“The Hon. Horatio Walpole, brother to the Earl of Orford, who was robbed by two men on the 7th (of Nov.) in Hyde Park, when a pistol going off shot through the coach, and scorched his face, received a letter from the robbers, intimating their concern for the accident, and their apprehension of the consequences at that time; and that, if he would send, to a place named, a person would be there to deliver his watch, sword, and coachman’s watch, if he would, on his honour, send 40 guineas in less than an hour to the same place, with threats of destruction if he did not. But he did not comply, though he afterwards offered 20, the sum they fell to in a second letter.”
Horace Walpole writes in 1750 to Horace Mann:
“I have been in town for a day or two, and heard no conversation but about MᶜLean, a fashionable highwayman, who is just taken, and who robbed me among others; as Lord Eglinton, Sir Thomas Robinson of Vienna, Mrs. Talbot, etc. He took an odd booty from the Scotch Earl, a blunderbuss, which lies very formidably upon the justice’s table. He was taken by selling a laced waistcoat to a pawnbroker, who happened to carry it to the very man who had just sold the lace. His history is very particular, for he confesses every thing, and is so little of a hero, that he cries and begs, and I believe, if Lord Eglinton had been in any luck, might have been robbed of his own blunderbuss. His father was an Irish Dean; his brother is a Calvinist minister in great esteem at the Hague. He himself was a grocer, but, losing a wife that he loved extremely about two years ago ... he quitted his business with two hundred pounds in his pocket, which he soon spent, and then took to the road with only one companion, Plunket, a journeyman apothecary, whom he has impeached but [who] has not been taken.
“MᶜLean had a lodging in St. James’s Street, over against White’s, and another at Chelsea.... There was a wardrobe of clothes, three and twenty purses, and the celebrated blunderbuss found at his lodgings....
“As I conclude he will suffer, and wish him no ill, I don’t care to have his idea, and am almost single in not having been to see him. Lord Mountford at the head of half White’s, went the first day: his Aunt was crying over him; as soon as they were withdrawn, she said to him, knowing they were of White’s, ‘My dear, what did the lords say to you? have you ever been concerned with any of them?’ Was it not admirable? What a favourable idea people must have of White’s! and what if White’s should not deserve a much better! But the chief personages who have been to comfort and weep over this fallen hero are Lady Caroline Petersham and Miss Ashe.”
Walpole a few days later writes to the same correspondent:
“My friend MᶜLean is still the fashion; have not I reason to call him friend? He says, if the pistol had shot me, he had another for himself. Can I do less than say I will be hanged if he is? They have made a print, a very dull one, of what I think I said to Lady Caroline Petersham about him.
“Thus I stand like the Turk with his doxies round.
“MᶜLean is condemned, and will hang. I am honourably mentioned in a Grub ballad for not having contributed to his sentence. There are as many prints and pamphlets about him as about the earthquake. His profession grows no joke; I was sitting in my own dining-room on Sunday night, the clock had not struck eleven, when I heard a loud cry of ‘Stop thief!’ A highwayman had attacked a post-chaise in Piccadilly, within fifty yards of this house: the fellow was pursued, rode over the watchman, almost killed him, and escaped.
“Robbing is the only thing that goes on with any vivacity, though my friend Mr. MᶜLean is hanged. The first Sunday after his condemnation, three thousand people went to see him; he fainted away twice with the heat of his cell. You can’t conceive the ridiculous rage there is of going to Newgate.”
Even children were not exempt. A girl of fourteen, convicted for white-washing farthings to make them appear like sixpences, was condemned to be burnt, and was only reprieved when she was actually at the stake.
Never was more stir created about the fate of a malefactor at Tyburn than in the celebrated case of Dr. Dodd. A preacher of remarkable eloquence, who attracted crowds to listen to him, a man who moved in the highest Society and was known to everybody, he lived, like so many others of his day, far above his means, and was constantly in pecuniary embarrassment. The episode which brought him to the gallows was the forgery of the name of the Earl of Chesterfield—the godson and successor of the old beau—to a bond for about £4000.
Dodd needed the money badly, and had, as subsequent events showed, every expectation of receiving it before the bill became due. He flattered himself in the belief that the transaction would be safely closed, and the bond returned and destroyed before the forged signature could come to the knowledge of the Earl. It was only the Earl’s credit, which was better than his own, that he was borrowing. However, some evil mischance—perhaps the largeness of the amount—led the discounter to pursue inquiries, in the course of which he called on Lord Chesterfield. The signature was immediately disavowed, and Dr. Dodd clapt into Newgate.
He promised restitution; and, in fact, all but a few insignificant hundreds were paid. Society was in arms. Chesterfield was blamed for prosecuting. Horace Walpole speaks of Dr. Dodd’s eloquence, and pities his fate. Dr. Johnson wrote in his favour. No subject was ever more enthusiastically discussed by the fashionable throng in Hyde Park. The populace were in his favour, for it was felt that the money in repayment was extorted by false pretences. Hanging after restitution was considered too much for the crime.
Letters appeared in the newspapers. A special petition from the inhabitants of the City of Westminster was drawn up for presentation to the King, which measured thirty-six yards, and contained 23,000 signatures, seeking the pardon of the unfortunate man. None of the great contemporary correspondences omits a discussion of the trial and sentence.
But all these efforts were of no avail. George III. obstinately refused a pardon. If the heavens should fall, Dr. Dodd should still hang; and, deaf to all appeals, he sent him to his doom. The execution was carried out on the morning of 27th June 1777. Dr. Dodd’s friends procured a mourning-coach, in which the condemned man was allowed to drive to Tyburn in place of the usual cart. The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser says of the last scene:
“The populace seemed universally affected at his fate, and even Jack Ketch himself was in tears.... The concourse of people who attended the execution of the two malefactors yesterday at Tyburn was incredible; it is conjectured that no less than 500,000 people were assembled on the occasion, between Newgate and the place of execution.”
Horace Walpole mentions the fact that two thousand soldiers were kept at drill in Hyde Park during the execution, in case of an attempt at rescue. It is related that Dr. Dodd prayed fervently, that twice he changed his cap when standing beneath the beam, and that the long delay, before he was sent into eternity, incensed the baser part of the ghouls, gathered round to take their delight in seeing a man hang.
What cheerful times those were!
Another class of criminal of earlier date was Mrs. Catherine Hayes, who in 1726 murdered her husband in circumstances of the grossest brutality. His head was hacked off, the body cut up, and efforts made to hide all traces of the crime by burying the mangled remains in a pond at Marylebone. They were discovered, and the woman’s two accomplices were hanged. A more dreadful fate was reserved for herself. She was conveyed to Tyburn, and was there burnt alive at the stake.
Execution of Catherine Hayes at Tyburn.
From a Print in the “Tyburn Chronicle.”
According to the law of the period, those committed for murder and “petty treason” were to be hanged and afterwards burnt at the gallows. The hangman did his work, but the mob of ruffians which surged around got out of all control, and so timoured the officer of the law that the wretched woman was cut down while still alive and conscious, and taken to the stake. The people yelled and shrieked, and tried to force their way towards the blazing pile, and generally behaved in such an uproarious manner that the horrors of death were rendered a hundredfold more hideous by their frantic conduct.
The most astounding thing about this revolting scene is, that the burning alive of a woman at the stake took place in the presumedly civilised days of George the First, and in the last year of his reign.
Society at the commencement of the eighteenth century still read little, and ignorance fed and thrived on the thrilling details of the careers of daring highwaymen. Persons of decent reputation vied with one another to have the latest chat with the manacled prisoners. “His Last Dying Speech and Confession” was shouted about the streets, and the broadside sold in thousands. People still flocked to an execution as to an entertaining show.
It is just as well not to have lived in those gross times. How different has public sympathy and sentiment grown in the comparatively short space of a century. Thackeray was right when he wrote of Tyburn:
“Were a man brought to die there now, the windows would be closed, and the inhabitants would keep their houses in sickening horror. A hundred years ago people crowded there to see the last act of a highwayman’s life, and made jokes of it. Swift laughed at him, cruelly advised him to provide a holland shirt and a white cap, crowned with a crimson or black ribbon, for his exit, to mount the cart cheerfully, shaking hands with the hangman, and so farewell; or Gay wrote his most delightful ballads, and then made merry over his hero.”
The last man hanged at Tyburn was John Austin on 7th November 1783, for robbery and unlawful wounding, and on the following 9th December, the first public execution outside Newgate took place. The Morning Chronicle of that day, in relating the event, added the remark:
“The saving to the State and to individuals from the new method of executing criminals is immense. Many indigent families will feel the good effects of preventing the loss of a day. No longer will thoughtless youth neglect their employment to attend Tyburn executions, where too many have become converts to bad practices.”
Indeed, the rascality attending these scenes almost passes belief. A Tyburn execution, especially if a “fashionable” one, at which the better—or at least wealthier—class gathered, was an occasion for the assembling of all the pickpockets, watch-snatchers, and bad characters of the town, who plied their skill busily while attention was directed upon the expiring struggles and groans of the poor wretch swinging from the tree. One Francis Grey, as he stood on the scaffold, actually exhorted the crowd around him to give up their evil ways, for he saw many bad men there, and bad deeds had never brought him happiness.
In closing the ghastly story of Tyburn Tree, it is interesting to note that The Times of 9th May 1860 printed a letter from Mr. A. J. B. Beresford-Hope, relating that outside the garden of Arklow House, at the extreme angle of Edgware Road, a pipe was being repaired, and many human bones were dug up, doubtless relics of the bodies buried near the Tyburn gallows. Earlier in the nineteenth century, when digging foundations for houses in Connaught Place, workmen had come on human remains, a whole cartload having been removed. Lady Battersea tells me no trace, whatever, of a burial place was found under their house opposite the Marble Arch when digging the drains about 1880.
In the later executions, the scaffold, the site of which had been changed, was a movable erection, consisting of two uprights and a cross beam. It was only put up on the morning of execution across the roadway, opposite the house at the corner of Upper Bryanston Street and the Edgware Road, wherein the gibbet was kept when not in use.
It is said that the timber of the famous gallows, beneath which so many hundreds—one might almost say thousands—of malefactors made a painful exit from this world, was sold to a carpenter, and used by him in making stands for beer-butts for the cellars of an alehouse hard by.