In 1752 Captain Lowry suffered at Execution Dock, and was hung in
chains by the side of the Thames, doubtless for piracy; and in the same
year John Swan was executed at Chelmsford and hung in chains in Epping
Forest.
In 1764 William Corbett was executed on Kennington Common. His body was
“fixed in irons”--a new expression--and hung upon Gallery Wall, between
Rotherhithe and Deptford. Eighteen years earlier the gallant young
rebel, Jemmy Dawson, had been hung, drawn, and quartered on the same
common for “the --45.” A young lady--“dear Kitty, peerless maid!”--died
of a broken heart on the day of his execution.
“She followed him, prepared to view
The terrible behests of law;
And the last scene of Jemmy’s woes
With calm and stedfast eye she saw.”[66]
On November 16, 1766, Thomas Parker called on his way from Penrith
Market at a small inn at Carlton. Being somewhat the worse for
drink,[67] the landlord urged him to remain, but the shaggy sot
pressed on his way, and was murdered the same night. The affair
caused an extraordinary local interest among a population who had not
forgotten the shocking incidents of the punishments for the Rebellion
of twenty years before. The poor muddled man had been beaten to death
by one Thomas Nicholson, after a violent struggle with the assassin.
The murderer, upon strong circumstantial evidence, was sentenced to
be executed, and his body to be hung in chains near where the crime
was committed. It so hung for many years, slowly dropping to pieces,
until on one stormy night the gibbet was blown down. Shortly after
some humane persons from Edenhall came and gathered the desolate bones
together, wrapped them in a winnowing-sheet--it sounds like an episode
from the Apocrypha, like a good deed of Tobit--and laid them in a
grave. The spot was long after distinguished by the letters, large and
legible, deeply cut in the turf, “T. P. M.,” signifying “here Thomas
Parker was murdered.”[68]
The hanging in chains of a man named Corbet, of Tring, who murdered
Richard Holt in 1773, is noteworthy, as the last instance of gibbeting
in the county of Buckingham.[69]
A notorious highwayman, John Whitfield, was executed and gibbeted on
Barrock, near Wetheral, Cumberland, about the year 1777. It is said
that he was gibbeted alive, and that the guard of a passing mail-coach
put him out of his misery by shooting him. If this were true the guard
was clearly guilty of murder. We shall have occasion to revert to this
question. Later, a sergeant was reduced to the ranks for shooting at
the dead body in chains of Jerry Abershaw, a notorious brigand, on
Wimbledon Common.[70]
In the year 1785 the Rev. Thomas Kerrich made sketches of two men
hanging in chains upon one gibbet on Brandon Sands, Suffolk. At the
present day all other record both of the men (May and Tybald), their
crimes, and their punishment, has, like the coral worm of the completed
reef, utterly passed away; all has succumbed to “the tooth of time, and
razure of oblivion.” The gibbet post is shown bound with iron bands to
prevent cutting down.
[Illustration: GIBBET ON BRANDON SANDS, 1785.
(_From a sketch by the Rev. Thomas Kerrich._)]
About the middle of the last century three men who robbed the north
mail near the Chevin, over against Belper, were all executed and hung
in chains on one gibbet on the top of the mountain. “Now then, you
three, hang there, and be a sign.”[71]
It is recorded that a friendly hand set fire one night to the gibbet
which, with all three bodies well saturated with pitch, was burnt to
ashes, leaving only the irons and chains remaining.[72]
Not unduly to multiply instances we may hurry on to 1788. In this year
the postboy between Warrington and Northwich was robbed by William
Lewin. This was still a capital offence, but the culprit evaded justice
for three years. Being finally overtaken he was executed at Chester,
and his body hung in chains on the highest point of Helsby Tor, eight
miles from Chester, and visible, as it was said, “with glasses,” even
from the Peak of Derbyshire. It was evidently believed that the whole
country round would see and take warning.[73]
“... but they kill’d him, they
Kill’d him for robbing the mail,
They hanged him in chains for a show.”[74]
There were then three gibbets between Liverpool and Warrington.
But the system, like all violent systems, was not deterrent--indeed, a
multitude of men hanging in chains seems to affect the spectator rather
as a curious sight than as the necessary and proper consequence of
transgression.
[Illustration: MILES’S IRONS, 1791.
(_From “Obsolete Punishments,” by C. Madeley._)]
Five months after the death of the last-mentioned criminal, Edward
Miles was executed and hung in chains, not only for robbing the mail,
but for murdering the postboy also. It was a serious case, and the
man was hung, and gibbeted in irons on the Manchester road, near the
Twystes. These irons, of a very careful manufacture, were dug up on the
spot in 1845, and falling into the hands of the late Mr. Beaumont, are
now preserved in the Warrington Museum.
In 1796 James Price and Thomas Brown were hung in chains on one gibbet
at Trafford, between Chester and Tarporley. A print in the account of
the trial shows the carcasses in iron frames shaped to the body like
the Warrington example.[75]
To take again a southern case. In 1799 two brothers named Drewett,
for attacking the Portsmouth mail, in the delightful district of
Midhurst, were executed on Horsham Common, and their bodies taken
to the scene of the robbery, and hung up in irons. This event still
lingers in memory in the district, and the more so, perhaps, because
the younger of the two convicts is believed to have had the nobility
to suffer for his father, whose guilt he would not disclose.[76] The
“last dying speeches” of these two men, printed with uncouth verbiage,
and picturesque deformity of language, is still occasionally to be met
with.