Olde London Punishments

by David Brandon

  Hogarth’s illustration of Tyburn and its crowd.

  Marble Arch, near to the old Tyburn gallows.

  The last execution at Tyburn was on 29 August 1783, after which such events were transferred to the outside of Newgate Prison. This change had nothing to do with more humane or enlightened attitudes to penal policy, but was because the execution days had become associated with disorder which upset trade and commerce in the City and along the route to Tyburn. Additionally, the residents of the highly fashionable streets and squares being developed north and south of what is now Oxford Street objected to the presence of the unruly and irreverent crowds that gathered every hanging day. The decision to end the spectacle of the procession from Newgate and the executions at Tyburn did not, however, meet with universal approval: Dr Johnson in particular fulminated that ‘the old method drew together a number of spectators. The old method was most satisfactory for all parties: the public was gratified by the procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why has all this to be swept away?’

  Statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament.

  A drawing of Cromwell’s head, now interred in the wall of Sidney Sussex College Chapel at Cambridge.

  The procession through the streets from Newgate to Tyburn and the events there had many of the elements of a carnival. The ‘Hanging Days’ gave people a break from everyday drudgery and it gave them an opportunity to mock their so-called social superiors. The whole ritual, including the selling of food, drink and broadsheets with the supposed ‘last confessions’ of the condemned prisoner, the opportunities for pickpockets, the drunken revelry and the fights, the last speech from the scaffold, the undignified scramble that sometimes took place to prevent the surgeons getting hold of the body – all these were part of a performance. The image is vividly portrayed by William Hogarth in his The Idle ’Prentice executed at Tyburn which depicts a scene which has little to do with submission to, or respect for, the power of the State as demonstrated by a judicial hanging.

  As Francis Place, the political radical, remarked, ‘a hanging day was to all intents and purposes a fair day’.

  Sign outside the Masons Arms near Marble Arch.

  Black humour was an essential feature of public executions and various slang terms emerged to describe various aspects of the event. It was a ‘hanging match’, a ‘collar day’ or the ‘Paddington Fair’. To be hanged was ‘to dance the Paddington frisk’, to be ‘collared’, ‘nubbed, ‘stretched’, ‘tucked up’ or ‘turned off’. Also common were such sayings as, ‘a man hanged will piss when he cannot whistle’ and ‘there is nothing to being hang’d but a wry neck and a wet pair of breeches’.

  For officialdom the main purpose of the public hanging was to demonstrate the awful consequences that followed conviction for serious offences. Executions supposedly showed the power of the State and acted as a deterrent to crime for those who attended them.

  In the eighteenth century, however, an increasing number of dissident voices were heard, questioning the deterrent effect, especially given the number of pickpockets plying their criminal trade among the crowds who were perhaps watching the dying moments of a felon condemned to death for the self-same offence. Henry Grattan (1746-1820), a reforming MP, said, ‘The more you hang, the more you transport, the more you inflame, disturb and disaffect’. After the simultaneous execution of eleven felons at Tyburn was followed by a spate of street robberies the following night, Henry Fielding, the novelist and reforming magistrate, observed, ‘...the execution of criminals as presently conducted, serve, I apprehend, a purpose diametrically opposed to that for which they were designed; and tend to inspire the vulgar with a contempt of the gallows rather than a fear of it’. Others asked whether repeated viewings of institutionalised State violence did not simply make those who observed them indifferent to the spectacle. The fact is that Londoners were inured to images of death. In 1847 a journalist wrote, ‘We have seen every execution for the past ten years and boast how on one day we saw one man hung at Newgate and took a cab to Horsemonger Lane in time to see another’. Dickens, watching the execution of a murderer, commented sorrowfully that the crowd displayed ‘no sorrow, no salutary terror, no observance, no seriousness; nothing but ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness, and flaunting vice in fifty other shapes’.

  The Carpenters Arms near Marble Arch, which was said to have bought the old movable gallows and used for them as stands for beer barrels.

  It is not surprising that the authorities eventually withdrew hangings from the public gaze. The scaffold crowds had adamantly refused to play the role expected of them. They appropriated the occasion for their own purposes. They protested, they scoffed, they mocked, they were irreverent and at times their behaviour became riotous enough to alarm the forces of law and order. The State might have controlled the theatre of punishment, but it had little hold over what happened during the performance. On one occasion, when two political radicals popular with the spectators were hanged, the Gentlemen’s Magazine indignantly reported that ‘the mob on this occasion behaved outrageously, insulted the Sheriffs, pulled up the gallows, broke the windows, destroyed the furniture, and committed other outrages’.

  Charing Cross

  A number of significant executions took place at Charing Cross during the seventeenth century. In 1544 William John Tooley, a poulterer, robbed a Spaniard in St James. Tooley was taken to Charing Cross in a cart before a large crowd to be hanged. However, the most gruesome executions were those of the regicides in 1660.

  Of the fifty-nine men who signed Charles I’s death warrant, forty-one were still alive and of these, fifteen fled the country. Ten were condemned to death at Charing Cross and Tyburn, in October 1660. On Saturday 13 October 1660, between nine and ten o’clock in the morning, Major-General Thomas Harrison was drawn upon a hurdle from Newgate to Charing Cross where a scaffold had been erected. He was the first of the regicides to face the brutal punishment. He was hanged with his face looking towards the Banqueting-house at Whitehall. Being half dead, he was cut down by the executioner, and then ‘his Privy Members cut off before his eyes, his Bowels burned, his Head severed from his Body, and his Body divided into Quarters, which were returned back to Newgate upon the same Hurdle that carried it’. In traditional manner his head was set upon a pole on the top of the south-east end of Westminster Hall and his quarters were hanged upon the city gates.

  On 16 October John Cooke, the chief prosecutor at the trial, and Hugh Peters were also executed at Charing Cross. After the former’s last words he was quickly taken from the rope and stripped of his clothes. His genitals were removed and held before his eyes and then the lining of his inner bowel was twisted out. Cooke looked on as his entrails were burned. Hugh Peters (1598-1660) was observed to be drinking some cordial liquors to keep him from fainting. Peters had to sit and watch Cooke go through the agonies of execution. The executioner, covered in blood, approached Peters ‘and rubbing his bloody hands together asked, “how do you like this Mr Peters, how do you like my work?”’ The stench that emanated from the burning of the intestines brought complaints from the residents and the executions of the regicides Axtell and Hacker were moved to Tyburn.

  The barbaric death by hanging, drawing and quartering.

  Other Places of Public Execution

  Many other locations in London saw public executions. A few are mentioned below.

  Charles I was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649. The shock waves from the unprecedented judicial execution of one of God’s anointed reverberated around Western Europe and threatened wars of intervention.

  On Tuesday 30 January 1649, a bitterly cold day, Charles went to his death. He entered the Banqueting House, walked through the Banqueting Hall and proceeded to the scaffold which had been erected outside one of the windows of the palace. The scaffold was draped in black and the floor likewise, and the axe and the block laid in the middle of the scaffold. The block was about 1ft high. Charles delivered his last speech, the
n spoke to the executioner and said, ‘I shall say but very short prayers and then thrust out my hands’, indicating this was the sign to bring down the axe. He then stooped down, laid his neck upon the block and after a short pause stretched out his hands. The executioner with one blow severed Charles’ head from his body and then held it up to the crowd and shouted ‘Behold the head of a traitor!’ An eye-witness recorded that as the King’s head fell, ‘There was such a groan by the thousands then present as I have never heard before and desire I may never hear again’.

  Several of those implicated in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 were executed in the old Palace-Yard at Westminster. Sir Walter Raleigh was executed in the same place in 1618.

  The Tower of London is almost synonymous with the spectre of human misery, imprisonment, mutilation, torture and execution. Those who were executed on Tower Green were usually political prisoners whose arraignment was controversial or delicate enough to make it expedient for them to be disposed of within the high security offered by the Tower’s precincts. Among those who breathed their last on Tower Green courtesy of the executioner was Anne Boleyn, decapitated with a sword in 1536, it being said that a man capable of doing the task had to be sent for from Calais. Another of Henry’s wives, Catherine Howard, followed in 1542, and Lady Jane Grey in 1554. Robert Devereux, one-time favourite of Elizabeth I, was despatched in 1601.

  Bust of King Charles I outside the Banqueting House, Whitehall.

  Tower Hill was a slightly elevated site close to the Tower. About 125 people are thought to have been executed there, the majority for treasonable activity or because the authorities thought their existence constituted a political threat. In 1381, during the Peasants’ Revolt, the hated Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon of Sudbury, was put to death at Tower Hill by the insurgents. Thomas More, previously one of Henry VIII’s closest advisors, was executed by order of the King on 6 July 1535. There were considerable risks attached to being one of Henry’s advisors – as Thomas Cromwell found to his cost in July 1540. In 1631 the Earl of Castlehaven was beheaded at Tower Hill. He had assisted the raping of his own wife by two of his servants, forced his wife to have sex with other servants while he watched and forced his daughter, aged twelve, to have sex with the servants. He in turn buggered some of the servants. An especially large crowd turned out to watch him being despatched. The hated favourite of Charles I, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, was executed to popular acclaim in 1641.

  Execution at Execution Dock, Wapping.

  A mixture of references including the Tyburn gallows, Kennington Common gibbet and the bell that tolled for the condemned at St Sepulchre’s, Newgate.

  An execution on the roof of Horsemonger Lane Gaol.

  The dock in Wapping had a special role to play in the history of London executions. This was where pirates and others who had committed capital offences on tidal waters or waters under the jurisdiction of the Admiralty paid for their crimes. This spot, about a mile east of the Tower, became known as ‘Execution Dock’. Perhaps its best-known victim was Captain Kidd, a man for whom the words bloodcurdling and swashbuckling might have been invented, but whose career was actually rather more like that of the cartoon character Captain Pugwash. He was hanged in 1701. The last hanging here occurred in 1831. A curious practice was that the hanging took place at the low-water mark and the corpse of the victim was left in place until three high tides had washed over them. This probably meant that during the period in which the corpse was visible, it would have been seen by large numbers of mariners for whom the consequences of piracy would be abundantly obvious.

  Among other places north of the Thames where executions were carried out were: Old Mitre Court, off Fleet Street; the junction of Haymarket and Panton Street in what is now SW1; Leadenhall Street, Cheapside; St Paul’s Churchyard, St Giles-in-the-Fields; and Clerkenwell Green. On occasions, condemned felons were executed at the scene of their crimes and so there are many other one-off locations where such events have taken place.

  South of the Thames, a number of executions were carried out at Kennington Common.

  Horsemonger Lane was the name commonly used for the Surrey County Gaol built in Southwark in the 1770s. A particularly famous execution was that of the husband and wife, Mr and Mrs Manning (the first in England since 1700 of a married couple) who were hanged in 1849 for murdering Patrick O’Connor. The couple had incurred financial loss as a result of bad financial advice given by O’Connor. The latter was attacked with a chisel and then finished off with a bullet, after which he was buried under the kitchen floor. The hanging of the Mannings was watched by Charles Dickens, who was disgusted by the animalistic behaviour of the crowd baying for the blood of this singularly repulsive pair of murderers. Dickens did not know which was worse, the appearance of the Mannings in their death-throes or the expectant faces in the crowd.

  The site of Horsemonger Lane Gaol.

  On 16 April 1862 James Longhurst was hanged at Horsemonger Lane for murdering a girl of seven. The heinousness of his crime ensured an especially large and hostile crowd.

  Horsemonger Lane Gaol closed in 1878 and Newington Recreation Ground now covers the site.

  5

  Methods and Instruments of Torture and Execution

  It is a serious mistake to consider instruments of torture as quaint relics of the past which can be viewed with amused detachment by those who visit castle dungeons or museums of crime and punishment. Torture, or the threat of it, has long been used as a means of breaking resistance and extracting information; doubtless it will continue to be used until such time as man moves onto a better and higher form of society.

  It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between an instrument of punishment and of torture or execution, so we will be fairly ecumenical and not too prescriptive in what we present below. It is likely that all the methods and instruments mentioned below have been employed in London in the past but that is not to say that they are unique to the metropolis. It is also likely that all of them, in similar or adapted form, have extracted their toll of human misery somewhere else in these islands.

  Hanging

  The earliest judicial hangings simply used the branch of a convenient tree. More permanent arrangements involved uprights and a crossbeam. The victims climbed a ladder and had a rope placed around their necks. When all was ready, the ladders were turned round and removed; hence the victims being ‘turned off ’. In the endless drive for greater efficiency, later on the victims were placed standing on a cart, likewise with a rope around their necks hanging from a crossbeam. The horse would then be whipped and as the cart shuttled away, the prisoners were left dangling in mid-air. In 1760 the device known as ‘the drop’ was introduced, first used at the Tower. Now the victim stood on a trap door on the scaffold. When the bolt was drawn, the trap door opened and the victim fell through to eternity. Some teething problems were encountered but when these were overcome, it was widely believed that the drop brought death to the victim more quickly.

  The London Dungeon on Tooley Street, London Bridge, dedicated to the display of punishments from London’s history.

  Hanging days were occasions for joyful revelry – at least for those who turned out to watch proceedings if not, of course, for the condemned prisoners, their friends and relations. Death by strangulation was slow – anything up to twenty minutes in some cases although unconsciousness came somewhat sooner. The crowds seem to have enjoyed watching the felon choking out the last few minutes of his life but sometimes they were thwarted in their voyeurism when, for an agreed sum, the hangman allowed the victim’s relations to pull on his legs, thereby shortening his suffering. To present-day tastes, the whole public performance and the rituals that went with it seem barbaric, especially since the victims often involuntarily evacuated their bladders and bowels.

  Beheading

  Beheading has been carried out with a sword or an axe. Very considerable skill is required by the executioner if beheading is to be done in such a way as to minimise the
suffering of the victim. Long and assiduous practice on dummies or animals in slaughterhouses was needed by the axeman because the neck presents only a small target for a rapidly descending axe brought down from over the back of the head. Likewise, decapitation with the sword can only be done effectively after a prolonged apprenticeship. It is in recognition of the fact that an expert wielding the sword or the axe can bring about an almost instantaneous death that these methods have been regarded as the prerogative of the high-born. The lower echelons of society have had to put up with the altogether slower and frequently more uncertain ministrations of the hangman.

  There was nothing very subtle about the headsman’s axe. Its action was basically like that of a chisel, crushing its way through the vertebrae by brute force as the heavy instrument descended on the neck. Its blunt edge is not intended for cutting but for breaking. It was all very well for the headsman to while away his spare time practising, but unfortunately even the most extrovert of operatives sometimes withered under the critical eye of the kind of people who turned up at executions. Some of the spectators were hardened veterans of hundreds of executions and they put the headsman’s performance under almost as much critical scrutiny as they bestowed on the behaviour and demeanour of the person being executed. Under these circumstances, headsmen sometimes became nervous and they might bungle the beheading, needing several blows with the axe to complete the operation. If this happened, it would be to an accompaniment of derisory scoffing from the audience and heart-rending screams of agony from the not-quite deceased. It was clearly in the latter’s interest to have the job completed as quickly and simply as possible and victims frequently offered the headsman money as an incentive to ensure a job well done.