.
A mourning coach and six, with some of his lordship’s friends.
A hearse and six, provided for the conveyance of his lordship’s corpse
from Tyburn to Surgeons’ Hall.
The procession was two hours and three quarters on the way, which gave
time to the chaplain to worry the earl about his religion—the world
would naturally be very inquisitive concerning the religion his lordship
professed. His lordship replied that he did not think himself accountable
to the world for his sentiments on religion. He greatly blamed my Lord
Bolingbroke for permitting his sentiments on religion to be published to
the world. But he did not believe in salvation by faith alone.
He gave his watch to Sheriff Vaillant, and intended to give five guineas
to the hangman. By mischance it was to the hangman’s assistant that the
earl handed the money, whence arose a dispute between these officers
of the State. The enjoined dissection was performed perfunctorily; the
body was publicly exposed in a room for three days, and then given up to
friends. There exists an engraving showing the body as exposed in the
coffin.