PUBLIC EXECUTIONS

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 196, 15 May 1926, Page 24

PUBLIC EXECUTIONS

SCENES AT TYBURN RECALLED

When in 1783, in response to public protests against the disorderly scenes in London that were evoked by the procession of condemned prisoners from Newgate prison to the gallows at Tyburn, a distance of three miles, it was proposed to erect a gallows outside Newgate, Dr. Johnson, as a sound Tory, was indignant at the idea of abandoning a custom that had been sanctified by centuries. “People are running mad after innovation," he said to Sir William Scott, a famous lawyer, who afterwards became a Judge of the Admiralty Court, and is now regarded as the founder of British prize law. “All the business of the world is to be done in a new way; men are to be hanged in a new way; Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of innovation,” When it was suggested that it would be an improvement to abolish the processions and hang criminals outside Newgate, Johnson replied emphatically, “No, sir, it is not an improvement. They object that the old method drew together a number of spectators. Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators. If they do not draw spectators they don’t answer their purpose. The old method was satisfactory to all parties; the public was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Whv is all this to be swept away?”. But Dr. Johnson, who died in the following year, was destined to witness the termination of the old method, which "was most satisfactory to all parties.” The last execution at Tyburn, where more than 30,000 people were executed during the 600 rears it had been the scene of the death penalty, took place on November 7, 1783, the victim being John Austin, convicted of robbing John Spicer “and cutting and wounding him in a cruel manner.” The innovation which Johnson condemned was begun on a handsome scale, for a batch of ten criminals, including several women, were executed outside Newgate prison on. December 9, 1783. Although the procession to Tyburn was abolished, executions still took place in public, and attracted a very large crowd of spectators of all classes, from the highest to the lowest. For several centuries executions had been a popular form of entertainment in London. For the most part " entertainment was free, but at T >rn wooden grandstands had been end.cd for those prepared to pay for a good view. When the executions took place outside Newgate the shops and houses in the vicinity reaped a harvest from those \who wanted to see the executions in comfort. As a rule they took place once a month, and it was seldom that there were not three or four victims. On February 2, 1785, a batch of twenty was executed in front of . the debtors’ door at Newgate. Five of them had been guilty in company of assaulting a man and robbing him of “two glass drops set in metal, value 3d.; a one-inch rule, value 2d.; two papers of nails, value Id.; one knife, value Id.; two shillings and a counterfeit ’Halfpenny.” Life was cheap in those days, and was forfeited for very petty crimes Up to the early part of the nineteenth century there were more than 200 offences on the Statute Book for which the penalty was death, but some decree of mercy had crept into the administration of the law, and for many of these petty ernes the death penalty was not imposed. Afte l ' 1868 executions in England ceased to be carried out in public. In 1903 Newgate prison was pulled down, and on its site now stands the Central Criminal Court, which still retains the ancient name of the Old Bailey. . The growth of London has swallowed up the site of Tyburn gallows, which was formerly regarded as being in the country. A triangular brass plate let into the roadway at the southern end of Edgware Road where it joins Bayswater Road, close to the Marble Arch entrance to Hyde Park, marks the spot where the gallows stood. The three miles from Newgate to Tyburn is now an endless succession of shops, and forms one of the main thoroughfares through London from east to west. Oxford Street, which is part of this thoroughfare, is beloved of women, b< cause of its big drapery shops and bargain sales.

Tyburn is not the only place at which executions were carried out in London, but during the eighteenth century it gained supremacy over its rivals The condemned men and women were conveyed from Newgate .to Tyburn in a cart—or in several carts when the number of victims was too large for one vehicle. The cart also carried coffins for the removal of the bodies. Originally the gallows consisted of two posts and a erssbeam, but as this provided for a limited amount of accommodation—not more than eight or ten bodies at a time —a triangular gallows, capable of hanging twenty-four people simultaneously, which became known as Tyburn’s triple tree, was erected in 1571. After the hangman and his assistants had adjusted the ropes round the necks of the victims, the cart on which they stood was driven away, and they were left suspended. There was no “drop” such as is now used to bring about instant death by breaking the neck. The victims died from asphyxia, and the arrest of the circulation of the blood to the brain. Friends of the victims used to seize them by the legs and hang on to them, in order to end their sufferings by hastening death. Sometimes the friends lifted the bodies up and then dragged them down suddenly, .so as to break the neck. Another method of hastening death was to thump the victims on the chest.

The spectators of these grim scenes displayed the utmost callousness; drunkenness and ribald disorder prevailed among the crowd. Many of the victims were also callous, and joked with the crowd as they passed along the route. Others died in piteous fear. Some of the victims were mere children, and cried for their mothers as they stood in the cart, awaiting the attentions of the hangmen. Samuel Richardson, the novelist, has left posterity the only surviving descriptive account of an execution at Tyburn, though some details of the more notable executions that took place during the eighteenth century are available in various records. Richardson, writing in 1741, says that he mounted a horse “and accompanied the melancholy, cavalcade to the fatal tree.” There were five condemned men in the cart. “I was much disappointed,” he continues, “at the unconcern and carelessness that appeared ’on the faces of three of the unhappy wretches. The countenances of the other two were spread with horror and despair, which is not to be wondered at in men whose period of life is so near.” Richardson comments on “the silly curiositv of people climbing into the cart to take leave of the criminals” as the procession passed along. The crowd was so dense that it obstructed the passage of the cart all the way to Holborn Many people handed wine to the criminals as the cart passed along. As a result of the wine “the three thoughtless voung men who at first seemed not enough concerned, grew most shamefully daring and wanton, savs Richardson. “Thev swore, laughed’, and talked obscenely, and wished their companions good hick.” At the place of execution, where the crowd was densest, the clergyman who had accompanied the condemned men in the cart led the singing of a psalm “amidst the curses and quarrelling of hundreds of the most abandoned and profligate of mankind.” Richardson adds that ‘all the preparation of the unhappy. wretches seems to serve only for subject of a barbarous’kind of mirth. And as soon as the poor. creatures were half dead, [ was much surprised, before such a number of peace officers, to see the populace fall to hauling and nulling the carcasses with so much earnestness - as to occasion several warm re-encounters and broken heads. These, T was told, were the friends of the nersons executed, or such as for the sake of tumult chose to appear so. and some persons sent bv private surgeons to obtain bodies for dissection.”

Some remarkable instances of the recovery of victims hung at Tyburn and elsewhere are on record. As a rule death took place gradually from asphyxia, and, therefore, a victim cut down before life was extinct might recover. John Smith, executed on December 12, 1705, was cut down as a reprieve arrived after lie had been hanging about ten minutes. He was put in a warm bed and recovered in half an hour. The “Gentleman’s Magazine” records other authentic instances of recovery. In several cases lecovery was due to the operation of bronchotomy (incision in the windpipe) performed bv surgeons who had obtained the bodies for dissection. A man named Reynolds, hanged at Tyburn on July 26. 1740, was cut down and put in. a coffin by his executioners, who tlmu-riit he was dead. He was suffl ’v alive to thrust back the lid coflin. The executioners lifted it of the coffin with the intenf hanph’R him again, but the would not allow them to do so. Ti carried Reynolds to a publichonse and gave him wine in an attem’ ’ to revive him, but he succumbed. The case of Reynolds gave rise to a legal discussion as to whether a man who had been hanged and recovered coud be hung again. The general opinion among laymen was that he could not be hung_a second time, but the sheriffs contended that he could, as the sentence was tha- he was to be hung by the neck until he was dead. But there is no record of man being hung a second time. On the other hand the fact that recoveries had occurred encouraged the friends of criminals sentenced to death to make preparations for restoring them after they had been hung. The friends of Jack Sheppard, the prince of prison breakers, made preparations of the kind, but they were not successful. Much more thorough, were the preparations made for the recovery of the fashionable divine, Dr. William Dodd, a chaplain to the King. His execution on June 27, 1777, for forgery after influential efforts to get th" King to pardon him had failed, resulted in “the greatest concourse of people ever drawn together by a like spectacle.” There were-several others executed at the same time, but it was noticed that the executioner when fastening the rope round Dodd’s neck was whispering to him. It was said that the hangman had been bribed to tie the knot in such a way as to give D'odd a good chance of recovery after being cut down, When the cart moved off and left the bodies hanging the hangman rushed back and caught hold of Dodd by the legs and steadied the body. When it was cut down it was taken to the house of an undertaker in the vicinity, where a hot bath was in readiness. Under the direction of Dr. Pott, a celebrated surgeon of the day. every effort was made to restore animation, but without success. It was said that failure was due to delay in getting the body to the. undertaker’s owing to the large crowd of people round the gallows. Many people believed that Dodd did recover and was sent abroad