Olde London Punishments

by David Brandon

  OLDE

  LONDON

  Punishments

  OLDE

  LONDON

  Punishments

  Alan Brooke & David Brandon

  First published 2010

  The History Press

  The Mill, Brimscombe Port

  Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

  www.thehistorypress.co.uk

  This ebook edition first published in 2013

  All rights reserved

  © Alan Brooke & David Brandon, 2010, 2013

  The right of Alan Brooke & David Brandon to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 5270 5

  Original typesetting by The History Press

  Contents

  1 Changing Punishment Through the Centuries

  2 The Prisons of London

  3 The Hulks

  4 Places of Execution

  5 Methods and Instruments of Torture and Execution

  6 The Pillory

  7 Religious Sanctions

  8 Social Sanctions

  9 Pleasurable Punishments

  10 Changing Attitudes

  1

  Changing Punishment Through the Centuries

  London has a long history of criminal activity and an equally long history of brutal public punishments. Whippings, brandings, mutilations, transportation and public humiliation in the stocks and the pillory, all of which ended in the nineteenth century, existed for a range of offences. Before 1868 many of these were part of the public spectacle. These gruesome displays attracted huge crowds to the various sites of execution and torture where people would witness, or perhaps be entertained by, the grisly spectacle of the condemned going through the agonies of their proscribed ordeal. This section will look at the development of punishments in London (although these punishments were also implemented elsewhere).

  In the seventh century, King Ethelbert I introduced what seems to have been the first written English penal system. Punishment was based on fines, with sliding scales of compensation for the victims of the crime. A person who was assaulted and lost an eye, for example, was entitled to 50s from the assailant, whereas a lost toe only rated 6d. Often the rate varied with the social status of the victim and assailant. This system was refined by the Danes who had a very complicated tariff of compensation which meant, quite literally, that every man had his price. The Crown also took a share of the fine and often of the assets of the offender – a stealth tax. An ingenious fund-raiser was the selling by the Crown of pardons – even in advance of any crime being committed. It was, in effect, a form of insurance on the part of those who thought that they might well offend in the future and wanted to take out precautions.

  As far as the penal system was concerned, women did not count. Little is known about how this system worked out in practice. Perhaps it did not work very well, if only because fines evaded the question of the element of revenge which is so critical where punishment is concerned. In the tenth century, whipping and mutilation were introduced. Canute gained the throne in 1016 and his reign was noted for unprecedented social peace. Perhaps this was because offenders were liable to being scalped or having noses, ears or eyes removed. William the Conqueror was not prepared to put up with any nonsense and added removal of the testicles for certain offences, although he also abolished the death penalty. The right to inflict this had previously been shared between the Crown and the barons. Astutely, William, wary as ever of any potential rivals for power, concentrated the official infliction of punishment under the auspices of the Crown.

  It was during William’s reign that ecclesiastical courts were established to deal with offences against the Church while civil courts adjudicated on crimes against the people. Generally, the ecclesiastical courts levied less severe punishments and so better-off laymen who were literate started claiming that they were priests and demanding to be tried in the Church courts. This anomalous practice was known as ‘claiming benefit of clergy’ and clearly discriminated against the poor. Over the centuries, more and more people took advantage of this loophole. Even a total ignoramus who managed to memorise the first verse of the Fifty-First Psalm was entitled to claim clerical privilege. This became known as the ‘Neck Verse’ and went as follows: ‘Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: According to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions’. Continuing abuse of this practice led to the creation in 1496 of offences which were ‘non-clergyable’. This meant that anyone charged with an offence such as the killing of his lord, master or sovereign could not plead benefit. Soon afterwards, anyone who had been convicted of a clergyable offence was to be branded on the thumb so that they could not enjoy the privilege a second time. Then it became possible to pay a bribe which meant that a cold iron would be applied to offenders who had the money.

  After William died, his son William II reintroduced the death penalty for poaching deer in the royal forests, and Henry I extended capital punishment. The belief was that only God knew whether a suspect was innocent or guilty and to help the Almighty make up his mind on such matters, trial by water or fire was devised. In the case of the latter, the theory was that the guilty would float and the innocent sink. In the case of fire, the accused had to hold a red-hot bar and if, three days later, his skin was not scarred he was deemed innocent. Less drastic was subjecting offenders to public ridicule as a deterrent. This practice was particularly applied to bakers of underweight loaves or brewers who over-watered their beer. Such a baker might be humiliated by being drawn around the town on a hurdle with an example of an offending loaf tied around his neck. His standing in the community – and his business – might be seriously damaged by this punishment. Sometimes the offending loaves would be made available for the crowd to pelt the dishonest baker. A brewer might be forced to drink as much of his substandard beer as he could swallow and then have the rest poured over him. More serious offences such as murder, treason, burglary and robbery carried the death sentence.

  In 1154, Henry II came to the throne and embarked on an overhaul of the legal and penal system which involved ensuring that every county had a prison used to house those awaiting trial or sentencing. Other reforms included amputation of the right hand and right foot for robbery, murder and coining, rather than death.

  It was in the thirteenth century that trial by jury was introduced. Corporal punishment involving the use of stocks for minor offences and the whipping post and the pillory became common. The idea of public humiliation can be seen in all these instruments. A new punishment was outlawry. The victim, his family and property, if any, lost all the protection of the law and thereafter they were friendless. In the early years they could be killed with impunity by any citizen. Those who harboured them or gave them succour could be punished. Several monarchs found outlawing highly profitable: it enabled them to sequester the property of the outlaws.

  In 1241, hanging, drawing and quartering was introduced for those guilty of treason. The victim was drawn through the streets to the place of execution – initially they were dragged along the road but this was found to be inconvenient because it injured or sometimes killed them prematurely. For that reason
it became normal to convey them on a horse-drawn hurdle. They were then hanged until almost on the point of expiry, whereupon they were cut open and eviscerated, their entrails often being burnt in front of them. On occasion, they would be castrated. Lastly, they were dismembered. Often their limbs and especially their heads, treated with preservative, were put on display in some prominent place. The gates to London Bridge were one favourite location. It used to be the practice to take a family walk on a Sunday and go have a look at how the heads were doing. From 1684, Temple Bar was another place where the heads and various body parts of traitors might be found. Spyglasses could be hired for closer scrutiny of the grisly remains posted up there.

  Temple Bar, where body parts were once displayed, now stands near St Paul’s Cathedral.

  Painful death by crushing.

  Convicted felons and their families forfeited all their property. This could leave a spouse and children in poverty. It was reasoned that if an accused person refused to plead, they could not be tried: if there was no plea, how could there be a trial? This greatly irked the authorities and in 1272 measures were taken to persuade suspects to lodge a plea. Initially they were placed in irons and stretched out, immobilised, on the floor and half-starved for a few days. This usually had the desired effect, but for the more stubborn ones worse horrors could follow. A torture known as peine forte and dure (strong and hard pain) involved pressing them by placing heavy metal weights on their chests and bellies. Those that were not killed usually pleaded quickly enough rather than put up with the excruciating agony. Pressing was not regarded as a torture or a punishment, but merely as a method of persuasion. Those who had been pressed then had to undergo a trial and, if found guilty, the likelihood of being hanged. Hanging was the most common method of execution but those of noble blood were entitled to the ‘privilege’ of decapitation with sword or axe.

  Heresy began to be a serious issue in the fourteenth century. Heretics were viewed as dangerous people who dared to question the political and religious status quo. In criticising the power structure of medieval society, they were regarded by the authorities as offending God, who had ordained how society should be organised, and the reigning monarch, who was God’s representative on Earth.

  The reign of King Henry VIII (1509-1547) inaugurated many legal changes. He permitted Sunday executions and introduced boiling to death. He also made a substantial number of other offences non-clergyable. These included piracy, rape and highway robbery. Beggars and wandering robbers increased in numbers, especially after the monasteries were dissolved, and were dealt with by being whipped. In official circles, poverty and criminality became virtually synonymous. Vagrants were often branded with a letter ‘V’ after their first conviction and from 1572 had a hole bored in the gristle of the ear. Houses of correction were built to punish vagrants and to put the able-bodied ‘idle’ to work. Whipping posts became familiar items of street furniture.

  Whipping became one of England’s most commonly used forms of punishment, used not only against vagrants but as a standard sentence for petty larceny, the theft of goods worth less than 1s. In 1589, appropriateness was the criterion for decreeing the loss of ears for uttering seditious words and of the right hand for producing seditious writings. Such punishment, of course, left the offender with visible evidence of guilt and dishonour. People who absented themselves from church services were liable to have their ears removed, showing that they had chosen not to hear the Lord’s word.

  Being whipped through the streets was a common punishment.

  Site of William Hunter’s Anatomy Theatre, Windmill Street, Piccadilly.

  During Henry’s thirty-eight-year reign it was estimated that around 70,000 people were executed in England. The rationale was that tough measures were needed to deal with those whose activities offended God (and the King). The effect was to provide a legal and penal framework within which the rising middle-class enjoyed the social stability thought essential for the country’s economic development. Henry, incidentally, inaugurated the practice whereby barber-surgeons were given the bodies of executed felons for research and demonstration purposes. From 1540, they were provided with four cadavers annually. This number increased in the eighteenth century amid considerable controversy. Public dissection of dead felons was used as an aggravated punishment.

  Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) was one of the monarchs who made use of banishment from her realm. Although this might seem humane by comparison with capital punishment, the effect on the recipient was not unlike outlawing, made worse by the fact that the victim was likely to find himself penniless, powerless and probably friendless in a foreign country.

  During the period of the Tudor monarchs, heresy and treason tended to conflate and were considered to be of the utmost seriousness. Most heretics were bunt at the stake. This appalling method of execution usually involved the victim being smeared with pitch or tar, tied to a post and then surrounded by a combustible material such as brushwood. The executioner then used a noose to render the prisoner unconscious before the flames reached him or her. Sometimes this did not work and the prisoner died in unspeakable agony. Britain’s last recorded burning at the stake occurred on 18 March 1789 when a woman was put to death in this fashion outside Newgate Prison. Her crime was coining.

  Despite the increasing severity of the penal code in Tudor times, the general impression was that crime was an increasing threat. In the somewhat hysterical climate that resulted, nobody seems to have been surprised when a senior legal figure seriously suggested pulling out the tongues of convicted criminals.

  The concept of punishment continued to embrace both physical pain and public humiliation. Petty offenders might be placed in the stocks or the pillory, whipped or fined, or two or more of these punishments. The pillory was extremely painful because the offender was held by the neck and wrists, causing agonising cramps. Sometimes, to aggravate the punishment, the offender had his ears nailed to the hinged wooden board in which his neck was placed. This prevented him ducking when a hostile crowd pelted him with all manner of filth or, if they really disliked him, with stones. Sometimes offenders were fatally injured by such missiles. If their feet did not reach the platform on which they were standing, they risked slow throttling.

  Occasionally, if the authorities felt particularly vindictive, they might further aggravate the punishment. In 1630 a Dr Leighton who wrote a book lampooning royalty, the peerage and the upper echelons of the Church of England, was whipped severely and had one ear cut off before being pilloried. He also had the septum of his nose split and was branded with the letters ‘SS’, indicating that he had stirred up sedition.

  During the Interregnum (1649-1660), the judgmental and joyless heavy hand of Puritanism descended on the English and on their favourite activities and pastimes. ‘Incontinence’ now became punishable. This word was used in the sexual sense and made fornication a misdemeanour and adultery a felony. Abusing the sanctity of the Lord’s Day also became a misdemeanour and uttering profanities and gambling with cards became punishable. With the Restoration, there was a huge communal sigh of relief but severe punishments continued to be imposed for a wide range of offences. The State seemed determined to keep the whip-hand – literally – over a populace which was seen as becoming increasingly fractious and insubordinate, most of all in London, .

  Nowhere did the perceived threat from crime seem as serious as in London. The capital offered unique opportunities to the criminally inclined. Its population was large and growing rapidly because of inward migration. The result was the creation of a rootless and volatile population, many of whom were unskilled and very much at the mercy of economic downturns and slumps. While some people migrated to London willingly, thinking they could make new and better lives for themselves there, in reality very few did. Economic and social changes were forcing people off the land. Possessing few loyalties or moral precepts, many inward migrants naturally turned to crime, especially when times were hard. London offered propitious con
ditions for criminal activity because of its concentrations of very evident wealth, its anonymity and the feebleness of its law-enforcing agencies. Probably the greatest incentive to criminal activity is a low arrest and conviction rate. Often those who arrived in the metropolis were young and single, and concern was expressed about the prevalence of youth crime. Additionally, London attracted disbanded soldiers and sailors, those who would now be described as ‘illegal immigrants’ – perhaps foreign sailors who had jumped ship. Refugees, wandering Jews, misfits, desperadoes; London had always been a social and ethnic melting pot, now more than ever. London developed sophisticated criminal and underworld networks.

  A sixteenth-century English visitor to London gives a colourful assessment of what he saw:

  ...If you come to London, pass through it quickly. Each race brings its own vices and customs to the city. No-one lives in it without falling into some sort of crime. Every quarter of it abounds with grave obscenities. Whatever evil or malicious thing that can be found in any part of the world, you will find it in that one city. Actors, jesters, smooth-skinned lads, Moors, flatterers, pretty boys, effeminates, pederasts, singing and dancing girls, quacks, belly-dancers, sorceresses, extortioners, night-wanderers, magicians, mimes, beggars, buffoons: all this tribe fill the houses. Therefore if you do not want to dwell with evildoers do not live in London.

  Parliament created a very large increase in the list of capital offences during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in an attempt to counter what was perceived as a serious increase in the level of crime. However, penal policy was by no means straightforward. Of course there were always those kinds of people around who thought hanging was too humane and that felons should, for example, be broken on the wheel instead. On paper there was a ferociously deterrent penal system. For example, what became known as the ‘Waltham Black Act’ of 1722 was aimed ostensibly at poachers but was used as a Trojan horse to introduce the death penalty for a host of other supposedly ‘rural’ crimes. In 1688 there were about fifty capital offences. Between 1660 and 1819 no fewer than 187 additional offences came to carry a capital sentence. These included cutting hop-bines, setting fire to coal mines, defacing Westminster Bridge, concealing the death of an illegitimate child, damaging a fish pond, stealing a shroud from a grave and bigamy.