Every morning, at seven o’clock, all the convicts capable of work... are taken ashore to the Warren, in which the Royal Arsenal and other public buildings are situated, and there employed at various kinds of labour; some of them very fatiguing; and while so employed, each gang of sixteen or twenty men is watched and directed by a fellow called a guard. These guards are commonly of the lowest class of human beings; wretches devoid of feeling; ignorant in the extreme, brutal by nature, and rendered tyrannical and cruel by the consciousness of the power they possess... They invariably carry a large and ponderous stick, with which, without the smallest provocation, they fell an unfortunate convict to the ground, and frequently repeat their blows long after the poor fellow is insensible.
The food the prisoners ate was basic to say the least, and consisted of ox-cheek, either boiled or made into soup, pease and bread or biscuit which were often mouldy. Each prisoner had two pints of beer four days a week and badly filtered water drawn from the river.
Resistance to the closing of the hulks had diminished by 1855 when the Penal Servitude Act ended transportation, replacing it with specific terms of imprisonment in English prisons. On 14 July 1857 The Times reported:
At 9 o’clock yesterday morning smoke was observed issuing from the convict hulk Defense, moored off Woolwich Arsenal, which, on closer examination was discovered to originate in the fore part of the ship... Every part of the huge vessel was soon filled with smoke and the whole of the inmates were hastily removed.
There had been 171 prisoners aboard up till that day. Many of them were invalids and in the ‘last stage of disease’. They were safely evacuated thanks to the prompt action between the warders and the prisoners. All the prisoners were transferred to the convict hulk Unite further up the Thames. After eighty years the prison ships had come to an end – or had they? In 1997, the government established a new prison ship, HMP Weare, as a temporary measure to ease prison overcrowding. Weare was docked at the disused Royal Navy dockyard at Portland, Dorset. On 9 March 2005 it was announced that the Weare was to close. Since then, the government has looked into using private contractors to supply prison ship spaces in order to alleviate overcrowding!
Boarding the Convict Ship
After their incarceration on the hulk, the convict’s next punishment was to embark upon the ship that would take them on the long journey to Australia.
The journey from hulk or prison to embarkation port was one of public spectacle, as convicts either walked or travelled via carts. Pickpocket George Barrington noted in his journal that he said his farewells and assembled with the others at 4.45 a.m. to be escorted by the city guards from his prison to Blackfriars Bridge. Barrington remarked on the ignominy of being mingled with felons of all descriptions and the humiliation of the early morning walk which would be witnessed by spectators. Even for the renowned thief, this was a ‘punishment more severe than the sentence of my country that I had so much wronged’.
Convicts would arrive at Woolwich and Deptford on the Thames dressed in regulation jackets, waistcoats of blue cloth, duck trousers (a durable, closely woven heavy cotton or linen fabric), coarse linen shirts, yarn stockings and woollen caps. Women were issued with a regulation dress, although clothing for the women on the First Fleet in 1787 fell to pieces within weeks of the voyage. In chains, they boarded the ship and were then ordered into the hold where battens were fixed for the hammocks which were hung ‘seventeen inches apart’. Barrington, commenting on his feelings, wrote of ‘the want of fresh air’ which ‘rendered [the] situation truly deplorable’.
It was not uncommon for the prisoners to have waited months on the hulks before they embarked onto the convict ship. Psychological and physical trauma was also acknowledged to be a feature of embarkation. Commenting on the adjustment prisoners had to make from Pentonville Prison to convict ship, surgeon John Stephen of the Sir George Seymour wrote in 1845:
The sudden change from seclusion to the bustle and noise of a crowded ship produced a number of cases of convulsion, attended in some instances with nausea and vomiting, in others simulating hysteria and in all being of almost anomalous character. The recumbent position, fresh air, mild stimulants etc were found to be beneficial in all cases and after three days the convulsions disappeared.
Conditions in the prison quarters on the ship were cramped, dark, damp and lacking in ventilation. The voyage would present further challenges. In storms and heavy seas the water would sweep through the quarters, which kept the bedding constantly wet. In addition to this were the awful, putrid smells of wet and rotting timbers combined with the packed bodies of the prisoners. In the tropics the heat was unbearable.
Punishments on board varied from whipping, solitary confinement, shaving of heads (a punishment reserved mainly for female convicts), and placing in irons into a small black box for a number of days, to being put on bread and water. In 1832 John Clifton died of exhaustion after being ordered to walk with a bed on his back for two hours – a punishment for expressing his wish that the ship would catch fire. For attempted mutiny, execution was the most serious penalty, although many received a severe flogging. A list of offences that carried punishments was placed on the wall on the prison deck.
Further torments included a range of ailments prisoners would suffer from. Diarrhoea was by far the most common, followed by constipation and haemorrhoids. Large iron buckets were used as toilets, but these could not be emptied and cleaned out during the night. Scurvy, which arises from a lack of vitamin C, became a problem and is mentioned in many of the journals, as did boils, rheumatism, colic and catarrh – convenient catch-all, ‘catarrh’. The presence of hordes of rats was an unavoidable hazard; typhus was a dreaded disease facilitated by rats and lice. Cholera was another epidemic disease caused by dirty water.
4
Places Of Execution
Many Londoners were inured to images of death. Public executions, as well as the display of rotting bodies on gibbets and spiked heads on poles, were common sights. Attending an execution was a generally accepted practice, as the diarist Henry Machyn made clear in the mid-sixteenth century: he recorded that he attended two and sometimes three per day. In the space of one month in 1557, Machyn saw eight felons hanged at Tyburn, three men and two women burnt at Smithfield for heresy, and seven pirates hanged at Wapping. Like many Londoners, Machyn witnessed executions as part of the popular calendar ritual.
Smithfield
For over 400 years, Smithfield was one of London’s main sites of execution. Smithfield, just to the west of the City of London and close to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, is not to be confused with East Smithfield, which was close to the Tower of London and another execution place, albeit minor by comparison. Those whose lives ended at the former included William Wallace, the Scottish patriot, in 1305; many Lollards, religious dissidents of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries; and numerous Protestant martyrs during the reign of Mary in the middle of the sixteenth century. Those who died for religious reasons were mostly burned as heretics and their sufferings usually attracted large numbers of appalled but fascinated spectators. These times were the heyday of Smithfield as a place of execution, but judicial deaths there continued sporadically into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The story of William Wallace (1272-1305) has taken on a particular significance in both historical and mythical terms. Conflicts with Scotland from the 1290s saw Wallace establish a reputation. In 1305 Wallace was captured near Glasgow and after a brief imprisonment in Dumbarton Castle he was taken to London to face a show trial in Westminster Hall where he was charged with treason, murder, robbery and ‘various other felonies’. The verdict of the court was that Wallace should be dragged from the Palace of Westminster to the Tower of London and from there through the City to Smithfield. On 23 August Wallace was wrapped in an ox hide and dragged by horses four miles through London to Smithfield where he was hanged as a murderer on a very high gallows made for the occasion. An expectant crowd looked on as he was cut
down while still alive and then mutilated, disembowelled and, being convicted of treason, his ‘privy parts’ would have been removed. The ritual continued. As a punishment for the ‘great wickedness which he had practised towards God and His holy church by burning churches’, his heart, liver, lungs and all internal organs were thrown into the fire and burned. Finally, he was decapitated and his carcass then cut up. His head was set on a pole on London Bridge.
Gibbet outside Clink Prison.
Smithfield today.
Memorial to William Wallace at Smithfield.
From the fourteenth century a long history of bloody incidents took place at Smithfield. The leader of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1382, Wat Tyler, was killed in a confrontation at Smithfield when he was stabbed by the Lord Mayor, William Walworth. Tyler had sought refuge in St Bartholomew’s Hospital but was dragged out to be beheaded (it is uncertain whether he was already dead prior to beheading).
The heady days of execution at Smithfield became fewer as Tyburn and later Newgate became the main sites. In 1674, for example, a woman was burned for the crime of clipping (removing precious metal from the edge of coins to melt down).
An unintended ‘execution’ occurred in 1756. A gang led by James Egan had been responsible for framing and accusing innocent people in order to claim rewards. Their activities had led to prosecutions and the death of some of their victims. Justice eventually caught up with them and Egan and one of the gang, named Salmon, were sentenced to stand in the pillory at Smithfield. This was to be their last public appearance for some time because they had also been condemned to seven years’ imprisonment. It was only to be expected that the nature of their crime rendered them exceptionally unpopular with the crowd. Even as they arrived, Egan and Salmon were subjected to a torrent of verbal abuse. No sooner had they been secured in the pillory than they were assailed by a rain of missiles, including stones, cobbles, rotting vegetation and dead, putrescent rats, cats and dogs. The constables tried to intervene but the crowd was growing angrier by the minute. Egan and Salmon were powerless to prevent some of these missiles finding their mark. A large one hit Egan with such force on the forehead that he died instantly.
John Perrot from Newport Pagnell was executed at Smithfield in 1761. He kept a draper’s shop and established a reputation as a merchant, and so had little problem in finding credit. Perrott was in fact a wealthy rogue who reputedly embezzled £25,000 of goods received on credit. It was only a matter of time before Perrott’s activities would be investigated and he paid a heavy price. At 10.15 a.m. on the morning of 11 November 1761 he said farewell to a fellow prisoner and, with some trembling, was immediately put in the cart and led to Smithfield to be hanged.
Executions at Smithfield ended soon afterwards.
Newgate
Executions began outside Newgate Prison in the street called Old Bailey in 1783. On execution days a scaffold was erected close to the Debtors’ Door in the prison wall. Through this door the condemned prisoners were brought for their public swansong. For some this offered a brief moment of celebrity – for once in their lives everybody was interested in them and they were the centre of attention. Later on the scaffold was mounted on wheels and was brought out of Newgate for each execution, drawn by two horses. The first execution in Old Bailey took place on 9 December 1783.
Prisoners varied in the manner in which they approached their execution. Those who excited most admiration from the crowd and even grudgingly from the authorities were those few who refused to be perturbed by the situation and in some cases whistled, sang and joked as if they did not have a care in the world. One murderer named Jeffreys, for example, ordered and was served roast duck the night before his execution and went to his death with a swagger and a cheery wave to the crowd.
Although executions now took place literally on the doorstep of Newgate, a strong sense of carnival surrounded these events. Crowds were as drunken, bawdy and irreverent as ever and pickpockets and prostitutes enjoyed rich pickings. Hucksters selling pies, fried fish and all manner of snacks and beverages elbowed their way through the teeming crowds, doing a roaring trade.
Punch and Judy can be said to represent the boisterous and anarchic nature of London as well as featuring London hangman Jack Ketch.
On the night before an execution, the peace of the small hours would be disturbed by the sounds of revelry from those who had arrived early to get the best view of the morning’s proceedings. The noise they made would have been audible to the occupants of the condemned cells eking out their last hours. From the condemned cells the prisoners were taken to the Long Room where they were met by a crowd of officials, newspaper reporters and others who had managed to insinuate themselves into the occasion. The irons were struck off the prisoners and their arms were tightly bound. The chaplain or ordinary would be annoying everyone by trying to get the prisoner to blurt out a confession, but all that most prisoners were capable of at this stage was sobbing, sighing or sometimes a frenzied last-minute appeal for clemency. A procession then formed up composed of sheriffs, warders, the hangman and assistants, guards and the prisoner or prisoners and they emerged into Old Bailey through the Debtors’ Door. They were met with a great roar from the crowd, temporarily drowning out the solemn toll of the bell of St Sepulchre’s Church nearby. A cry of ‘Hats off, Hats off’ reverberated through the crowd as headwear was doffed and everyone jostled in the confined space in order to get the best view possible.
The keenest enthusiasts for a hanging often arrived in Old Bailey the evening before so as to obtain ringside seats. Sometimes there were enough of them to create an unruly mob which spent the night singing, dancing, drinking and, if the mood developed, in brazenly overt individual and group sex sessions. The Governor of Newgate invited friends and family to an exclusive social event in a room with an excellent view overlooking Old Bailey. The ritual was to have a few drinks and then watch and hopefully enjoy the hanging. This was followed by a hearty breakfast which traditionally always included grilled or devilled kidneys. Having gorged themselves, the party then watched the cutting down of the corpse (which took place an hour after the felon’s death). Rooms with a view of proceedings could also be hired, at very considerable expense, in the Magpie and Stump pub in Old Bailey. They advertised ‘execution breakfasts’.
In 1820 the Cato Street Conspirators, who had plotted to assassinate the entire Cabinet, were the last people to be publicly decapitated. A large crowd gathered outside Newgate. When the executioner raised one of the severed heads to show the crowd and then managed to drop it, there was a chorus of derisory catcalls and shouts of ‘Butterfingers’.
The last execution outside Newgate took place on 26 May 1868 when hangman Calcraft terminated the life of a young Irish republican called Michael Barrett who had tried to blow up the Middlesex House of Detention in Clerkenwell in order to rescue some fellow nationalists who were detained there. A spectacular explosion brought down some of the prison walls but also demolished a terrace of houses opposite, killing six people immediately and fatally injuring others. For all this effort, the Irish nationalists remained immured in their cells. This was the last public execution in Britain. Hangings within Newgate ended in 1902.
Tyburn
Tyburn was London’s major place of execution for hundreds of years. Although it is now very close to the permanent traffic pandemonium around Marble Arch, when Tyburn was used for executions it was a rural spot along the muddy lane which was the old Roman road leading to Oxford. It was about three miles west of the City of London.
It is thought that the first executions took place at Tyburn around 1196, and from that time many thousands of condemned prisoners ended their days at this spot. They were from all classes and had been found guilty of every kind of capital offence. In 1571 the legendary ‘Triple Tree’ was erected at Tyburn. This was a triangular gallows capable of hanging twenty-four people at a time, eight on each beam. It operated until 1759, when it was replaced by a movable scaffold.
On
e of the most extraordinary sights at Tyburn was the public hanging of the dead bodies of three of the ‘regicides’ who were held responsible for signing the death warrant of Charles I. On 30 January 1662 the corpses of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton (his son-in-law) and John Bradshaw, the judge at Charles’s trial, were hanged publicly on the ‘Triple Tree’ then cut down, decapitated and thrown into a nearby pit.
Persons convicted of larceny, burglary, housebreaking, pick-pocketing and highway robbery feature largely on the list of the tens of thousands who died at Tyburn while murderers, arsonists, rapists, bigamists and those found guilty of treason were also executed there, but in smaller numbers. In the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries many were executed for their religion, having been found guilty of either heresy or treason. Witchcraft and infanticide became capital offences in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and so the perpetrators of such offences made their unhappy way to Tyburn.
Hangings at Tyburn usually took place on the first Monday of each month. On every execution day, thousands would line the route or make their way to Tyburn to watch and enjoy the proceedings. If the felon(s) to be hanged were particularly notorious, hated or popular with the citizenry then tens or even hundreds of thousands would turn out and the route from Newgate to Tyburn and the surroundings of the gallows would be en fête. Those who might have described themselves as aficionados of hangings would set great store by the conduct and bearing of those who were about to be hanged. Prisoners were allowed to make a last-minute speech from the gallows. Those so terrified they were scarcely able to stand but who mumbled out a cringing confession or a hopeless appeal for clemency did so to a chorus of catcalls and ribaldry. Those felons who used the occasion to boast of their crimes or to attack the authorities for their corruption were always guaranteed a warm reception. The hangman and his assistants were almost universally jeered at and booed unless the felon they were about to hang had been found guilty of an unacceptable crime such as child molestation, in which case they became heroes for the day. Such was the demand for a good view of the proceedings at Tyburn that a permanent grandstand was erected, the enterprising owners of which were able to charge fees for entry dependent on the notoriety or otherwise of the felon(s) being hanged on the day.
Olde London Punishments Page 6
