THE GHASTLIEST SPOT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 7, 9 January 1937, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE GHASTLIEST SPOT.

LONDON'* GRIM REMINDER. THE "TRIPLE TREE" OF TYBURN. If a London visitor, passing the Marble Arch, will stand at the corner where Edgware Road and Bayswater Road meet, he will see gleaming in the roadway * small brass ~ insertion—a miniature representation of the "triple tree" which stood there.

It was for centuries London's most ghastly spot, on which hundreds of criminals, and many innocent, rendered up their life in agony. One day in the week (writes Mr. A. H. Blake, M.A.) there started from Newgate, right through the city, the procession of death. The bells of St.. Sepulchre's Church tolled; the clerk recited the final exhortation, and the last journey of the condemned began. There was the guard, the ordinary of Newgate in his carriage, and the wretched criminal in his cartsome gay and laughing, like many a highwayman, others in the last extremity of fear, like Thomas Idle in Hogarth's famous picture. For many years there accompanied the prisoner in the same cart a well-known London character, who is shown in Hogarth's print. He was converted by the preaching of Wesley, and devoted his life to succouring and exhorting those about to die at Tyburn. "I was sick and in prison, and ye visited me" was the text that brought about his conversion, and his life was spent in endeavouring to carry it out into active operation. The procession halted in St. Giles', where, at a well-known hostelry, the prisoners received their last drink and were presented with a bouquet of flowers. Hooting and jeering crowds jostled round the condemned as the procession drew near to Tyburn. There, where we «ee the plate in the road, stood the fatal gallows with three beams capable of receiving three victims at once; and there, hardened by his dreadful vocation, and perhaps callously smoking his pipe, waited the hangman. As the ordinary recites his prayer, the cart draws up under the gallows; the hanging noose is round the prisoner's throat, and the time is come for his few last words. If these are too long the crowd jeers, and cries of "Turn him off! Turn him off I" are heard. At last the sign is given; the cart & drawn forward, and the wretched victim dies the slow death of strangulation. After a decent interval the body is cut down, and if claimed is handed to his friends. If not, •it is bought by the Apothecaries' Guild for post-mortem work. The records of this society have many entries of this nature: "Paid to the hangman for the body of man hanged at Tyburn."