1724. November 16. John, or Jack Sheppard, for burglary.

Jack Sheppard does not seem to have committed any crime worse than burglary: his hands were not stained with blood. He was famed for several remarkable escapes from prison. He had once escaped from Newgate and being again arrested, unusual care was taken of him. But he once more and for the last time escaped, being soon after captured while drunk. For better security he was lodged in a strong room called the Castle, where he was hand-cuffed, loaded with a heavy pair of irons, and chained to a staple in the floor. The Sessions at the Old Bailey began on October 14th, and Jack, knowing that the keepers would be busy in attending the court, thought that this would be the only time to make a push for his liberty.

“The next day, about two in the afternoon, one of the keepers carried Jack his dinner, examined his irons, and found all fast. Jack then went to work. He got off his hand-cuffs, and with a crooked nail he found on the floor, opened the great padlock that fastened his chain to the staple. Next he twisted asunder a small link of the chain between his legs, and drawing up his feet-locks as high as he could, he made them fast with his garters. He attempted to get up the chimney, but had not advanced far before his progress was stopped by an iron bar that went across within-side, and therefore being descended, he went to work on the outside, and with a piece of his broken chain picked out the mortar, and removing a small stone or two about six feet from the floor, he got out the iron bar, an inch square and near a yard long, and this proved of great service to him. He presently made so large a breach, that he got into the Red-Room over the Castle, there he found a great nail, which was another very useful implement. The door of his room had not been opened for seven years past; but in less than seven minutes he wrenched off the lock, and got into the entry leading to the Chapel. Here he found a door bolted on the other side, upon which he broke a hole through the wall, and pushed the bolt back. Coming now to the chapel-door, he broke off one of the iron spikes, which he kept for further use, and so got into an entry between the chapel and the lower leads. The door of this entry was very strong, and fastened with a great lock, and what was worse, the night had overtaken him, and he was forced to work in the dark. However, in half an hour, by the help of the great nail, the chapel spike, and the iron bar, he forced off the box of the lock, and opened the door, which led him to another yet more difficult, for it was not only locked, but barred and bolted. When he had tried in vain to make this lock and box give way, he wrenched the fillet from the main post of the door, and the box and staples came off with it: and now St. Sepulchre’s chimes went eight. There was yet another door betwixt him and the lower leads; but it being only bolted within-side, he opened it easily, and mounting to the top of it, he got over the wall, and so to the upper leads.

“His next consideration was, how to get down; for which purpose looking round him, and finding the top of the Turner’s house adjoining to Newgate, was the most convenient place to alight upon, he resolved to descend thither; but as it would have been a dangerous leap, he went back to the Castle the same way he came, and fetched a blanket he used to lie on. This he made fast to the wall of Newgate, with the spike he stole out of the Chapel, and so sliding down, dropped upon the Turner’s leads, and then the clock struck nine. Luckily for him, the Turner’s garret-door on the leads happened to be open. He went in, and crept softly down one pair of stairs, when he heard company talking in a room below. His irons giving a clink, a woman started, and said, ‘Lord! What noise is that?’ Somebody answered, ‘The dog or the cat’; and thereupon Sheppard returned up to the garret, and having continued there above two hours, he ventured down a second time, when he heard a gentleman take leave of the company, and saw the maid light him down stairs. As soon as the maid came back, and had shut the chamber door, he made the best of his way to the street door, unlocked it, and so made his escape about twelve at night.”

But on October 31st Jack made merry at a public-house in Newgate Street, with two ladies of his acquaintance, afterwards treated his mother in Clare Market with three quarterns of brandy, and in a word got so drunk that he forgot all caution and was once more apprehended.

He still had schemes for eluding justice. He had got hold of a penknife; with this on the road to Tyburn he would cut the cords binding his hands, jump from the cart into the crowd and run through Little Turnstile, where the mounted officers could not follow him, and he reckoned on the sympathy of the mob to help him to make good his escape. But he was searched, and the knife was taken from him. He had one last hope; he urged his friends to get possession of his body as soon as cut down, and put it into a warm bed; so he thought, and precedents were not wanting, his life might be prolonged. This, too, came to naught (Villette, i. 261-6).

In the twenty-third year of his age “died with great difficulty, and much pitied by the mob,” the prince of prison-breakers.

Villette says: “I don’t remember any felon in this kingdom, whose adventures have made so much noise as Sheppard’s.” Six or more stories of his life appeared: among his biographers was Defoe. Sir James Thornhill painted his portrait, reproduced in a mezzotint engraving. The British Journal of November 28, 1724, contained verses on this portrait:—

Nor did the pulpit disdain to draw a moral from Sheppard’s career:—

“O that ye were all like Jack Sheppard! Mistake me not, my brethren, I don’t mean in a carnal, but in a spiritual sense, for I purpose to spiritualise these things.… Let me exhort ye then, to open the Locks of your Hearts with the Nail of Repentance: burst asunder the Fetters of your beloved Lusts: mount the Chimney of Hope, take from thence the Bar of good Resolution, break through the Stone-wall of Despair, fix the blanket of Faith with the Spike of the Church. Let yourselves down to the Turner’s House of Resignation, and descend the Stairs of Humility; so shall you come to the Door of Deliverance from the Prison of Iniquity, and escape from the Clutches of that old Executioner, the Devil” (Villette, i. 253-72).

A few days before, on November 11, Joseph Black, better known as “Blueskin,” a companion of Jack Sheppard, had been hanged at Tyburn.[211]

1725. May 24. Jonathan Wild, “the thief-taker.”

Jonathan Wild, whose exploits were celebrated by Fielding in “Jonathan Wild, the Great,” invented a new method which may be described as running with the hare and riding with the hounds. He was in league with great numbers of thieves of all kinds, from highwaymen downwards. This body was described as “a corporation of thieves of which Wild was the head or director.” He divided the country into districts, assigning gangs for the working of each. These gangs accounted to him for the proceeds of their robberies. He selected by preference convicts returned from transportation, because, in case of accident, they could not give legal evidence against him; moreover, they were in his power, and if any rebelled he could hang them. For fifteen years he carried on this system. His depredations were on a large scale: he had in his pay several artists to alter watches, rings, and other objects of value, so as not to be recognised by their owners.

At his trial he circulated among the jury a list of persons apprehended and convicted by his means: 35 for highway robbery, 22 for burglary, 10 for returning from transportation. It would be too tedious, he said, to give a list of minor cases. Written in his name is an elegy, of which these are a few lines:—

On the way to Tyburn he was cursed and pelted. The rest of the batch being tied up, the executioner told Wild he might have any reasonable time to prepare himself. This so incensed the mob that they threatened to knock the hangman on the head if he did not at once perform the duties of his office. The body was buried in the churchyard of Old St. Pancras, but was afterwards removed, by surgeons as was supposed.

1726. May 9. Catherine Hays and Thomas Billings, executed for the murder of John Hays, the husband of Catherine. Thomas Wood, also condemned for the murder, died on May 4 in the “Condemned-Hold.”

Hays’s body was cut up by the murderers, and the head thrown into the Thames, but it was recovered and set up on a pole in the churchyard of St. Margaret’s, Westminster. This led to identification and discovery of the criminals. Catherine Hays was drawn on a sledge to Tyburn. Here she was chained to a stake and faggots were piled around her. A rope round her neck was passed through a hole in the stake. When the fire had got well alight and had reached the woman, the executioner pulled the rope, intending to strangle her, but, the fire reaching his hands, he was forced to desist. More faggots were then piled on the woman, and in about three or four hours she was reduced to ashes. Billings was put in irons as he was hanging on the gallows, his body was then cut down, carried to a gibbet about a hundred yards distant, and there suspended in chains (Villette i. 394-428).

Thackeray’s “Catherine, A Story,” originally published in Fraser’s Magazine, is based on this case, much as Fielding’s “Jonathan Wild the Great” is based upon the career of that worthy.

1732. October 9. Thirteen executed at Tyburn.

1733. January 29. Twelve malefactors, condemned in the three preceding sessions, executed at Tyburn.

1733. May 28. John Davis, feigning sickness, begged that he might not be tied in the cart. When he came to the Tree, he jumped from the cart and ran across two fields. A countyman knocked him down, and he was brought back and hanged.

1733. December 19. Thirteen executed at Tyburn. Among them were a man and a woman condemned for coining. They were, as usual, drawn in a sledge: the man, after being hanged, was slashed across the body. The woman, chained to a stake, was first strangled and then burnt.

1737. March 12. Twelve malefactors executed at Tyburn.

1738. January 18. Thirteen, convicted in October and December, executed at Tyburn.

1738. November 8. Eleven executed at Tyburn.

1739. March 14. Eleven executed at Tyburn.

December 20. Eleven executed at Tyburn.

1741. We are so fortunate as to possess an account of an execution written at this time by Samuel Richardson, the first great English novelist. It is found in a volume, printed without the author’s name; a kind of Polite Letter Writer, bearing this portentous title:—

“Letters written to and for particular friends on the most important occasions. Directing not only the requisite style and forms to be observed in writing familiar letters; but how to think and act justly and prudently in the common concerns of Human Life, containing one hundred and seventy-three letters, none of which were ever before published.”

Letter CLX. (p. 239), is as follows:—

From a Country Gentleman in Town to his Brother in the Country, describing a publick Execution in London.

Dear Brother,—I have this day been satisfying a Curiosity I believe natural to most People, by seeing an Execution at Tyburn. The Sight has had an extraordinary Effect upon me, which is more owing to the unexpected Oddness of the scene, than the affecting Concern which is unavoidable in a thinking Person, at a Spectacle so awful, and so interesting, to all who consider themselves of the same Species with the unhappy Sufferer.

That I might the better view the Prisoners, and escape the Pressure of the Mob, which is prodigious, nay, almost incredible, if we consider the Frequency of these Executions in London, which is once a Month; I mounted my Horse, and accompanied the melancholy Cavalcade from Newgate to the fatal Tree. The Criminals were Five in Number. I was much disappointed at the Unconcern and Carelessness that appeared in the Faces of Three of the unhappy Wretches: The countenances of the other Two were spread with that Horror and Despair which is not to be wonder’d at in Men whose Period of Life is so near, with the terrible Aggravation of its being hasten’d by their own voluntary Indiscretion and Misdeeds. The Exhortation spoken by the Bell-man, from the Wall of St. Sepulchre’s Church-yard, is well intended; but the Noise of the Officers, and the Mob, was so great, and the silly Curiosity of People climbing into the Cart to take leave of the Criminals, made such a confused Noise, that I could not hear the Words of the Exhortation when spoken, though they are as follow:

All good People, pray heartily to God for these poor Sinners, who are now going to their Deaths: for whom this great Bell doth toll.

You that are condemn’d to die, repent with lamentable Tears. Ask Mercy of the Lord for the Salvation of your own Souls, thro’ the Merits, Death, and Passion of Jesus Christ, who now sits at the Right-hand of God, to make Intercession for as many of you as penitently return unto him.

Lord have Mercy upon you! Christ have Mercy upon you!

Which last Words the Bell-man repeats three times.

All the way up to Holborn the Croud was so great, as at every twenty or thirty Yards to obstruct the Passage; and Wine, notwithstanding a late good Order against that Practice, was brought to the Malefactors, who drank greedily of it, which I thought did not suit well with their deplorable Circumstances: After this, the Three thoughtless young Men, who at first seemed not enough concerned, grew most shamefully daring and wanton; behaving themselves in a manner that would have been ridiculous in Men in any Circumstances whatever: They swore, laugh’d, and talk’d obscenely, and wish’d their wicked Companions good Luck, with as much Assurance as if their employment had been the most lawful.

At the Place of Execution, the Scene grew still more shocking; and the Clergyman who attended was more the subject of Ridicule, than of their serious Attention. The Psalm was sung amidst the Curses and Quarrelling of Hundreds of the most abandon’d and profligate of Mankind: Upon whom (so stupid are they to any Sense of Decency) all the Preparation of the unhappy Wretches seems to serve only for Subject of a barbarous Kind of Mirth, altogether inconsistent with Humanity. And as soon as the poor Creatures were half dead, I was much surprised, before such a number of Peace-Officers, to see the Populace fall to halling and pulling the Carcasses with so much Earnestness as to occasion several warm Rencounters, and broken Heads. These, I was told, were the Friends of the Persons executed, or such as, for the sake of Tumult, chose to appear so, and some Persons sent by private Surgeons to obtain Bodies for Dissection. The Contests between these were fierce and bloody, and frightful to look at: So that I made the best of my way out of the Crowd, and, with some Difficulty, rode back among a large Number of People, who had been upon the same Errand as myself. The Face of every one spoke a kind of Mirth, as if the Spectacle they had beheld had afforded Pleasure instead of Pain, which I am wholly unable to account for.

In other Nations, common Criminal Executions are said to be little attended by any beside the necessary Officers, and the mournful Friends; but here, all was Hurry and Confusion, Racket and Noise, Praying and Oaths, Swearing and singing Psalms: I am unwilling to impute this Difference in our own to the Practice of other Nations, to the Cruelty of our Natures; to which Foreigners, however to our Dishonour, ascribe it. In most Instances, let them say what they will, we are humane beyond what other Nations can boast; but in this, the Behaviour of my Countrymen is past my accounting for; every Street and Lane I passed through, bearing rather the Face of a Holiday, than of that Sorrow which I expected to see, for the untimely Deaths of five Members of the Community.

One of the Bodies was carried to the Lodging of his Wife, who not being in the way to receive it, they immediately hawked it about to every Surgeon they could think of; and when none would buy it, they rubb’d Tar all over it, and left it in a Field hardly cover’d with Earth.

This is the best Description I can give you of a Scene that was no way entertaining to me, and which I shall not again take so much Pains to see. I am, dear Brother, Yours affectionately.

Mandeville, writing some years earlier, gives an account, even more unfavourable, of the behaviour of the crowd.[212]

The batch of convicts whose execution is described by Richardson did not happen to include a highwayman. Here is a portion of Swift’s account of “Clever Tom Clinch, going to be hanged,” a piece written in 1727:—

Richardson’s long description may be supplemented by the chaplain’s account of the last scene:—

The rev. Paul Lorrain, Ordinary of Newgate, as has been said elsewhere, was in the habit of printing an account of the behaviour of criminals, after condemnation. He gives long accounts of his sermons. In the broadsheet relating to an execution at Tyburn on March 22, 1704, he describes the proceedings at Tyburn. The Ordinary exhorts the criminals to clear their consciences by making a free confession. The malefactors then address the people praying them to take warning from the example before them. Then the Ordinary proceeds to prayer: afterwards to the rehearsal of the Articles of the Christian faith: then comes the singing of penitential hymns[213]: then prayer again. “And so, taking my leave of them, I exhorted them to cry to God for Mercy to the last Moment of their Lives, which they did, and for which they had some time allow’d them. Then the Cart drew away, and they were turn’d off, as they were calling upon God.”

1743-1745. At the Old Bailey sessions, September 7-12, were indicted James Stansbury and Mary his wife, for the robbery of Mr. or Captain George Morgan. The case is very interesting, as having furnished to Hogarth the motive of one of his prints in the series of “The Effects of Industry and Idleness.” Captain Morgan, going home in the early hours of the morning of July 17, seeing a lady in the street, feared for her safety, and gallantly offered to escort her home. He was taken into a house where he was robbed and assaulted. The house, in Hanging-Sword Alley, Fleet Street, bore an execrable reputation, in virtue of which it was known as “Blood-Bowl House.” At the trial Mary Stansbury asked a witness, “Have I not let you go all over the house, to see if there were any trap-doors as it was represented?” The witness, Sharrock, replied that he had looked all over the house and saw no trap-door. It will be recollected that in Hogarth’s print the body of a murdered man is being thrust through a trap-door. The same witness spoke of the house as “Blood-Bowl House.” Stansbury asked him how he came to know of the Blood Bowl, to which Sharrock replied that he had seen it in the newspapers. (I have been less fortunate: I have not found accounts in contemporary newspapers referring to the name or to the trap-door). Stansbury was acquitted: his wife was sentenced to death, the sentence being afterwards commuted to one of transportation.

Stansbury was afterwards convicted of burglary. He described himself as a clockmaker, living in Whitechapel, from which we may infer that Hanging-Sword Alley had become too hot for him. It would seem too that he had not retired from Blood Bowl House with a fortune.

Mr. Nicholls in his notes on the print gives the name of Blood-Bowl to the Alley, but there is no evidence that it was ever officially known by this name. The alley is Hanging-Sword Alley in Rocque’s map of 1746; it bears the same name in Hatton’s “New View,” 1708, and in Stow’s “Survey of London” we read: “Then is Water Lane, running down by the west side of a house called the Hanging Sword, to the Thames.” The alley appears under this name in various books giving the names of streets: it was Hanging-Sword Alley when Dickens wrote “Bleak House,” and it is Hanging-Sword Alley to-day.

1749. February 20. Usher Gahagan was executed at Tyburn. Gahagan was a scholar. He edited Brindley’s edition of the classics, and translated into Latin verse Pope’s Essay on Criticism. He also, while in prison, translated into Latin verse Pope’s “Temple of Fame,” and “Messiah”—“with a Latin Dedication to his Grace the Duke of Newcastle.” His offence was filing gold money. These verses were addressed to him:—

The catalogue of the library of the British Museum includes ten works by Usher Gahagan.

1749. October 18. Fifteen malefactors were executed at Tyburn. There had been a riot in the Strand, where a number of sailors had wrecked a house in which a sailor had been maltreated. There exists a well-known print of the riot. The London Magazine gives the following account of the execution:—

About nine in the morning the criminals were put into the carts. Mr. Sheriff Janssen, holding his white wand, and on horseback, attended the execution, accompanied by his proper officers. At Holborn-bars Mr. Sheriff dismissed very civilly the party of foot-guards, who otherwise would have marched to Tyburn. The multitude of spectators was infinite. Though a rescue had been threatened by many (on account of Wilson and Penlez, the two ill-fated young rioters, both of whom were expected to suffer) there yet was not the least disturbance, except during a moment at the gallows, where a vast body of sailors, some of whom were armed with cutlasses, and all with bludgeons, began to be very clamorous as the unhappy sufferers were going to be turned off, which Mr. Sheriff perceiving, he rode up to them and enquired in the mildest terms the reason of their tumult. Being answered that they only wanted to save the bodies of their brethren from the surgeons, and the Sheriff promising that the latter should not have them, the sailors thanked the above magistrate, wished every blessing to attend him, and assured him that they had no design to interrupt him in the execution of his office. The criminals seemed very penitent, and were turned off about twelve.

It would appear that in 1750 the immemorial custom of halting at St. Giles’s, for “the bowl,” was abolished:—

1750. February 7. The criminals on their way to Tyburn were under double guard. The procession closed with the two under-sheriffs, who did not permit the carts to stop for the malefactors to drink by the way. There were thirteen criminals.

1750. May 16. Thirteen executed at Tyburn.

1750. July 6. Three women were executed at Tyburn. They were drunk, contrary to an express order of the Court of Aldermen against serving them with strong liquor.

1750. August 8. Six executed at Tyburn. “It is remarkable that the above six malefactors suffered for robbing their several prosecutors of no more than six shillings” (London Magazine).

1750. October 3. Twelve malefactors executed at Tyburn. One of them was the celebrated “Gentleman Highwayman,” Mr. Maclean. Another was William Smith, the son of a clergyman in Ireland. Smith was convicted of forgery. The Universal Magazine of October, 1750, gave long accounts of these worthies, and printed an ode by Smith on his melancholy condition. This is one stanza:—

Smith had in an advertisement “entreated contributions for his decent interment, and that his poor body might not fall unto the surgeons, and perpetuate the disgrace of his family.” According to a newspaper of the time the surgeons got possession of one body only (not Smith’s): the rest were delivered to the friends. Smith edited several volumes of “Classicks.” The publisher seized the opportunity to advertise them.

We have a full account of James Maclean, “The Gentleman Highwayman,” given by Horace Walpole, who was robbed by him (Letters, ed. 1857, i. lxvi. to lxvii., ii. pp. 218-9, 224, and in the World, No. 103, December 19, 1754). This is the account in the World:

An acquaintance of mine was robbed a few years ago, and very near shot through the head by the going off of the pistol of the accomplished Mr. Maclean: yet the whole affair was conducted with the greatest good breeding on both sides. The robber, who had only taken a purse this way, because he had that morning been disappointed of marrying a great fortune, no sooner returned to his lodgings than he sent the gentleman two letters of excuses, which, with less wit than the epistles of Voiture, had ten times more natural and easy politeness in the turn of their expression. In the postscript, he appointed a meeting at Tyburn at twelve at night, where the gentleman might purchase again any trifle he had lost, and my friend has been blamed for not accepting the rendezvous, as it seemed liable to be construed by ill-natured people into a doubt of the honour of a man who had given him all the satisfaction in his power, for having unluckily been near shooting him through the head.

The first Sunday after his condemnation three thousand people went to see him. He fainted away twice with the heat of his cell. He was only twenty-six when executed.

A long account of his behaviour in prison was given in a pamphlet by the Rev. Dr. Allen. The rev. gentleman was greatly concerned to know whether Maclean, by his association with “licentious young People of Figure and Fortune,” who affected to despise “all the principles of Natural and Revealed Religion, under the polite Name of Free-thinking,” had not “fallen into the fashionable way of thinking and talking on these Subjects.” Maclean was able to give his reverend monitor satisfactory assurances on this point. Maclean’s brother was the minister of the English church at The Hague. Maclean lived in fashionable lodgings in St. James’s Street, and frequented masquerades, where he at times won or lost considerable sums. The skeleton of Maclean appears in the fourth plate of Hogarth’s “Stages of Cruelty,” showing the interior of Surgeons’ Hall.

1750. December 31. Fifteen executed at Tyburn.

1751. February 11. Three boy-burglars executed at Tyburn.

1752. In this year the State made a determined effort to “put down” murder. It was a question that had long exercised the academic mind. So far back as 1701 a writer, known only as “J. R., M.A.,” had published a tract, “Hanging not Punishment enough for Murtherers, High-way Men and House-Breakers.” J. R. inquired why, since at the last Great Day there will be degrees of torment, we should not imitate the Divine Justice? He invoked, not only the Divine example, but the practice of our own laws. “If Death then be due to a Man, who surreptitiously steals to the Value of Five Shillings (as it is made by a late Statute) surely he who puts me in fear of my Life, and breaks the King’s Peace, and it may be murthers me at last, and burns my House, deserves another sort of Censure: and if the one must die, the other should be made to feel himself die.”

J. R. therefore proposed hanging alive in chains, the victim being left to starve, or he might be broken on the wheel, or whipped to death.

About 1730 J. R., M.A., was followed by a writer who had no scruple in revealing his name. George Ollyffe, M.A., published “An Essay humbly offer’d for an Act of Parliament to prevent Capital Crimes, and the Loss of many Lives, and to promote a desirable Improvement and Blessing in the Nation.” Ollyffe argued that a swift death has no terrors. “An execution that is attended with more lasting Torment, may strike a far greater Awe, much to lessen, if not to put a stop to, their shameless Crimes.” He, like J. R., speaks with approval (somewhat modified, indeed) of the ancient practice of hanging men alive on gibbets. This plan has, however, its disadvantages; it is “tedious and disturbing,” more than “the tender and innocent part of mankind” can bear—as spectators. He recommends breaking on the wheel, “by which the Criminals run through ten thousand thousand of the most exquisite Agonies, as there are Moments in the several Hours and Days during the inconceivable Torture of their bruised, broken, and disjointed Limbs to the last Period.” Or the twisting of a little cord hard about the arms or legs “would particularly affect the Nerves, Sinews, and the more sensible Parts to produce the keenest Anguish.”

Ollyffe recommended that these things should be done on gibbets about twenty poles from the usual places of execution, so that “their cries may not much disturb the common Passengers.”

The State followed J. R. and Ollyffe—at a distance—in the Act 25 George II. (1752), c. 37, An Act for better preventing the horrid Crime of Murder. The preamble runs: “Whereas the horrid Crime of Murder has of late been more frequently perpetrated than formerly, and particularly in and near the Metropolis of this Kingdom, contrary to the known Humanity and natural Genius of the British Nation; and whereas it is thereby become necessary, that some further Terror and peculiar Mark of Infamy be added to the Punishment of Death now by Law inflicted on such as shall be guilty of the said heinous Offence.…”

The Act directs that persons condemned for murder shall be executed on the next day but one after sentence, unless Sunday intervenes, when the execution shall take place on Monday.

Bodies to be given to the Surgeons’ Company at their Hall or where else the Company may appoint, with a view to dissection; or the judge may appoint that the body be hanged in chains (not alive as proposed by J. R. and Ollyffe). In no case whatsoever is the body of a murderer to be buried except after dissection. Incidentally, the Act mentions that hanging in chains was already practised in case of “the most atrocious Offences.”

In one point only did the State go beyond its two advisers. The words of the Act show clearly that the interval between the passing of the sentence and its execution was purposely abridged. The interval had been allowed so that, with the aid of the ordinary, or other minister of religion, the condemned man might have time to repent, and to make his peace with Heaven. The abridgment of the interval must therefore be regarded as intended to lessen the chances of repentance, and to send the criminal to judgment still unrepentant. Thus regarded, the action of the State denoted a daring attempt to prejudice the final award of the Day of Doom; it was a distinct invasion of the jura regalia of the Most High.

The first to suffer under this Act was Thomas Wilford, a one-armed lad of seventeen, who married on a Wednesday, and murdered his wife through jealousy on the following Sunday. If we may trust the Gentleman’s Magazine, Wilford, sentenced on June 30, was hanged, not on the next day but one after sentence, but on the very next day, July 1: “Wilford to be executed the next morning, and then his body to be dissected and anatomised, according to the late Act.”

The fourth plate of Hogarth’s “Stages of Cruelty” shows the dissection of a criminal at Surgeons’ Hall, but as the print was published in 1751, Hogarth did not take the idea from the Act. Of course, the bodies of criminals frequently found their way to Surgeons’ Hall before the passing of this Act, but was the enactment suggested by Hogarth’s plate?

In 1725 Mandeville proposed that the bodies of the hanged should be given to the surgeons for dissection, not as an aggravation of capital punishment, but in order to supply a want felt by anatomists; Mandeville was a doctor. He says: “Where then shall we find a readier Supply; and what Degree of People are fitter for it than those I have named? When Persons of no Possessions of their own, that have slipp’d no Opportunity of wronging whomever they could, die without Restitution, indebted to the Publick, ought not the injur’d Publick to have a Title to, and the Disposal of what the others have left?” (“An Enquiry into the Causes of the Frequent Executions at Tyburn,” 1725, p. 27.)

1752. July 13. Eleven executed at Tyburn.

1753. June 7. Dr. Archibald Cameron, condemned for high treason for being concerned “in the late rebellion,” and not surrendering in time. It might have been expected that vengeance would have been satiated by the numerous executions that had already taken place: then, too, “the late rebellion” was eight years old. Dr. Cameron was nevertheless sentenced to be drawn, hanged, and quartered. The quartering was omitted. He was, moreover, suffered to hang for twenty minutes, so that the burning of his bowels was done before eyes closed in death. Dr. Cameron met death, not so much with fortitude, which implies, in a way, an effort, as with perfect equanimity.

1754. February 4. Twelve executed at Tyburn.

1757. October 5. Twelve executed at Tyburn.

1758. December 18. Some surgeons attempting to carry off the body of a man executed at Tyburn, the mob opposed, a riot ensued, in which several persons were wounded. In the end the mob was victorious, and carried off the body in triumph.

1759. Between June 18 and October 3 in this year the old triangular gallows, in use for nearly two hundred years, was removed, and the new “movable” gallows took its place (see pp. 69, 70).

1760. May 5. Earl Ferrers had more than one relative of unsound mind: he himself had given many proofs of madness. Without any cause, he shot his steward, who had been for thirty years in his service. He was undoubtedly a homicidal lunatic who would to-day be confined in an asylum. On his trial by the House of Lords he produced witnesses to prove his insanity, but “his lordship managed this defence himself in such a manner as showed perfect recollection of mind, and an uncommon understanding.” The plea was not accepted, the earl was sentenced to death. Under the ferocious Act of 1752 the execution should have taken place the next day but one, but, in consideration of the earl’s rank, the execution was deferred to May 5. The sentence, however, bore that the body should be anatomised.

On the appointed day the earl rejected the mourning coach provided by his friends, and obtained permission to make the journey from the Tower to Tyburn in his own landau, drawn by six horses. He was dressed in a suit of light-coloured clothes, embroidered with silver, said to be his wedding suit. To the sheriff he said: “You may perhaps, sir, think it strange to see me in this dress, but I have my particular reasons for it.”

The procession was the grandest that had ever made that fatal journey. First came a very large body of Middlesex constables, preceded by one of the high constables: then a party of horse grenadiers, and a party of foot soldiers.

Mr. Sheriff Errington in his chariot, accompanied by his under-sheriff.

The landau, escorted by two other parties of soldiers.

Mr. Sheriff Vaillant’s chariot, carrying the sheriff and under-sheriff.

A mourning coach and six, with some of his lordship’s friends.

A hearse and six, provided for the conveyance of his lordship’s corpse from Tyburn to Surgeons’ Hall.

The procession was two hours and three quarters on the way, which gave time to the chaplain to worry the earl about his religion—the world would naturally be very inquisitive concerning the religion his lordship professed. His lordship replied that he did not think himself accountable to the world for his sentiments on religion. He greatly blamed my Lord Bolingbroke for permitting his sentiments on religion to be published to the world. But he did not believe in salvation by faith alone.

He gave his watch to Sheriff Vaillant, and intended to give five guineas to the hangman. By mischance it was to the hangman’s assistant that the earl handed the money, whence arose a dispute between these officers of the State. The enjoined dissection was performed perfunctorily; the body was publicly exposed in a room for three days, and then given up to friends. There exists an engraving showing the body as exposed in the coffin.

Walpole gives a long account of the execution. It was remarkable, among other things, for the introduction of a new device. “Under the gallows was a new-invented stage, to be struck from under him.… As the machine was new, they were not ready at it: his toes touched it, and he suffered a little, having had time by their bungling to raise his cap: but the executioner pulled it down again, and they pulled his legs, so that he was soon out of pain, and quite dead in four minutes.” The “drop” was no more used at Tyburn, but it became a feature of the new gallows of Newgate.

Walpole says that “the executioners fought for the rope, and the one that lost it cried.”

There is a story that Ferrers was hanged by a silk rope, or, in another version, that he desired to be hanged by such a rope. Timbs, in his “Curiosities of London,” even asserts that the bill for this rope of silk is still in existence; he does not say where. The legend must have arisen later. It is a detail which would have delighted Walpole; he mentions the rope, as we have seen; his silence as to its particular character seems conclusive. But the curious in the matter may consult an article by M. Feuillet de Conches (“Causeries d’un Curieux,” 1862, ii. 333-40); Abraham Hayward, “Biographical and Critical Essays,” ii. 30; an article in the Quarterly Review, lxxxv. 378, and the account of Earl Ferrers in the “Dictionary of National Biography.”

The experience gained by the State during six centuries of hanging enabled it to make two immense advances in the art. To the great Elizabethan era we owe the invention of a machine on which a number of victims, up to at least twenty-four, could be simultaneously choked out of life. This enabled the spectators to concentrate their attention on one spot, and therefore to lose not one jot of the moral lesson inculcated with so great pains.

What was behind the invention of the “drop” is not so clear. On first sight we are inclined to deem it the whim of some “faddist”: indeed, it exhales a strong and disagreeable odour of humanitarianism. As such we are naturally inclined to condemn it. Our conservative instincts are also against the daring innovation. Here was a new principle: the fall would dislocate the neck, and the victim would die otherwise than by strangulation. The “fall,” resulting in immediate death, would deprive the public of what was regarded as the most diverting episode of the piece—the tugging by friends at the legs of the suspended man, the thumping him on the chest, rough methods of accelerating his death. But on consideration it seems probable that the State began to have a real concern as to the effect of mere hanging. We have seen (pp. 221-3) how “half-hanged Smith” was brought back to life—a life which, thus prolonged, did indeed prove useful to the State. But awkward questions arose as to the proper way of dealing with such cases: the mob, indeed the public, and the legal experts took different views. Moreover, a new art was arising, based on these cases of recovery. Bronchotomy, as applied to victims of the scaffold, did not, for all I have been able to find, become recognised as a branch of the healing art till some years later than 1760. But so early as 1733, Mr. Chovet had made such progress in “preventing the fatal consequences of the Halter” that the State may well have trembled. Here was a new development of smuggling. On the whole it seems safer to conclude that the “fall” was adopted as a means of bringing to naught these ingenious attempts to rob the State of its due.

1767. Mrs. Brownrigg, the wife of James Brownrigg, at one time a domestic servant, was the mother of a large family. To support the household Mrs. Brownrigg learnt midwifery, and received an appointment as midwife to women in the workhouse of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West. She had the character of being skilful and humane: she was reputed to be a faithful wife and an affectionate mother. About 1763 Brownrigg took a house in Fetter Lane, and in February, 1765, Mrs. Brownrigg took as apprentice a poor girl of the precinct of Whitefriars: a little later another girl was bound apprentice to her by the governors of the Foundling Hospital. Mrs. Brownrigg treated these poor girls with unimaginable cruelty. She tied them up naked, and flogged them with a horse-whip, made her husband and son do the same: starved them and gave them insufficient clothing. This went on for two years. At last the neighbours, constantly hearing groans in the Brownriggs’ house, watched, and at last caught sight of one of the poor creatures in a most deplorable condition. Information was given and the girls were rescued. But relief came too late to save Mary Clifford, who died of the most terrible wounds inflicted on her by these monsters. On September 12, father, mother, and eldest son were tried for the murder of Mary Clifford: only Elizabeth Brownrigg was found guilty. She was executed on September 14, her body was carried to Surgeons’ Hall to be anatomised. Afterwards “her skeleton has since been exposed in the niche opposite the first door in the Surgeons’ Theatre, that the heinousness of her cruelty may make the more lasting impression on the minds of the spectators.” The Gentleman’s Magazine adds to a full account of the story an engraving showing the “Hole” under the stairs in which the poor wretches were confined, and the kitchen in which one of the girls is shown tied up to be flogged. The case made a profound impression on the public, and to this day remains the most shocking case of its kind on record.

1767. October 14. William Guest, a teller in the Bank of England, was convicted of filing guineas. Guest’s crime was high treason: he was therefore drawn to the gallows in a sledge. “After the three others were tied up, he got into the cart: he was not tied up immediately, but was indulged to pray upon his knees, attended by the ordinary, and another clergyman of the Church of England. He joined in prayers with the clergymen with the greatest devotion, and his whole deportment was so pious, grave, manly, and solemn as to draw tears from the greatest part of the spectators.” There exists a print showing Guest in the sledge on the way to Tyburn.

1768. March 23. James Gibson, attorney-at-law, convicted of forgery, and Benjamin Payne, footpad, were executed at Tyburn. For a long time, as has been shown, the “respectability” of criminals had been recognised by permitting them to be carried to their doom in a mourning coach, instead of in the ordinary cart. To Gibson, as the erring member of an honoured profession, this indulgence was granted. Gibson desired that the footpad might be allowed to accompany him in the coach. There is something pathetic in this practical recognition of the truth that death makes all men equal. The authorities might well have granted the request, but it was refused.

1769. The manufacture of silk fabrics was highly protected, but protection did not bring prosperity to the workers. The condition of the weavers of Bethnal Green and Spitalfields was deplorable, leading to constant disturbances. The destruction of looms, and the cutting of woven silk—capital offences—became frequent.

On December 20 three men were executed at Tyburn for destroying silk-looms. Their execution had been preceded on the 6th by that of two others, hanged at Bethnal Green for cutting woven silk. In connection with this execution at Bethnal Green a grave question arose. The sentence passed on the condemned men was that they should be taken from the prison to the usual place of execution, but the Recorder’s warrant for the execution directed they should be hanged at the most convenient place near Bethnal Green church. The variation of place was directed by the King. A long correspondence ensued between the Sheriffs and the Secretary of State. The point raised was whether the King had power thus to vary the sentence. The condemned men were respited in order that the opinion of the judges might be taken. It was unanimous that the King had the power of fixing the place of execution, and the men were executed at Bethnal Green, as directed. There was great apprehension of tumult, and not without cause, for in the Gentleman’s Magazine we read: “The mob on this occasion behaved outrageously, insulted the Sheriffs, pulled up the gallows, broke the windows, destroyed the furniture, and committed other outrages in the house of Lewis Chauvette, Esq., in Spitalfields.” The mob dispersed only on being threatened with military execution.

It was observed that when the Recorder next passed sentence of death, he omitted direction as to the place of execution.

1771. On October 16, Mary Jones was executed at Tyburn for stealing from a draper’s shop on Ludgate Hill some pieces of worked muslin. The annals of Tyburn contain the record of no more poignant tragedy than this. It is a story so piteous that, once heard, it ever after haunts the memory. Mary Jones was a young woman whose age is variously given as nineteen and twenty-six: all accounts tell of her great beauty. She was married, lived in good credit, and wanted for nothing till her husband was carried off by a press-gang. Then she fell into great straits, having neither a bed to lie on, nor food to give to her two young children, who were almost naked. On her trial her defence was simple: “I have been a very honest woman in my lifetime. I have two children: I work very hard to maintain my two children since my husband was pressed.” Her beauty and her poverty prove Mary’s averment that she had been a very honest woman. But when the jury gave in a verdict of guilty, Mary cursed judge and jury for a lot of “old fogrums.” It was really for this that she died on the gallows. The theft had not been completed: she was arrested in the shop and gave up the goods. It was her first offence. Her neighbours in Red Lion street, Whitechapel, presented a petition in her behalf, but there was against her the record of her “indecent behaviour.” One of the two children was at her breast when she set out in the cart on the journey from Newgate to Tyburn. Her petulance had gone: “she met death with amazing fortitude.”

So perished Mary Jones, whose husband had been torn from her side, who was now, in her turn, torn from her helpless babes. Poor Mary Jones! Beautiful Mary Jones, with your great crown of auburn hair! Our hearts are wrung as we seem to see you setting out on your last journey in this world, with your little one at your breast. Your last prayer was for your babes, your last thoughts of your husband, to whom, as honest as beautiful, you remained true in spite of the temptation to stay your children’s hungry cries with bread earned by your shame.

History does not tell us more. Did the husband return from fighting the battles of his country—or rather of its politicians—to find that his true wife had perished on the gallows? Better far that he should have met his death in some glorious victory or inglorious defeat, reddening with his blood some distant sea. And the little ones, robbed by the cruel State of father and mother—what became of them? These are things it behoves us to know, for they are one side of glory, of imperialism. How many Mary Joneses, how many broken hearts and ruined lives are behind the naval victories celebrated by painting, by song, by sculptured tombs in temples dedicated to the Prince of Peace? Or are we to dry our tears, comforting ourselves with the reflection that “the suffering is irrelevant”?

Mary Jones did not die wholly in vain. Six years later, after “John the Painter” had been hanged on a gallows sixty feet high, for setting fire to the rope-house in Portsmouth Dockyard, ingenuity discovered a chance of adding one more capital offence to the two hundred or so already on the Statute-book. A Bill was promoted for making it a hanging matter to set fire to private dockyards. Sir William Meredith, a “faddist” of his day, inveighed against the Bill and the atrocious cruelty of the laws. He cited the case of Mary Jones. “I do not believe,” he said, “that a fouler murder was ever committed against law, than the murder of this woman by law.”[214] A girl of fourteen had lately been sentenced to be burnt for hiding, at her master’s bidding, some white-washed farthings. The faggots had been laid, the cart was setting out, when a reprieve, granted at the instance of the Lord Mayor, saved this poor child from the flames. “Good God, Sir,” he cried, “are we taught to execrate the fires of Smithfield, and are we lighting them now to burn a poor harmless child, for hiding a white-washed farthing?” This speech, delivered in Parliament, was printed by the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge upon the Punishment of Death, founded by Basil Montague in 1808, and was also printed separately in several editions down to 1833.

1771. January 1. John Clark and John Joseph Defoe executed at Tyburn, for robbery of a gold watch and money. Defoe was said to be a grandson of the immortal author of “Robinson Crusoe.”

1773. September 13. Mrs. Herring was thus executed for murdering her husband:—

She was placed on a stool something more than two feet high, and, a chain being placed under her arms, the rope round her neck was made fast to two spikes, which, being driven through a post against which she stood, when her devotions were ended, the stool was taken from under her, and she was soon strangled. When she had hung about fifteen minutes, the rope was burnt, and she sunk till the chain supported her, forcing her hands up to a level with her face, and the flame being furious, she was soon consumed. The crowd was so immensely great that it was a long time before the faggots could be placed for the execution.

1773. October 27. The two sheriffs and under-sheriff attended the execution of five malefactors on horseback, and two persons clothed in black walked all the way before the prisoners to the place of execution, where they were allowed an hour and a half in their devotions, a circumstance not remembered for a great many years past.

A vivid picture of the manners of the times is given in these two extracts from the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1774.

The first passage shows the extraordinary prevalence of highway robbery, which at this time seems to have become a recognised form of out-door sport among young men:—

“As lord Berkeley was passing over Hounslow Heath in the dusk of the evening [of November 11] in his post-chaise, the driver was called to stop by a young fellow, genteelly dressed and mounted, but the driver not readily obeying the summons, the fellow discharged his pistol at the chaise, which lord Berkeley returned, and, in one instant, a servant came up, and shot the fellow dead. By means of the horse, which he had that morning hired, he was traced, and his lodgings in Mercer-street, Long-Acre, discovered; where Sir John Fielding’s men were scarce entered, when a youth, booted and spurred, came to enquire for the deceased by the name of Evan Jones. This youth, upon examination, proved to be an accomplice, and impeached two other young men belonging to the same gang, one of whom was clerk to a laceman in Bury-street, St. James’s, after whom an immediate search being made, he was traced along the road to Portsmouth, and, at three in the morning, was surprised in bed at Farnham, and brought back to London, by Mr. Bond and other assistants. The other accomplice was also apprehended, and all three were carried before Sir John Fielding, when it appeared, that these youths, all of good families, had lately committed a number of robberies in the neighbourhood of London: that their names were Peter Holtum, John Richard Sauer, and William Sampson: that Sampson in particular, had 50 guineas due to him for wages when he was apprehended, and that he had frequently been intrusted with effects to the amount of 10,000l. An evening paper says, that there are no less than seven of these youths in custody, from 18 to 20 years of age, some of whose parents are in easy, some in affluent circumstances, all of them overwhelmed with sorrow by the vices of their unhappy sons.”

Here is a batch of executions:—

1774. November 30. The six following malefactors, were executed at Tyburn, pursuant to their sentence, viz., John Coleby and Charles Jones, for breaking into the dwelling-house of Lancelot Keat, and stealing goods: William Lewis, for publishing a forged draught upon Mess. Drummond and Co. for 48l. 18s.: John Rann, alias Sixteen-string Jack, for robbing the rev. Dr. Bell, near Gunnerbury-lane: and William Lane and Samuel Trotman, for robbing the Knightsbridge stage-coach.

Lewis, the unhappy sufferer for forgery, was a most ingenious copyist, and could counterfeit copper-plate writing to astonishing exactness. He was far from an abandoned character, and died an example of penitence, which, in some measure, atoned for the injury he had done the public. He composed a prayer in the cells, which does credit to his understanding.

The friends of Coleby and Jones, in passing the house of Mr. Keat, their prosecutor, in order to the interment of their bodies, committed the most outrageous acts of violence that have been known in any civilised country, by breaking the windows, attempting to set the house on fire, and threatening the life of Mr. Keat.

1776. January 17. Robert and Daniel Perreau executed at Tyburn.

They were twin brothers, natives of St. Kitts. Robert was an apothecary “in high practice” in Golden Square, then a fashionable quarter. Daniel lived “a genteel life” with his mistress, Mrs. Rudd. Robert Perreau sought a loan of Drummonds, the bankers, on bonds, afterwards found to be forged. The evidence made it probable that the actual forgery was by Mrs. Rudd, but that all three were acting in concert. The brothers were both found guilty on their trials, but a strong feeling existed that the sentence on Robert was harsh. A petition to commute the sentence to one of transportation was presented on behalf of seventy-eight “capital Bankers and Merchants” of the City. The king was, however, obdurate, and after the acquittal of Mrs. Rudd let the law take its course. The execution was witnessed by 30,000 persons. The brothers, born together, were not divided in death. They fell from the cart with their four hands clasped together.

Mr. Bleackley has told the story at length in “Some Distinguished Victims of the Scaffold,” 1905.

1777. June 27. Execution of Dr. Dodd.

William Dodd, born in 1729, was the popular preacher of his day. He came, a young man of 21, from Cambridge to London in 1750. He hesitated between adopting literature as a profession and the Church, but took orders in 1751. He still dabbled in literature, and is said to have been the author of a work, “The Sisters,” which gave no very favourable idea of the purity of his mind. In 1758 he became chaplain of the Magdalen Hospital, and fine ladies came to hear his sermons “in the French style.” In 1763 he was made one of the king’s chaplains, an appointment he lost when, in 1774, Mrs. Dodd wrote to the wife of the Lord Chancellor, offering a bribe for the living of St. George, Hanover Square. Dodd got into debt: he had to sell a proprietary chapel in which he had sunk money: it is said that he even “descended so low as to become the editor of a newspaper.” He fell still lower: in his need he forged the signature of his patron, Lord Chesterfield, to a bond for £4,200. The forgery was discovered, and warrants were issued against Dodd and his broker. Dodd made partial restitution, offered security for the remainder, and the affair might have been settled had not the Lord Mayor, who had issued the warrants, refused to let the case be hushed up. Dodd was tried on February 22, 1766. The evidence was irresistible. Only a legal point stood in the way of sentence. This point was decided adversely to Dodd, and on May 26 sentence of death was passed. “They will never hang me,” said Dodd, and indeed everything possible was done to save him. “The exertions made to save him were perhaps beyond example in any country. The newspapers were filled with letters and paragraphs in his favour. Individuals of all ranks and degrees exerted themselves in his behalf: parish officers went from house to house to procure subscriptions to a petition to the king, and this petition, which, with the names, filled twenty-three sheets of parchment, was actually presented. The Lord Mayor and Common Council went in a body to St. James’s, to solicit mercy for him, but all this availed nothing; government were resolved to make an example of him.” Foremost among those who pleaded for Dodd was Dr. Johnson. There was nothing in common between the shallow flippancy of Dodd, and the great, rough, earnest nature of Johnson; being once asked whether Dodd’s sermons were not addressed to the passions, “They were nothing, Sir,” growled the lexicographer, “be they addressed to what they may.” But to misery Johnson’s heart was more tender than a woman’s; he was agitated when application was made to him on behalf of Dodd; he paced up and down the room, and promised to do what he could. He wrote the speech delivered by Dodd before the passing of the sentence and more than one petition in his behalf.

All was in vain: “If I pardon Dodd, I shall have murdered the Perreaus.” So the king is reported to have said—and, indeed, although Dodd’s partisans fell foul of court and jury, it is not easy to see how, if Dodd had been pardoned, the punishment of death for forgery could ever after have been inflicted. There is a pathetic touch in the fact that, many years before his fall, Dodd preached a sermon, afterwards printed, deprecating the frequency of capital punishment. In “Prison Thoughts” he foretold the abolition of the procession to Tyburn, or perhaps of public executions:—