Exactly the date at which the dreaded instrument at Tyburn assumed the form of the “Triple Tree” cannot be told. As has already been said, there is reason to believe that a permanent structure—“the common gallows” of the time—was set up in the district known as Tyburn in the closing years of the fourteenth century; and that the site was a little more eastward, beyond the present area of the Park, than the later place of execution.

What particular plan the earlier structure took can only be surmised. One is inclined to think that the gallows, like other and better inventions of civilisation, underwent stages of development; that from the branch of the growing elm the old gibbet, with its single beam and angle bar, was first devised, and that the two upright posts with the crossbeam followed. In all probability the gallows was then built high, so that the victim who paid the last penalty of the law swung clear above the heads of the crowd gathered to witness the execution.

No doubt this gruesome spectacle was intended to strike awe into the hearts of the beholders. But human nature, being a thing perverse, is not always understood. Its most disastrous result on the manners of the time was rather to glorify crime and criminal. A fitting end at Tyburn gave distinction to many a poor rogue who otherwise would have left the world unhonoured and forgotten. Four centuries of Tyburn’s rough justice did less for the suppression of crime than more enlightened and humane efforts have done in the course of comparatively few years.

The triangular plan had already been adopted in Shakespeare’s time, and probably long before, as references to it imply a common knowledge. In Love’s Labour Lost, one of his earlier plays, he has Biron saying:

In an old quarto of 1589 occurs the passage:2

Only thirteen years earlier, Gascoigne, strangely enough, speaks of “Tyborne Cross.”

The gallows where so many highwaymen of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were, in the phrase of the day, “turned off,” is shown in the drawings of Hogarth and a host of others, as well as in maps of contemporary date. At each of the three corners of a triangle a stout upright post was set in the ground. In some cases two cross beams are seen fastened to the tops of these posts, in others three, forming a sort of triangular enclosure. It was quite low, rising not more than twelve feet from the ground, and giving just enough room for the malefactor’s cart to pass beneath.

So thorough have been the measures taken to sweep Tyburn and all its associations out of the Metropolis, since the fashionable area of the town extended westward, that the particular spot on which stood the “Triple Tree” is also left uncertain. It can, however, be pretty closely approximated. It was never actually within the Royal Park, but was just beyond its northern boundary, standing back from the high road to Uxbridge, about a hundred yards west of the Marble Arch. A house near the corner of Connaught Square is believed to be built on the actual site of Tyburn gallows, which originally stood on the rise, where the ground was open to the Park. The “Triple Tree” was, however, moved to the triangular space now forming the entrance to the Edgware Road, early in the eighteenth century.

I do not know if ghosts are ever seen about Connaught Square. I can find no trace of spectral visitors disturbing the well-to-do people who pass their lives agreeably in this now fashionable quarter. But if there be any truth in psychical phenomena,—if, indeed, it be a fact that the unsubstantial shades of men love in the stillness of the night to revisit the scenes where they met a violent end,—surely they should marshal here, not singly nor in groups, but in whole battalions, creeping between the motor broughams which noiselessly come and go, or the busier traffic which runs along by Park Lane and Oxford Street.

When King Charles II. came back “to his own” in 1660, the triangular gallows at Tyburn was evidently a structure of respectable antiquity. Already it was known to all the populace by its nickname of the “Triple Tree,” which it kept for more than a century. Death was a common state at Tyburn; it was, however, reserved for this strange, easy-going, good-natured voluptuary to hang men who were already dead there.

Amid all the horrible scenes enacted at Tyburn, none are more ghastly than the stupid, purposeless indignities wreaked by Charles and his licentious Parliament, a year after his restoration, on the bodies of the regicides, whom death had withdrawn from his active vengeance. The story is briefly told in the little weekly sheet which served the purpose of a newspaper in those days:3

So the mutilated corpses of Cromwell, of Ireton, his statesmanlike general and brother-in-law, and Bradshaw, the president at the trial of Charles I., drawn in their shrouds from their tombs in the quiet of Henry the Seventh’s Chapel at the Abbey, gibbeted until sundown as objects for the ridicule and derision of a demoralised mob, and then decapitated, were flung “into a deep hole under the gallows.” And there they may remain until this day. Who knows? The cemetery for the unnamed dead, which extended from the fatal tree towards the Marble Arch, was dug up when hangings ceased on this spot, and it is probable that the unrecognised bones of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were in that process swept into oblivion. The heads had been spiked on poles in front of Westminster Hall.

The grave has gone; the remains have perished. No vestige of the honoured dead survives; in spite of Cromwell’s gorgeous funeral, his remains are not even located.

That is just where history awakens us from musings to the unexpected reality of things. Of all the vanities of life, assuredly the love of funeral pomp and show is the most vain; and that strange vanity Cromwell—hard, narrow, cold though he might be—seems to have shared to an extravagant degree. He had arranged for himself a gorgeous funeral, and one glances with amazement at the documents of the year 1658, when the burial of the Protector had to be put off from 9th November to 23rd November (he died on 3rd September) as the elaborate arrangements for the event could not be completed by the earlier date. During the short Protectorate of Richard Cromwell, sums were voted to the amount of £18,600 for expenses and mourning, and so many claims were brought forward for settlement, that nearly a year later, on 4th July 1659, a Committee was appointed to inquire into the money still owing. They reported that £19,303, 0s. 11d. was the properly audited account, and this merely for baize, cloth, velvet, and fringes. This sum represents about £80,000 of our present money; so that an estimate of £150,000 can hardly be too large for the expenses of Oliver Cromwell’s funeral.

Apart from these outrages on the dead, Tyburn witnessed the final scenes in the lives of two military officers, Hacker and Axtele, who had guarded Charles I., and of at least three of the judges, Okey, Barkstead, and Corbet, who had pronounced sentence upon him. Others of the regicides were done to death at Charing Cross, with all the barbarous additions of drawing, decapitating, and quartering. It seems singular that these revolting scenes, relics of an earlier and, one would have thought, a more brutal age, occasioned no condemnation from the finer spirits of the day. Old Pepys, amiable and gossipy on whatever subject passed under his notice, was only led by the executions to a pious and somewhat inapposite reflection, “Wonderful are the ways of Providence!” And the courtly Evelyn, who had the grace to secretly disapprove of them, contents himself with writing in his Diary:

In 1908 one of the former victims of Tyburn was canonised, a fact that brings the past and to-day into close proximity. The history of Oliver Plunket—a name well known in Ireland—is both romantic and sad.

Celebrated as a high-minded and high-living Archbishop of Armagh, Oliver Plunket ended his days at Tyburn in 1681, a victim of the “Popish Plot.” After spending more than two and a half years in dungeons, first in Dublin and then in Newgate, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered. His body was buried in St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields by Father Corker, who had been his companion in Newgate. His head was sent to Rome to Cardinal Howard, and brought back to Ireland in 1722, and is preserved in the Convent of Drogheda, which was founded by his great-niece. In fact, all honour was paid to his remains as relics. When Father Corker buried the body he cut off the arms, one of which was long preserved in Herefordshire, and one in the Franciscan Convent at Taunton. This priest afterwards sent the body to Germany, but when the English monks were expelled from that country in 1803, Plunket’s body was brought back to England, and buried at St. Gregory’s Monastery, Downside, Bath.

Truly a tragic history, and one fraught with so much valour and strength of character, that the Irish must feel proud of the dignity of canonisation now bestowed on their hero.

The Rye House Plot against the lives of Charles II. and his brother, then James, Duke of York, was the means of another distinguished man, Sir Thomas Armstrong, suffering an ignominious end on Tyburn’s fatal tree. Later, a further victim was claimed in Elizabeth Gaunt, who had sheltered one of the conspirators. After the failure of the plot Armstrong fled to Holland, but was seized at Leyden in 1684, and conveyed to England, swearing his innocence. He was taken before Judge Jefferies, and when again he insisted on his innocence, protested against the perjured evidence, and asked for nothing but the free course of the law, Jefferies said “he should have it to the full”; and so ordered his execution within six days. Like a common malefactor, the knight was dragged through the streets to Tyburn on a hurdle, and was there hanged and quartered. Bishop Burnett says that one of the quarters was sent to Stafford, which place Armstrong represented in Parliament.

The execution of Elizabeth Gaunt was a still more shameless affair, and bears witness to the degeneracy and brutal inhumanity of the times. She was then an old woman, well known for her good works in helping the afflicted and visiting the prisoners. Among those who took part in the Rye House Plot was one James Burton, for whose apprehension a reward was offered. Chance led him in the way of Elizabeth Gaunt, who assisted him to the utmost of her power, and sent him in a boat to Gravesend, whence he escaped to Amsterdam. He was supplied with a large sum of money by his benefactress. On Monmouth’s landing in England to raise the standard of rebellion in 1685, Burton came among his following, fought in the hopeless fight at Sedgemoor, and after the rout fled to London, where he took refuge in the house of John Fernley, a barber in Whitechapel.

Fernley was poor, and his creditors were troubling him. Yet, though he knew the Government were offering £100 for Burton, he would not betray him. The wretch, whom he was thus sheltering, had no such scruples. Finding that James II. was dealing out punishment more severely to those who sheltered rebels, than to the rebels themselves, he gave himself up to the Government, and tendered information against both Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt.

They were brought to trial, and Burton was the chief witness against them. Of Burton’s fate we learn nothing. Fernley was hanged, and for Elizabeth Gaunt was reserved the more dreadful end of death by fire. William Penn, the famous Quaker, who lies buried at Jordans, near Beaconsfield, and who during his life travelled far afield and founded Pennsylvania, went to Tyburn to witness the execution. He afterwards related that, when this poor woman had calmly disposed the straw about her in such a manner as to hasten the blaze and so shorten her sufferings, all the bystanders burst into tears.

Elizabeth Gaunt was the last woman who suffered death in England for a political offence.

Tyburn, however, enjoys such reputation—if that is the word—as still clings to the name, less from its nobler victims than from those darlings of the populace, the highwaymen of a later day, whose exploits were deservedly cut short by the hangman’s noose; and we must hurry on. One more State plot in the reign of William III. (Mary had been dead a year) had its sequel under the Triple Tree, and the affair is worth mention, because it throws a weird light on public manners so late as two centuries ago. This was the Assassination Plot, for alleged participation in which, Sir William Parkyns and Sir John Friend, a non-juror, were condemned to die.

Sir John Friend, whom Lord Macaulay describes as “a man who had made a very large fortune by brewing, and who spent it freely in sedition,” thought the whole thing so rash that he refused to join it from the first. Sir William Parkyns, old and gouty as he was, amassed arms at his country house sufficient for a troop of cavalry.

It was first suggested to assassinate William III. just as the royal coach was passing from Hyde Park, where Apsley House now stands, into the Green Park, but afterwards it was agreed to murder him when he was going to hunt at Richmond. The secret leaked out; the chase was given up at the last moment, and the chiefs of the conspiracy were sought for. Parkyns was found concealed in a garret in the Temple, and Friend at the house of a Quaker, where he had taken refuge. Lord Macaulay describes the final scene, which had some dramatic moments.

Scaffolding had been put up for the hanging, and an amphitheatre was formed around the gallows. It was known that a fashionable throng would assemble, and therefore everything was done to make them happy and comfortable, and to give them an opportunity of thoroughly enjoying the show. On these benches the wealthier spectators stood, row above row. When expectation was at its height, it was announced that the hanging was deferred. Rough words passed, and rougher actions followed. The mob broke up in bad humour, and not without many fights and broken noses between those who had given money for their places, and those who refused to return it.

So in the closing years of the seventeenth century the love of witnessing a gruesome spectacle was more rife than ever, and a public hanging still formed quite a fashionable entertainment; in fact, it became more and more so, until in Horace Walpole’s time it was the smart thing to visit the prisoners in Newgate and to be present at executions.

Newgate, which ultimately replaced Tyburn, and within whose walls the last hanging in the actual City of London took place, was only demolished in 1904. I well remember, not long before that, going over this gruesome and historical old pile. Many of the cells were just as they had been for centuries, but the most terrible of all were the dungeons. Our modern coal cellars are far preferable, for at least their walls are whitewashed and they are drained to frustrate the damp. These terrible dungeons at Newgate, with slanting floors, slanting walls, and slanting roofs, and almost without light and ventilation, had contained dozens of human beings, who were literally herded together, to live or die as chance might ordain. Plague and pestilence swept through those loathsome dens, and after seeing them on the eve of their destruction, one realised how easy it was to start the great plague of London from them alone.

The prisoners in Newgate in the eighteenth century were allowed to spend the money given them as they liked; and they often rigged themselves out in the height of fashion, in which practice their distinguished visitors encouraged them.

On the Sunday before their execution, the victims were permitted to receive visits from all their friends, who brought special gifts for the journey to Tyburn: a white cap with black ribbons, a prayer-book, a nosegay; and always an orange to hold in the hand as they sat on their own coffin, trundling along in the cart to the scaffold.

These same friends often lingered at the foot of the Triple Tree, when, the three-mile journey over, the sentence was carried out, in order to be at hand to hang on to the legs of the condemned and thus put a speedy end to his sufferings. Not so friendly was the purpose of the respectably-dressed women in deep mourning, who, professing to be the nearest of kin to the deceased, mingled in the crowd in the hope of securing the body for some anatomist.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century people began to travel farther afield. They were richer, more numerous, and more enterprising; they made journeys by coach to Bath and Cheltenham to drink the waters, or went out for the evening to Vauxhall Gardens to dine and gamble, dance and make merry. Fine clothes, costly jewels, and gambling gains were spoils easily disposed of, and highwaymen and footpads quickly followed in their wake. Naturally, places near the Metropolis were the most lucrative. If nothing of value was secured from the coach belonging to Lord A——, another coach owned by the Marquis of B—— soon passed by, and loot might be forthcoming; if not, the highwaymen waited for Mr. C——.

Outlying districts of London became unsafe at night, and Highgate, Hampstead, Richmond, Hounslow, and Shooter’s Hill were all hot-beds of robbery by these “gentlemen of the road.” Hyde Park and Knightsbridge came in for a share of petty larcenies and assaults by the meaner footpads and outlaws who lurked at many a dark corner, and few persons thought of going home by night except under escort, and with torches to light the gloom of the streets. It was a short life, if a desperate and at times a merry one. Of all the famous highwaymen who dangled on Tyburn gibbet, one finds few who lived to see the age of thirty.

Jack Sheppard, though not the romantic figure of the moonlit heath, but a meaner thief, must, I suppose, take pride of place. Never was there a more dare-devil character hanged at Hyde Park. Fielding and Harrison Ainsworth have glorified his career, and some of the facts of his life are told in a pamphlet published by Daniel Defoe at the request of Sheppard himself, containing a Narrative of all the Robberies, Escapes, etc., of John Sheppard. This, he declares, was “written by himselfe during his confinement in the Middle Stone Room” at Newgate. Says Jack:

Sheppard describes Mr. and Mrs. Wood as “strict observers of the Sabbath,” which he thought fit to spend in his own manner, and he fell into evil ways. For this he blamed Joseph Hind, who kept the “Black Lyon Alehouse in Drury-Lane.” Here he met Bess Lyon, who was his ruin, and for whose benefit most of his robberies were committed.

He asserts that his first crime was stealing two silver spoons from the Rummer Tavern in Charing Cross. In 1723 he describes being sent to the house of a Mr. Bains to do some carpentering, where he stole a roll of fustian (24 yards) from amongst others, and offered it for sale at 12d. per yard, but having no offers, he concealed it in his master’s house. In the following August he was making some shutters for Mr. Bains, and in the night entered by the cellar window, taking £14 worth of goods, and £7 in money. When he went next day he found the shop shut, and the Bains family in much trouble, in which he greatly sympathised. A fellow apprentice saw the fustian and told Mr. Wood, so Sheppard broke into Wood’s house in the night and took it away again, but the Bains family followed him up, and in spite of his own and his brother’s assertions of innocence, he was compelled to restore what remained.

From that time such a number of thefts and burglaries were committed that Jack Sheppard soon made a reputation. The Tyburn Chronicle, writing of this part of his life, says:

Later he made his headquarters in the Hampstead district, and committed a robbery in the Hampstead Road.

His clever escapes, when in prison for his many offences, stimulated the interest and admiration of the people. Confined in St. Giles’s Round House, he made a hole in the roof, from which he flung a cartload of stones on the people in the street below. Later, Bess Lyon was committed to the St. Anne’s Round House. Sheppard went to see her, and was promptly shut up there as an accomplice. He wrenched the bars from the window, and tying the blanket and sheet together, first let her down, and then followed himself.

Joseph Blake, alias Blueskin, and his brother Tom Sheppard decided to hire a stable at the Horse Ferry at Westminster, and there store their stolen goods until they could dispose of them. They took a man named Field, who had been indicted for felony and burglary (and found receiving a safer business), to see these goods, hoping he would buy them, but he only betrayed them to Jonathan Wild. Jack Sheppard, in his Narrative, says that Field broke into the stable, and stole some cloth he had himself stolen from Mr. Kneebone. Sheppard and Blueskin were arrested, and condemned to death. Sheppard managed to again escape, by breaking off a spike at the hatch where the prisoners came to speak with their friends. In the evening two acquaintances came to see him, and as he thrust his head and shoulders through the opening they managed to pull him out.

After this he went to Northampton to some relations, who did not give him a warm welcome. Committing more robberies, he then retired to Finchley. There he was again found, and brought to Newgate. He was put in the “Castle,” the strongest part; but his last escape had made such a commotion that crowds came to see him in gaol. However, the prison-breaker was so closely watched that they could not bring him an implement of any kind, but there were few who went away without giving him money.

On the 15th October 1724, immediately after his keeper had brought him dinner, Sheppard began to prepare for his flight. This he effected by making a hole in the chimney, and having wrenched the chain between his fetters, he was able with the broken links to pull an iron bar away. Making another hole in the chimney, he gained access by its means to the Red Room over the “Castle,” which had not been opened for seven years. Sheppard, however, pulled off the lock, and entered the Chapel. There fresh difficulties beset him. The doors resisted his efforts, and St. Sepulchre’s bells struck eight before he reached the leads. Looking round for means of descent, he found the house adjoining Newgate was the most suitable, but the leap was too dangerous, so he returned to the “Castle” and fetched a blanket, fixed it to the wall, and sliding down dropped to the leads as the clock struck nine. The garret door was open, but people were moving in the house until midnight, when he went downstairs and so into the street.

Two days after, he personally left at the house of Mr. Applebee, in Blackfriars (a printer), a letter saying that as he had cheated him out of the account of his execution, which would be a loss to his journal, Applebee might make what use he liked of the letter Jack Sheppard was then leaving.

He continued committing burglaries in London, one of which was in the house of Mr. Rawlins, a pawnbroker in Drury Lane. Mr. Rawlins realised there was somebody in the house. Sheppard, hearing him move, made a great noise and scuffling, and shouted, “Fire at the first man that comes!” All the time his accomplices were imaginary, as he was alone. By this ruse he got away. Soon after he appeared in his old haunts and amongst his old comrades, dressed in the height of fashion. On 31st October he dined with two friends, one of them Bess Lyon, and sent for his mother, who begged him to be cautious. This was his last piece of bravado. He had been drinking heavily, and, continuing his visits to ale-houses, was given up by a bar-keeper and removed to Newgate.

Famous beyond all his contemporaries, his visitors were even more numerous than before. Many people of high degree crowded to see him in his fetters. Sheppard entertained them with stories of his exploits. Even to the end he had hoped that his friends would rescue him. When he left the prison for Tyburn on the 16th November 1724, an open penknife was concealed in his pocket. Apparently, he intended to cut the rope that bound his hands, on his way to the gallows, and then throw himself over into the crowd and escape. But the penknife was discovered as he was leaving Newgate. He was too closely guarded for a rescue to be possible. He died “with much difficulty, and with uncommon pity from all spectators.”

The British Journal of 21st November 1724 records that a bailiff in Long Acre having procured Sheppard’s body for the purpose of dissection, the friends of the young desperado caused a great riot in Long Acre, and Justices of the Peace being summoned, they sent to the Savoy (then a Royal Palace) with a request that a party of Footguards might be despatched. The chief promoters were seized, and the body handed to a gentleman who asked that he might be permitted to see to its proper burial. The mob had fought over the corpse at Tyburn, where a man was waiting with a hearse to take it decently to a grave already prepared in St. Sepulchre’s. But the bailiff above mentioned had reported that he was employed by surgeons, and pretended to rescue the body from them.

Thus ended the famous Jack Sheppard.

Of a different stamp to Jack Sheppard, and a much greater ruffian, was his little less notorious contemporary Jonathan Wild. This man was a product of the age and of the extraordinary remissness of the law, which made his operations both possible and profitable. The smallest thefts, if only of the value of one shilling, were punishable then, and long afterwards, by death. Nothing shows more strikingly, how remote we of this twentieth century are from the cruelty and harshness of only a century ago, than the short extracts which it is the custom of some of the older London newspapers, The Times and The Observer among them, to reprint from their issues of a hundred years back. Time after time you read, packed away in a few lines, as though of little concern, the proceedings at the Old Bailey Sessions, thus: “Joseph Bailey, convicted of the theft of spoons. Death.” Again, “Henry Trudwick, convicted of the theft of an embroidered waistcoat. Death.” Even the abstraction of a pocket-handkerchief has sufficed to bring a lad to the gallows.

Every Sunday morning in sessions, the box for the condemned in Newgate prison chapel was crowded with wretches, who were to die on the morrow. Looking over the galleries and shouting down encouragement to them, with many oaths and much blasphemy, was another group, equally large. These were awaiting trial and sentence, and were soon to fill the empty places. Executions were so common that the few newspapers of the eighteenth century took no trouble to record them, save when the harvest of death was unusually large, or some picturesque villain by his dashing exploits filled the public eye, and a far-spreading crowd gathered to see his exit from the stage.

The rigour with which capital punishment was applied to almost every crime sent troops of victims to Tyburn’s “triple tree.” Also it became responsible for many ill-favoured ruffians escaping penalty of any kind. But while the criminal code was remorseless in its treatment of the meaner offender, it took no account of the man who was responsible for inciting and abetting him, the “fence,” or receiver of stolen goods. It made no attempt to reach him. That finer subtlety of the law, the “compounding of a felony,” was a much later abstraction; and a feature of the newspapers of the day was the list of advertisements from people whose property had been stolen, and who were quite willing to pay handsomely for its return. Some of them are quaint reading, as this from The Postman (from Tuesday, 25th June, to Thursday, 27th June 1706):

Another in the Daily Courant, 10th September 1706, runs thus:

An advertisement from The Postman of the date before given strikes at higher game:

There is suppressed agony in this plaint of a tradesman in the Mercurius Politicus (Thursday, 21st October, to Thursday, 28th October 1658):

Jonathan Wild did a flourishing business as a receiver and restorer—for reward—of stolen goods to their proper owner. A system that existed of giving certain rewards for information concerning various offences provided him with a lucrative profession. For instance:

Information of Highway robbery was rewarded by £40, the horse, arms, furniture, and money belonging to the robber; and a Tyburn Ticket, which he could transfer for the sum of £25 or £30.

Particulars of a burglary gained the informant £40 and a Tyburn Ticket.

Information of horse-stealing was rewarded by a Tyburn Ticket.

Of cattle-stealing, £10.

Wild’s transactions, in fact, became so great a menace to the public safety that they were the cause of the first Act directed against thieves’ “fences” being placed on the Statute Book. In his case, the temptation of doing a little thieving on his own account proved too strong, and it was this, after a nefarious career only too protracted, that brought him eventually to the gallows at Tyburn.

One story told of him is that a lady went in her sedan-chair to pay a visit in Piccadilly. The chairmen left the beautiful verni martin painted coach at the door, and waited for her return at a neighbouring alehouse. While they were drinking, the chair, with the velvet seat and furniture, was carried off. The chairmen immediately applied to Wild, and after taking his usual fee of a crown, he told them he would consider the matter, and desired them to call in a day or two. They went at the time appointed, when Wild insisted upon a considerable reward, which they paid him. Then he bade them be sure to attend the prayers of Lincoln’s Inn Chapel the next morning. They went there accordingly, and were equally surprised and pleased to find their lady’s chair under the piazzas of the Chapel, with the seats and furniture in the same condition as when it was stolen.

Even after sentence Wild hoped that he would be freed. As a circumstance in his favour he mentioned that he had himself handed over forty criminals to justice. This did him no good, but incensed the populace against him. While awaiting execution he took laudanum in his cell with the hope of suicide, and was still under its influence on arriving at Tyburn. The hangman told him to prepare himself, and left him sitting in the cart. But the mob became so unmanageable at the delay, that the hangman was obliged hurriedly to carry out his office. Jonathan Wild was executed 25th May 1725, and was buried at two o’clock the next morning at St. Pancras Churchyard, but his body was afterwards removed for dissection.

The London Journal, Saturday, 29th May 1725, says:

Other adventurers who paid the penalty to outraged justice at Tyburn were Henry Simms, who declared he had swallowed the rings he had stolen “wrapped in the skin of a duck’s leg, well buttered”; “Sixteen String Jack,” or more correctly, John Rann; Jack Hall, the chimney-sweeper; John Smith, who, waiting about at Paddington hoping to steal something, felt his heart fail him when he saw the gallows at Tyburn, but his accomplice kept him to his purpose; and Kingsmill, Perin, and Fairall, the smugglers. Perin was ordered only to be hanged and afterwards buried, and Kingsmill and Fairall to be hung in chains,—a gruesome adjunct to that sentence being that the bodies first received a coating of black pitch. Perin was saying to his companions that he lamented their cases, when Fairall smilingly replied:

“We shall be hanging in the sweet air, when you are rotting in your grave.”

These gangs of highwaymen, footpads, burglars, and common thieves had a curious dialect of their own, a few words of which and their equivalents may be taken from the vocabulary given in the Tyburn Chronicle:

The highwayman struck at big game, and persons of the highest “quality”—to adopt the phrase of the day—did not consider it in any way derogatory to display the keenest interest in him. The darling of the lower orders needed only a dashing exploit or two to his credit, and a hair’s-breadth escape from the armed men sent to track him down, to make him equally the darling of the drawing-room. Fine ladies went to see him in chains at Newgate, often to condole with him, and give him money. Horace Walpole grows quite enthusiastic over MᶜLean, a former grocer of Welbeck Street, who took to the road, and in the course of his depredations relieved Walpole of his watch and sword. The circumstances of the robbery are told in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1749: