Hanging in Chains

This arrangement enabled the designer of the building to form a vault in the centre, lighted by a small loop. It had an entrance, or “eye,” in the crown, at the crossing of the ribs, through which were swept from time to time the bones and fragments that fell from above, the ossuarium, or charnel-house, being cleared out, as necessity dictated, through a doorway level with the outside ground on the further or sinister side of the building. It must have been a thing quite unique in the world, somewhat recalling the Towers of Silence of the Parsees.

The mode of operation was as follows:—

The executioner, in his rayed and party-coloured habit of red and yellow, mounted the ladder, placed opposite a convenient space, backwards, holding in his hand the slack ends of three cords placed round the culprit’s neck; two of these cords, “les tortouses,” had slip-knots. The wretch under treatment was encouraged to follow “le maistre des haultes œuvres,” driven up after him—no doubt with blows and execrations, according to the Gallic fashion—and drawn forward by him by means of the third cord, “le jet.” Arrived at the proper height, the operator, the mediæval “Monsieur de Paris,” rapidly attached the “tortouses” to the gallows, or chain pendent from it, and, twisting the “jet” firmly round his arm, by means of this, and the action of his knee, threw the culprit off the ladder into mid-air; the knots of the “tortouses” ran home, and the man was strangled. The executioner then gripped the crossbeam, and, placing his feet in the loop formed by the bound hands of the patient, by dint of repeated vigorous shocks terminated his sufferings.[37]

It may not be questioned that death under the circumstances and complicated conditions above described cannot have been other than a very shocking spectacle, and particularly when it is noticed from the arrangement of the chains that many a malefactor may in his agony have broken loose from his bonds, and clutched and grappled in his last moments with a decaying carcass at his side.

We can gather a further idea of the strange and dismal appearance of the Gibbet of Montfaucon, if we consider that the quantity of bodies attached to it, and ceaselessly renewed, attracted thousands of carrion birds to the spot. But that its hideous aspect and pestilential surroundings prevented not the establishment, in its immediate vicinity, of places of amusement and debauch, one would almost have been slow to believe were it not for the testimony of ancient poetry:—

So wrote Villon—also called Corbeuil,—in the middle of the fifteenth century. We shall have occasion, later on, to show that human nature on the hill of Montfaucon, in the darkness of the Middle Ages, was the same as human nature in a great English midland town in the enlightened nineteenth century.

Monsieur de Lavillegille tells us that there was another and a smaller gibbet, not far from Montfaucon, called “Le gibet de Montigny.”[39] This was to supply the place of the great scarecrow, when the latter was under repair, because, of course, Justice never stands still. The bodies of men decapitated, quartered, torn to pieces by horses, or boiled, were hung up in sacks of sackcloth or leather; such as committed suicide also,[40] and lay figures of persons condemned in contumaciam. The corpse of the great Captain Coligny, who was killed in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572, was hung up by the heels at the gibbet of Montfaucon. L’Etoile reports that Catherine de Medecis—“pour repâitre ses yeux”—went to view him one evening.

It was the custom in France to try, condemn, and hang on the gibbet, in human clothing, certain animals under special circumstances. So a sow, who had killed a child, was hung up at Montigny. A bull was similarly tried and condemned for killing a man, but whether the beast was gibbeted is not recorded. It may be that the difficulty and inconvenience of carrying the matter out, or perhaps the trouble to obtain garments large enough, caused our fantastic neighbours to draw the line at the bull. But we may fairly admire the principle of mediæval times, which seems to have been that justice should be meted out equally both to man and beast. It is pleasant to know that in many English towns at the present day societies are active in seeing that not only simple justice, but, what is much better for them, mercy also, is dealt out to the poor dog, the poor horse, the necessary or unnecessary cat, and other harmless, helpless creatures.

Chapter IV.

In Spain the body remained usually upon the gallows after execution, the gallows thus becoming the gibbet. The following story is an exemplification of this practice:—

“It was my fortune at St. Domingo to enter the Town-Church: accompanied with two French Puppies, mindful to shew me a miraculous matter.

“Where, when come, I espied over my head, opposite to the great Altar, two milk-white Hens enravelled in an Iron Cage, on the inner-side of the Porches Promontore. And demanding why they were kept? or what they signified? Certain Spaniards replyed come along with us, and you shall see the Story; and being brought to the (Choro) it was drawn thereon as followeth. The Father and the Son, two Bourboneons of France, going in Pilgrimage to St. James, it was their lot to Lodg here in an Inn: Where supper ended, and reckoning paid, the Host perceiving their denariate Charge, he entered their Chamber, when they were asleep, and in Bed, conveying his own Purse in the young man’s Budget.

“To-morrow early; the two innocent Pilgrims, footing the hard bruising way, were quickly over-hied by the Justice; where the Host making search for his Purse, found it in the Sons bagg. Whereupon instantly, and in the same place he was hanged, and left hanging there, seizing on their money by a Sentential forfeiture.

“The sorrowful Father (notwithstanding) continued his Pilgrimage to Compostella. Where, when come, and Devotion made, our Lord of Mount Serata appeared to him saying: Thy prayers are heard, and thy Groans have pierced my heart, arise, and return to Saint Domingo, for thy Son liveth. And he accordingly returned, found it so, and the Son-hanged Monster, after thirty days absence, spoke thus from the Gallows, Father go to our Host, and shew him I live, then speedily return. By which direction the old man entered the Town, and finding the Host at Table, in breaking up of two roasted Pullets, told him, and said: My son liveth, come and see. To which the smiling Host replyd, he is as surely alive on the Gallows, as these two Pullets be alive in the Dish. At which Protestation, the two fire-scorched Fowls leapt out suddenly alive, with Heads, Wings, Feathers, and Feet, and kekling took flight thrice about the Table. The which amazing sight, made the astonished Host to confess his guiltiness, and the other relieved from the Rope, he was hung up in his place, allotting his house for a Hospitality to Pilgrims for ever.”[41]

Having an opportunity we made inquiries in Holland. In that country the procedure seems to have been much the same as in France. Our very obliging correspondent informs us:—

“I am convinced that criminals remained for a long time fastened to the gallows after the execution. I have in my possession a copy of an old judgment, dating 1595, which, in my opinion, gives full evidence of what I advance, as this criminal also remained there a long time afterwards. It is written in old Dutch, but let me try to translate it, perhaps it may interest you:—‘The Sheriffs of the city of Leyden,—Whereas the demand and conclusion done and taken by Lot. E. Huygengael, Mayor of this city, against and on account of the dog of Jan Janz van den Poel, named “Troeveetie,” or by any other name that it might be called, whether by name or surname, at present being in prison. Whereas the information given by M. Eyssler for this purpose, as well as the prisoner’s own confession, given without torture or rack. Giving sentence and justice we have of high authority and on behalf of the county of Holland and West-Friesland, condemned it (the dog), by these presents, to be brought into the yard of Graefstyn, in this city, where criminals are usually punished, and that it may there, by the executioner, be hung by means of a string on the gallows, between heaven and earth, so that death may ensue; further, that its dead body be dragged on a stretcher into the gallows-field, and that there it be suspended to the gallows in horrification for all other dogs, and as an example to everybody. We further declare all his assets, if it owns any, to be forfeited and confiscated in favour of the county of Holland and West-Friesland. Actum in the public court of Justice—the “Doomstool”—in the presence of all the Aldermen, May 25, 1595.’

“This dog had bitten J. J. van den Poel’s baby, when playing at his uncle’s house, where the child was holding in his hand a piece of meat, which the dog had seized, and so bitten the child, and thus inflicted a wound on the two fingers of the right hand, through the skin to the flesh, making the blood pour out of the wound, and causing the child to die from this world by the terror thus produced within a few days afterwards.”[42]

Chapter V.

From the stony horrors of Paris, and the serio-grotesque doings of the Batavians, it will be a relief to turn to the imagery of the “Inspired Dreamer”:—

“Now I saw in my dream, that they went on until they were come to the place that Simple, and Sloth, and Presumption, lay and slept in, when Christian went by on pilgrimage: and behold they were hanged up in irons, a little way off on the other side.”

This was written between 1660 and 1670. It is to be observed that the expression is “irons,” and not chains, and that the fact is mentioned in a simple, natural way, as if the mode of punishment was quite usual for grave offences. Christiana says—“They should never be bewailed by me; they have but what they deserve: and I think it well that they stand so near the highway, that others may see and take warning.” And she suggests that their crimes should be engraved on an iron or brass plate, and left “for a caution to other bad men,” which Greatheart told her had already been done. But Mercy, with a lack of tenderness which her name and fine earnest character do not bespeak, cries out, “No, no, let them hang, and their names rot, and their crimes live for ever against them!”

The crimes in question were combination against the truth, and opposition unto holiness, figuratively deserving the highest punishment that could be awarded.

In that strange, shameful, and scarce book, “Le Moyen de Parvenir,” by Beroalde de Verville, it is recorded that when Charles V. made his entry into Douai, the inhabitants set up triumphal arches and like embellishments. At the last moment they bethought themselves of a wretch who was gibbeted hard by the gate of the principal entrance. Him they therefore dressed in a clean white shirt, to do honour to the emperor.[43] It will be noticed that they did not take the body away, which would have been easier; that would have been illegal.

Before proceeding further it must be stated, as it were to clear the ground, that there were certain treasonable offences for which women might be convicted, and it is to the credit of the English law that the solemn and terrible sentence was not carried out upon them in its fulness, so that, both for high treason and petit treason, the sentence ordered merely drawing to the gallows and burning alive. This sentence was modified in 30 George III. (1791) to drawing, hanging, and dissecting. It is similarly to the credit of humanity that the bodies of women were not publicly exposed on gibbets in irons and chains.

In France the same feelings of respect and propriety prevented the hanging of women at the “fourches patibulaires.” The sentence for grave offences was that of “la fosse,” or burying alive, usually in front of the gibbet.

It will be convenient now to give a variety of examples further illustrating the subject specially under our notice.

We learn from the parish registers of Bourne, in Cambridgeshire, that Richard Foster, his wife, and his child, were buried on Shrove Wednesday, 1671. All three were murdered on the preceding Sunday by a miscreant named George Atkins. He evaded the law for seven years, but was finally captured, hung, and gibbeted on Caxton Common, adjoining Bourne.

In 1674 Thomas Jackson, a notorious highwayman, was executed for the murder of Henry Miller. He was hung in chains on a gibbet set up between two elm trees on Hampstead Heath, one of which still remains, known as “Gallows Tree.” Jackson left a “Recantation,” which was printed in quarto form immediately after his death. In this rare tract “is truly discovered the whole mystery of that Wicked and Fatal Profession of Padding in the Road.”

In 1687 a person named Bunbury was barbarously murdered by one Loseby, who was caught almost red-handed, executed, and hung in chains on the top of a tumulus on the Watling Street Road, about four miles from Rugby. The spot is marked in Beighton’s map of Warwickshire, from a survey made in 1725, as “Loseby’s Gibbet.” The tumulus was demolished—as so many others unfortunately have been—in the latter part of the last century, on the making of a turnpike road between Daintry and Lutterworth.[44] In modern maps the site of the tumulus is forgotten, and the spot being now known as “Gibbet Hill,” the ancient history is wiped out, or, perhaps, to put it more justly, one kind of history replaces another, as it ever has done, in the revolutions of time, and an entirely new train of thoughts is called up.

In 1690 one William Barwick, while out walking with his wife at Cawood, a few miles south of York, threw her into a pond, drowned her, drew her out, and buried her then and there, in her clothes. Barwick’s brother-in-law’s suspicions arose, and inquiries were set about; the man confessed, and was duly tried, condemned, and executed at York, and hung in chains by the side of the fatal pond. The curious part of this case was that Barwick’s brother-in-law was urged to move in the matter in consequence of his having seen, or fancied he saw—it was all the same in, and long after, the time of Matthew Hopkins[45]—a few days after the murder, the ghost of his sister, by the side of the water, at twelve o’clock in the daytime! And his deposition to that effect was taken before the Lord Mayor on the day preceding the trial.[46]

Probably if Barwick had not confessed, his case, in those times, against such evidence as this, would have been quite hopeless.

When the convicted man mounted the gallows he naïvely told the hangman that he hoped the rope was strong enough, because, he said, if it broke with his weight, he would fall to the ground, and become a cripple for life. His apprehensions were quieted by the hangman’s assurance that he might venture upon the rope with perfect confidence. And so it turned out, for it was, as American speculators would say, a “spot” transaction.

For examples in the early years of the eighteenth century, the following will suffice; they show how thick the gibbets were near London.

Edward Tooll, executed on Finchley Common, Feb., 1700, and afterwards hung in chains.—Michael Von Berghem, and another, executed at the Hartshorne Brewery, June, 1700, and hung in chains, between Mile End and Bow.—William Elby, executed at Fulham, in the town, Aug., 1707, and hung in chains there.—Hermann Brian, executed in St. James’s Street, near St. James’s House, Oct., 1707, and hung in chains at Acton Gravel Pits.—Richard Keele, and William Lowther, executed on Clerkenwell Green, 1713, conveyed to Holloway, and there hung in chains.—John Tomkins, executed at Tyburn, Feb., 1717, with fourteen other malefactors, and hung in chains.—Joseph Still, executed on Stamford Hill Road, and hung in chains in the Kingsland Road.—John Price, executed in Bunhill Fields, and hung in chains near Holloway, 1717.[47]

Chapter VI.

It will be recollected that one of the most interesting of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, “The Pirate,” is founded upon a case of piracy in the Orkneys, in 1725.[48] The captain, John Gow, and his crew, were secured, with much courage and address, by a patriotic inhabitant, James Fea, and the prisoners were prosecuted by the High Court of Admiralty. The remarkable part of this affair was that, on Gow “standing mute,” that is, refusing to plead, the judge ordered that he should be brought to the bar and his thumbs squeezed by two men with a whipcord until it broke; that it should be doubled, and then trebled, and that the operators should pull with their whole strength. This discipline Gow endured with much fortitude, but when he had seen the preparations for pressing him to death—the peine forte et dure,—until he died, or pleaded, his courage gave way,—few men, especially bad ones, can look unflinchingly into the dark valley,—and he said he would not have given so much trouble if he could have been assured of not being hung in chains. He was convicted, hung, and gibbeted in the chains he so much dreaded.

Apropos of the peine forte et dure, in March, 1674, a man living at Cannock was arraigned at the Stafford Assizes for the murder of his father, mother, and wife. He refused to plead, but was adjudged guilty. For his contumacy he was sentenced to undergo the peine forte et dure, or, in other words to be pressed to death. This was carried out, as appears from a picture in the Salt Library at Stafford, showing the unhappy wretch lying on the floor, with a board on his chest covered with a number of heavy weights.[49]

This must have been a more dreadful agony, while it lasted, than the “little ease” or the “rack.” The severity of the latter engine is sufficiently attested by the signatures of Guy Fawkes before and after that ordeal.[50]

In 1726 Mrs. Catherine Hayes was burnt alive, doubtless for high or petit treason.[51]

We gather from Howell’s State Trials that when the English Regency made an order, in 1742, to hang the body of the murderer of Mr. Penny in chains, they inserted therein that it was on the petition of the relatives of the deceased.[52]

In 1742 John Breeds a butcher of Rye, conceived a violent animosity against Mr. Thomas Lamb of the same place, and, as the old Statute of High Treason would put it, “compassed and imagined” his death. The opportunity seemed to present itself on the night of March 17th, on the occasion of Mr. Lamb being about to see a friend off by ship to France. But, changing his mind at the last moment, he requested his neighbour, Mr. Grebble, to take his place, which he did. Breeds, or, as he is called on Mr. Grebble’s tombstone, the “sanguinary butcher,” sharpened his knife and took his station in the shadowy churchyard, and soon rushed on the unsuspecting Mr. Grebble, and mortally stabbed him. The unfortunate victim had strength enough to reach his house, and sit himself in a chair, out of which he very soon fell, and died, to the great consternation of his servant, who was at once suspected of being the murderer. The conduct of Breeds, however, soon cleared up all doubts upon this point. He was tried, and found guilty, and condemned to death, and to be hung in chains. For this purpose a gibbet was set up in a marsh at the west end of the town now called “Gibbet Marsh.” The carcass of Breeds swung for many years on the morass, and when all but the upper part of the skull had dropped away, the chains and frame were rescued by the Corporation of Rye, and have, by lapse of time, acquired a kind of grim interest, if not exactly to “adorn a tale,” at least “to point a moral.”

In 1747 Christopher Holliday was beaten to death with his own staff by a cold-blooded savage, Adam Graham, on Beck Moor, near Balenbush, on the English side of the Border. Graham was executed at Carlisle, and his body hung in chains upon a gibbet twelve yards high, on Kingmoor, with twelve thousand nails driven into it to prevent it being swarmed, or cut down, and the body carried off. The murderer left a confession of several other crimes, which was published at the time in pamphlet form, and had a large sale.

The smugglers also fell into the dire clutches of the law for the good reason that their vulgar atrocities deserved the highest punishment. They were not graceful villains like Claud Duval, that hero of the mob, who is said—but by disinterested witnesses—to have quite charmed the victims while he broke two of the commandments. Thus William Carter, smuggler and murderer, was executed and hung up in chains near Rake, on the Portsmouth road, in 1749.[53] Four others, concerned in the same crime, were similarly gibbeted. One of the leg pieces of Carter’s irons is in the collection of Lady Dorothy Nevill. Implicated in this affair—namely, the robbery of the Custom House at Poole, and the murder of Mr. Galley and Mr. Chater—was William Jackson. He, also, was condemned to be hung, and gibbeted in chains; but the poor wretch was so ill, and horror-struck when they measured him for his irons, that he died of fright. His body was thrown into a hole near Carter’s gibbet. A memorial stone, with a long inscription recording the crime in which so many suffered, was set up on the spot in 1749, and still remains.

Under the pressure of a belief in the extraordinary delusion of witchcraft, a harmless and aged couple at Tring,—who had been removed from the workhouse to the church for safety,—were seized and so shockingly handled and ducked by a mob at Long Marston, near Tring, in 1751, that the woman, Ruth Osborne, died on the spot. The ringleader, Thomas Colley, was tried at Hertford, when the revolting particulars of the barbarities were proved. He was taken for execution to Gubblecote Cross, in Long Marston parish, thirty miles from Hertford, and so great was the infatuation, and sympathy for the man who had “destroyed an old wicked woman that had done so much mischief by her witchcraft,” that a strong escort of horse was necessary. The body of Colley was afterwards hung in chains on the same gallows, the people of Long Marston, many of whom were present at the murder, having petitioned against the gibbeting near their houses.[54]

Chapter VII.

By this time, as we have seen, it had gradually become usual for the court, in atrocious cases, to direct that the murderer’s body should be hung upon a gibbet in chains, near the place where the fact was committed; but this was no part of the legal judgment.[55] By an Act of 25 George II. (1752) gibbeting in chains was first legally recognized. By this statute it was enacted that the body should, after sentence delivered and execution done, be given to the surgeons to be dissected and anatomized, and that the judge may direct the body to be afterwards hung in chains, but in no wise to be buried without dissection.[56]

But still the gibbeting did not form, as it never has formed, part of the legal sentence.[57] The judge could direct it to be carried out by a special order to the sheriff,[58] and this was sometimes done—as we have seen in the case of Mr. Penny’s murder in 1741—on the petition of the relatives of the deceased. The theory was that the body was at the disposal of the Crown, and that an order to hang in chains would be granted on application to the proper authorities. This post-mortem revengement was thought to be a singular great comfort to the relatives of the murdered man. The Roman law also permitted the murderer’s body to remain on the gibbet after execution, as a comfortable sight to the relatives of the deceased:—“Famosos latrones, in his locis, ubi graffati sunt, furca figendos placuit: ut et conspictu deterreantur alii, et solatio sit cognatis interemptorum.”[59]

The Act of 1752 seems to have cleared the way considerably, and from this date gibbetings rapidly increased. It may here be recalled that the idea of being gibbeted was ever a very terrifying one to the sufferer, and many a strong man who had stood fearless under the dread sentence broke down when he was measured for his irons. We may inquire a little what was in prospect for the caitiff that made the iron so to enter into his soul.

At Newgate, which no doubt gave the example to other prisons, it was the custom, after execution, to convey the body into a place grimly called “the Kitchen.” Here stood a caldron of boiling pitch, and into this the carcass was thrown. It was shortly after withdrawn, placed in the chains, and these cold-rivetted—truly enough “fast bound in misery and iron.” We can picture the brutal work, with, no doubt, the coarse jesting, when the dead malefactor was finally rivetted up in what was called “his last suit.”

Occasionally the bodies were put into sacks, and so hung up. In France also, men in the fifteenth century were drowned in sacks of leather; hence the term “gens de sac et de corde” for evilly-disposed persons at the present day.

It is well known—for there is frequent allusion to it in the literature of the time—that travellers approaching London and other large cities, in the last century, were offended, both in sight and in other ways, by the number of dingy, dead, iron-bound bodies that welcomed them. In remote parts a gibbet had the effect of diverting the slender traffic—at least when night set in. Belated wayfarers were grieved by the horrid grating sound as the body in the iron frame swung creaking to and fro. Thus Shakespeare:—

And in the daytime these odd features in an English landscape often proved an attraction to flippant sporting men.

On the banks of the Thames, opposite Blackwall, hung the bodies of numerous pirates. The Rev. T. Mozeley, in his “Reminiscences,” tells us that “the only inhabitants of the Isle of Dogs that I ever saw were three murderers hanging from a gibbet.” A correspondent tells us “they looked like scarecrows.” One of Hogarth’s pictures of “The Idle Apprentice” series shows the pirates hanging in the distance.[62] In later times, in the windows of the waterside taverns at Blackwall, “spy-glasses,” or what Robinson Crusoe called “perspective glasses,” were fixed for people to enjoy the spectacle; similarly the Greenwich pensioners on the Hill used to exhibit the gibbeted pirates on the opposite side of the river, in the Isle of Dogs, through telescopes; and when the bodies were removed by legislative enactment, some of the forward newspapers of the day made an outcry that the holiday-makers were deprived of their amusements.[63]

In the same manner, at Northampton, on the occasion of the last public execution there, in 1852, thousands of people gathered together, and were painfully disappointed and turbulent when they found the day had been changed. Some of these worthies said if they could only get at the under-sheriff “they would let him know what it was to keep honest folk in suspense,” one old woman loudly declaring that she should claim her expenses from the authorities.[64] The New Drop set up at the Northampton County Gaol in 1818 was of such ample capacity that it was proudly described by the governor as efficient for the hanging of twelve persons “comfortably.”[65]

Chapter VIII.

In 1752 Captain Lowry suffered at Execution Dock, and was hung in chains by the side of the Thames, doubtless for piracy; and in the same year John Swan was executed at Chelmsford and hung in chains in Epping Forest.

In 1764 William Corbett was executed on Kennington Common. His body was “fixed in irons”—a new expression—and hung upon Gallery Wall, between Rotherhithe and Deptford. Eighteen years earlier the gallant young rebel, Jemmy Dawson, had been hung, drawn, and quartered on the same common for “the —45.” A young lady—“dear Kitty, peerless maid!”—died of a broken heart on the day of his execution.

On November 16, 1766, Thomas Parker called on his way from Penrith Market at a small inn at Carlton. Being somewhat the worse for drink,[67] the landlord urged him to remain, but the shaggy sot pressed on his way, and was murdered the same night. The affair caused an extraordinary local interest among a population who had not forgotten the shocking incidents of the punishments for the Rebellion of twenty years before. The poor muddled man had been beaten to death by one Thomas Nicholson, after a violent struggle with the assassin. The murderer, upon strong circumstantial evidence, was sentenced to be executed, and his body to be hung in chains near where the crime was committed. It so hung for many years, slowly dropping to pieces, until on one stormy night the gibbet was blown down. Shortly after some humane persons from Edenhall came and gathered the desolate bones together, wrapped them in a winnowing-sheet—it sounds like an episode from the Apocrypha, like a good deed of Tobit—and laid them in a grave. The spot was long after distinguished by the letters, large and legible, deeply cut in the turf, “T. P. M.,” signifying “here Thomas Parker was murdered.”[68]

The hanging in chains of a man named Corbet, of Tring, who murdered Richard Holt in 1773, is noteworthy, as the last instance of gibbeting in the county of Buckingham.[69]

A notorious highwayman, John Whitfield, was executed and gibbeted on Barrock, near Wetheral, Cumberland, about the year 1777. It is said that he was gibbeted alive, and that the guard of a passing mail-coach put him out of his misery by shooting him. If this were true the guard was clearly guilty of murder. We shall have occasion to revert to this question. Later, a sergeant was reduced to the ranks for shooting at the dead body in chains of Jerry Abershaw, a notorious brigand, on Wimbledon Common.[70]

In the year 1785 the Rev. Thomas Kerrich made sketches of two men hanging in chains upon one gibbet on Brandon Sands, Suffolk. At the present day all other record both of the men (May and Tybald), their crimes, and their punishment, has, like the coral worm of the completed reef, utterly passed away; all has succumbed to “the tooth of time, and razure of oblivion.” The gibbet post is shown bound with iron bands to prevent cutting down.

About the middle of the last century three men who robbed the north mail near the Chevin, over against Belper, were all executed and hung in chains on one gibbet on the top of the mountain. “Now then, you three, hang there, and be a sign.”[71]

It is recorded that a friendly hand set fire one night to the gibbet which, with all three bodies well saturated with pitch, was burnt to ashes, leaving only the irons and chains remaining.[72]

Not unduly to multiply instances we may hurry on to 1788. In this year the postboy between Warrington and Northwich was robbed by William Lewin. This was still a capital offence, but the culprit evaded justice for three years. Being finally overtaken he was executed at Chester, and his body hung in chains on the highest point of Helsby Tor, eight miles from Chester, and visible, as it was said, “with glasses,” even from the Peak of Derbyshire. It was evidently believed that the whole country round would see and take warning.[73]

There were then three gibbets between Liverpool and Warrington.

But the system, like all violent systems, was not deterrent—indeed, a multitude of men hanging in chains seems to affect the spectator rather as a curious sight than as the necessary and proper consequence of transgression.