The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 1/2

and scourge-Capital punishment universal-Methods of inflicting death-Awful cruelties-The English custom-Pressing to death-Major Strangways-Spiggot

-That of Earl Ferrers and of Sheppard-Demeanour of condemned: effrontery, or abject terror-Improper customs long retained-St. Giles' Bowl-Saddler of Bawtry-Smoking at Tyburn-Spiritual attentions of Ordinary not always devoted-Amateur preachers and others assist-R

ctive spirit; others, notably those of the Mosaic law, were retaliatory, or aimed at restitution. All, more or less, were intended also to deter from crime. The criminal had generally to pay in his person or his goods. He was either subjected to physical pain applied in degrading, often ferociously cruel ways, and endured mutilation, or was branded, tortured, put to death; he was mulcted in fines, deprived of liberty, or adjudged as a slav

ancient Saxon punishment, no doubt perpetuating the Mosaic law of retaliation which claimed an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a limb for a limb. William the Conqueror adopted it in his penal code. It was long put in force against those who broke the forestry laws, coiners, thieves, and such as failed to prove their innocence by ordeal. Although almost abandoned by the end of the sixteenth century, the penalty of mutilation, extending to the loss of the right hand, still continued to be punishment for murder and bloodshed within the limits of a royal residence. The most elaborate ceremonial was observed. All the hierarchy of court officials attended; there was the sergeant of the woodyard, the master cook to hand the dressing-knife, the sergeant of the poultry, the yeoman of the scullery with a fire of coals, the sergeant farrier who heated and delivered the searing irons, which were applied by the chief surgeon after the dismemberment had been effected. Vinegar, basin, and cloths were handed to the operator by the groom of the salcery, the sergeant of the ewry, and the yeoman of the c

kam in th

f his ears was to be nailed to the pillory in such a manner that he should be compelled "by his own proper motion" to tear it away; and on the second day he was to lose his other ear in the same cruel fashion. William Prynne, it will be remembered, also lost his ears on the pillory, but at the hands of the executioner. The Earl of Dorset, in giving the sentence of the Star Chamber Court, asked his fellow-judges "whether he should burn him in the forehead, or slit him in the nose?... I should be loth he should escape with his ears; ... therefore I would

etch neck" was at first applied only to fraudulent traders, perjurers, forgers, and so forth; but as years passed it came to be more exclusively the punishment of those guilty of infamous crimes, amongst whom were long included rash writers who dared to express their opinions too freely before the days of freedom of the press. Besides Prynne, Leighton, Burton, Warton, and Bastwick, intrepid John Lilburne so suffered, under the Star Chamber decree, which prohibited the printing of any book without a license from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, or the authorities of the two universities. Daniel Defoe again, who was pilloried in 1703 for his pamphlet. 'The S

d the pillory with a sprig of laurel in each hand; and a gentleman present made a collection of two hundred guineas for him in a purple purse adorned with orange ribbons. In front of the pillory the mob erected a gallows, and hung on it a boot, with other emblems, int

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punishment upon that much wronged naval hero. The pillory ceased to be a punishment, except for perjury, in

the top of a pole, and placed upon an elevated platform. In this cross were three holes, one for the head, the other two for the wrists. The cross-piece was in two halves, the upper turning on a hinge to admit the culprit's head and hands, and closed with a padlock when the operation of insertion was completed. A more elaborate affair, capabl

east. The old chap's books contain numerous references to the stocks of course. Welch Taffy, "the unfortunate traveller," was put into the stocks for calling a justice of the peace a "boobie;" and "Simple Simon," when he interfered in a butter-woman's quarrel, was adjudged to be drunk and put into the stocks between the two viragoes, who scolded him all the time. The story of Lord Camden when a young barrister having a desire to try the stocks, and his being left in them by an absent-minded friend for the part of the day, is probably well known. The stocks were not wholly abolished till a few years ago.[109] The Stokesley stocks were used within thirty years of t

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a man pelted

of the populace that they pelted him to death. The coroner's inquest returned a verdict of wilful murder, but against persons unknown. In 1763 a man who stood in the pillory at Bow, for an unnatural crime, was killed by the mob. Ann Marrow, who had been guilty of the strange offence of disguisi

er "scolding cart," and other forms of tumbrels, the culprit was paraded through the town before immersion. The punishment was primarily intended for scolds, shrews, and "curst queens," but it was also applied to female brewers and bakers who brewed bad ale, and sold bad bread. It was inflicted pursuant to sentence in open court, but in some parts the bailiffs had the power within their own jurisdictions, and the right of gallows, tumbrell, and pillory was often claimed by lords of the Manor. The greatest antiquity is claimed for this sort of punishment. Bowine declares that it was used by the Saxons, by whom it was called "Cathedra in qua rixos? mulieres sedentes aqu? demergebantur." No doubt the ducking was often roughly and cruelly carried out. We have in the frontispiece of an old chapbook, which relates how "an old woman was drowned in Ratcliffe highway," a pictorial representation of the ceremony of ducking, and it is stated that she met her death by being dipped too often or too long. That the instrument was in general use through the kingdom is proved by numerous entr

sips and scolds, was often preferred to the ducking-stool, which endangered the health, and moreover gave the culprit's tongue free play between each dip. The branks was a species of iron mask, with a gag so contrived as to enter the mouth and forcibly hold down the unruly member. "It consisted of a kind of crown or framework of iron, which was locked upon the head and was armed in front with a gag,-a plate or a sharp-

be stripped naked from the middle upwards, and whipped till the body should be bloody," long continued in force. Men with their wives and children were flogged publicly, and sometimes by the order of the clergyman of the parish. Girls of twelve and thirteen, aged women of sixty, all suffered alike; women "distracted," in other words out of their minds, were arrested and lashed; so were those that had the small pox, and all who walked about the country and begged.[114] The constabl

fell short of death. Yet were there innumerable cases in those uncompromising and unenlightened ages in which death alone would be de

Torture

ges and in all climes: about some there was a brutal simplicity; others have been marked by great inventiveness, great ingenuity, much refinement of cruelty. Offenders have been stoned, beaten, starved to death; they have been flayed alive, buried alive, cast headlong from heights, torn to pieces by wild animals, broken on the wheel, crucified, impaled, burnt, boiled, beheaded, strangled, drowned. They have been killed outright or by inches, enduring horrible agonies;[116] after death their bodies have been dismembered and disembowe

" a mattrass which clutched the sufferer tight, while his legs were broken by heavy logs of wood; or the long lingering death in the iron cages of Louis XI., the occupant of which could neither sit, stand, or lie down. Again, the devilish tortures inflicted upon the murderers Ravaillac and Damiens caused a shudder throughout Europe. Ravaillac was burnt piecemeal, flesh was torn from him by red-hot pincers, scalding oil and molten lead were poured upon his bleeding wounds, he was drawn and dismembered by horses while still alive, and only received his coup de grace from the sticks and knives of the hellish bystanders, who rushed in to finish more savagely what the executioner had been unable to complete. As for Damiens, the process followed was identical, but the details preserved of an event nearer our own time are more

til 1772. Pressing to death, or the peine forte et dure, was a development of the ancient prison forte et dure the punishment of those who refused "to stand to the law;" in other words, stood mute, and refused to plead to a charge. Until the reign of Henry IV. such persons were condemned to penance and perpetual imprisonment, but the penance meant confinement in a narrow cell and absolute starvation.[

d; that there be set upon your body a weight of iron as great as you can bear-and greater; that you have no sustenance, save on the first day three morsels of the coarsest bread, on the second day thr

any escape from it. The practice of tying the thumbs with whipcord was another form of torture

Yorkshire, who was arraigned for the murder of his wife and two children, stood mute, and was pressed to death in York Castle. Another notable instance of the application of this fearful punishment was in the case of Major Strangways, who was arraigned in February 1657-8 for the murder of his brother-in-law Mr. Fussell. He refused to plead unless he was assured that if condemned he might be shot as his brother-in-law had been. In addition he said that he wished to preserve his estate from confiscation. Chief Justice Glyn reasoned with him at length, but could not alter his d

guarded down to a dungeon in the press-yard, the dismal place of execution." On his giving the appointed signal, "his mournful attendants performed their dreadful task. They soon perceived that the weight they laid on was not sufficient to put him suddenly out of pai

under pressu

ading to hi

e sooner be deprived of life, "though he was denied what is usual in these

to plead, giving as his reason that he meant to die as he had lived, like a gentleman. When he was seized, he said he had on a fine suit of clothes, which he intended to have gone to the gallows in, but they had been taken from him. "Unless they are returned, I will not plead," he went on, "for no one shall say that I was hanged in a dirty shirt and a ragged coat." He was warned what would

ntinued half an hour with a weight to the amount of 350 lbs. on his body; "but, on addition of the 50 lbs. more, he likewise begged to plead." Both were then convicted and hanged in the ordinary course of law. Again, Edward Burnworth, the captain of a gang of murderers and robbers which rose into notoriety on the downfall of Wild, was sentenced to the press at Kingston in 1726, by Lord Chief Justice Raymond and Ju

by the jury to be guilty of "wilful and affected dumbness and lunacy." He was given some days' grace, but still remaining dumb, he was pressed to death in the public

t length altered the law on this head, and judgment was awarded against mutes as though convicted or they had confessed. In 1778 one so suffered at the O

ed by the historian that the executioner pursued the Countess of Salisbury about the scaffold, aiming repeated blows at her, before he succeeded in striking off her head. This uncertainty in result was only ended by the ingenious invention of Dr. Guillotin, the rude germ of which existed long previously in the Scotch "maiden." The regent Morton, who introduced this instrument into Scotland, and who himself suffered by it, is said to have taken it from the Halifax Gibbet.[118] Guillotin's machine was not altogether original, but it owed more to the Italia

he Greeks as an especially ignominious punishment. The "sus per coll." was not unknown in the penal law of the Romans, who

aded there for rescuing a prisoner, and in 1351 two fishmongers for some unknown crime. Smithfield had long the dismal honour of witnessing the death-throes of offenders. Between Hozier and Cow Lanes was anciently a large pool called Smithfield Pond or Horse Pool, "from the watering of horses there;" to the south-west lay St. John's Court, and close to it the public gallows on the Town Green. There was a clump of trees in the centre of the green, elms, from which the place of execution was long euphemistically called "The Elms." It was used as such early in the thirteenth century, and distinguished persons, William Fitzosbert, Mortimer, and Sir William Wallace suffered here. About 1413 the gibbet was removed from Smithfield and put up at the north end of a garden wall belonging to St. Giles' Leper Hospital, "opposite the Pound where the Crown Tavern is at present situate, between the end of St. Gile

in London the gallows were moved further and further westward of the building of houses, so the name of Tyburn travelled from Marylebone Lane to Edgeware Road. As time passed on it came to be the generic name for all places of execution, and was used at York, Liverpool, Dublin, and elsewhere. Tyburn was a kind of Golgotha, a place of infamy and disgrace. Here certain zealous Protestant gentlemen from the Temple in 1585 hung in chains an image, a Popish image, although styled Robin Hood. When Colonel Blood seized the Duke of Ormond in St. James' Street it was with the avowed intention of carrying him to Tyburn, there to be hanged like a common criminal. The exact position of the Tyburn gallows has been a matter of some controversy. Mr. Robins[121] places the Elms Lane as the first turning to the right in the Uxbridge Road after getting into it from the Grand Junction Road opposite the Serpentine. In Smith's 'History of Marylebone,' he states that the gallows stood on a smal

the wheel of a cart for a shilling in great pain above an hour before the execution was done. He delaying the time by long discourses and prayers one after another in hopes of a reprieve, but none came." κυφωνTurner was drawn in a cart from Newgate at eleven in the morning, accompanied by the ordinary and another minister, with the sheriffs, keeper of the gaol, and other officials in attendance. On coming to the gibbet he called the executioner to him, and presented him with money in lieu of his clothes, which his friends desired to keep. Then standing in the cart, he addressed the crowd with great prolixity. He dwelt on the cardinal sins; he gave a circumstantial account of his birth, parentage, family history; he detailed

aracterizes as "a most fearful, sad, deplorable place. Hell itself in comparison cannot be such a place. There is neither bench, stool, nor stick for any person there; they lie like swine upon the ground, one upon another, howling and roaring-it was more terrible to me than this death. I would humbly beg that hole may be provided with some kind of boards, like a court of guard, that a man

shoulders, and afterwards, "taking it in his hands, he kissed it, and put it on his neck himself; then after he had fitted the cap and put it on, he went out of the cart up the ladder." The executioner fastened the noose, and "pulling the rope a little, says Turner, What, dost thou mean to choke me? Pray, fellow, give me more rope-what a simple fellow is this! How long have you been executioner, that you know n

22] It is not strange, then, that in uncultivated and comparatively demoralized ages the concourse about the gallows should be great, or the conduct of the spectators riotous, brutal, often heartless in the extreme. There was always a rush to see an execution. The crowd was extraordinary when the sufferers were persons of note or had been concerned in any much-talked-of case. Thus at the hanging of Vratz, Borosky, and Stern, convicted of that same murder of Mr. Thynne of which Count Konigsmark was acq

him of the execution of Waistcott, Lord Harrington's butler, for burglary, which he had attended, with his brother, at the risk of breaking their necks "by climbing up an old rotten scaffolding, which I feared would tumble before the cart drove off with the six malefactors." St. John goes on to say that he had a full view of Waistcott, "who went to the gallows with a white cockade in his hat as an emblem of his innocence, and died with some hardness, as appeared through his trial." Another correspondent, Gilly Williams, gives additional particulars. "The dog died game: went in the cart in a blue and white frock ... and the white cockade. He ate several oranges on his passage, inquired if his hearse was ready, and then, as old Rowe would say, was launched into eternity." Again George Townshend, writing to Selwyn from Scotland of the Jacobites, promises him plenty more entertainment on Tower Hill. The joke went round that Selwyn at the dentist's gave the signal

some thirteen or fourteen people of distinction, and his daughter, a very pretty girl, did the honours of the table. According to her account, few did much justice to the viands: the first call of the inexper

hat the procession took three hours to travel from Newgate to Tyburn. Lord Ferrers told the sheriffs that passing through such a multitude was ten times worse than death itself. The same brutality was carried to the foot of the gallows. The mob surged around the cart conversing with the condemned: now encouraging, now upbraiding, anon making him a target for all manner of missiles, and this even at the last awful moment, when the convict was on his knees wrapped in prayer. A woman named Barbara Spencer was beaten down by a stone when actually in supplication upon her knees. When Jack Sheppard, that most popular but most depraved young criminal, was executed, an incredible number of persons was present. The crowd was unruly enough even before execution, but afterwards it grew perfectly frantic. When the body had hung the appointed time, an undertaker ventured to appear with a hearse to carry it off, but being taken for a surgeon's man about to remove Jack Sheppar

ands and mourning-bands. Nathaniel Parkhurst who, when in the Fleet for debtors, murdered a fellow-prisoner, demolished a roast fowl at breakfast on the morning of his execution, and drank a pint of liquor with it. Jerry Abershaw was persistently callous from first to last. Returning from court across Kennington Common, he asked his conductors whether that was the spot on which he was to be twisted? His last days in the condemned cell he spent in drawing upon the walls with the juice of black cherries designs of the various robberies he had committed on the road. Abershaw's sangfroid did not desert him on the last day. He appeared with his shirt thrown open, a flower in his mouth, and all the way to the gallows carried on an incessant conversation with friends who rode by his side, nodding to others he recognized in the crowd, which was immense.[125] Still more awful was the conduct of Hannah Dagoe, a herculanean Irish woman, who plied the trade of porter at Covent Garden. In Newgate while under sentence she was most defiant. She was the terror of her fellow-prisoners, and actually stabbed a man who had given evidence against her. When the cart was drawn in under the gallows she got her arms loose, seized the executioner, struggled with him, and gave him so violent a blow on the chest that she nearly knocked him down. She dared him to hang her, and tearing off her hat, cloak, and other garments, the hangman's perquisites, distributed them among the crowd in spite of him. After a long struggle he got the rope a

n the gallows between the executioner and his assistant. Lord Ferrers had given the latter, in mistake for his chief, a fee of five guineas, which the head executioner claimed, and the assistant would not readily surrender. Some were in abject terror till the last act commenced. Thus John Ayliffe, a forger, was in the utmost agonies the night preceding his execution; his agitation producing an intolerable thirst, which he vainly sought

days. No doubt many rejected the offers of the ordinary, refusing to attend chapel, pretending to belong to out-of-the-way persuasions, and still declinin

rayer-book

retty certain that, although, doubtless, blameless and exemplary men, Newgate chaplains were not always over-zealous in the discharge of their sacred office in regard to the condemned. There were many grim jokes among the prisoners themselves as to the value of the parson's preaching. Thus in the Reverend Mr. Cotton's time as ordinary, convicts were said to go out of the world with their ears stuffed full of cotton; and his interpretation of any particular passage in Scripture was said to go in at one ear and out at the other.[126] Hence the intrusion, which must have seemed to them unwarrantable, of dissenting and other amateur preachers, of well-meaning enthusiasts, who devoted themselves with unremitting vigour to the spiritual consolation of all prisoners who would listen to them. It is impossible to speak otherwise than most approvingly of the single-minded, self-sacrificing devotion of such men as Silas Told, the forerunner of Howard, Mrs. Fry, the Gurneys, and other estima

athed fifty pounds a year for ever, so Stowe tells us, with this philanthropic purpose. When condemned prisoners were being "drawn to their executions at Tyburn," a man with a bell stood in the churchy

ners that

ickedness

w His grace and mercy upon you whilst you live. I beseech you, for Jesus Christ his sake, to keep this night in watching and prayer for the salvation of your own souls, whilst there is yet time and place for mercy: as knowing to-morrow you must appear before the judgment-seat of your Creator, there to give an account of all things done in this life, and to suffer eternal torments for your sins, committed against Him, unless upon your h

those poor sinners who are now going to thei

vation of your own souls, through the merits, death, and passion of Jesus Christ, who now sits

ve mercy

ve mercy

e mercy

ve mercy

the Roman carnifex, an odious official, who was not suffered to live within the precincts of the city. The only man who would condescend to the work was usually a condemned criminal, pardoned for the very purpose. Derrick, one of the first names mentioned, was sentenced to death, but pardoned by Lord Essex, whom he afterwards executed. Next to him I find that one Bull acted as executioner about 1593. Then came Gregory Brandon, the man who is generally supposed to have decapitated Charles I., and who was commonly addressed by his Christian name only. Through an error Brandon was advanced to the dignity of a squire by Garter, king at arms, and succeeding executioners were generally honour

re several well-authenticated cases of resuscitation after hanging, due doubtless to the rude and clumsy plan of killing. To slide off a ladder or drop from a cart might and generally did produce asphyxia, but there was no instantaneous fracture of the vertebral column as in most executions of modern times. The earliest case on record is that of Tiretta de Balsham, whom Henry III. pardoned in 1264 because she had survived hanging. As she is said to have been suspended from one morning till sunrise the following day, it is difficult to believe the story, which was probably one of many medi?val impostures. Females, however, appear to have had more such escapes than males. Dr. Plot[130] gives several instances, one that of Anne Green, who in 1650 came to when in the h

when he first dropped caused him great pain; his "spirits" forced their way up to his head and seemed to go out at his eyes with a great blaze of light, and then all pain left him. But on his resuscitation the blood and "spirits" forcing themselves into their proper channels gave him such intolerable suffering "that he could have wished those hanged who cut him down." William Duell, hanged in 1740, was carried to Surgeon's Hall, to be anatomized; but as his body was being laid out, one of the servants who was washing him perceived that he was still alive. A surgeon bled him, and in two hours he was able to sit up in his chair. Later in the evening he was sent back to Newgate, and his sentence changed to trans

is given by the sheriffs for the year 1784, and is convincing. In a pamphlet published that year it is set forth that the procession to Tyburn was a hideous mockery on the law; the final scene had lost its terrors; it taught no lesson of morality to the beholders, but tended to the encouragement of vice. The day of execution was deemed a public holiday, to which thousands thronged, many to gratify an unaccountable curiosity, more to seize an opportunity for committing f

lows in the

tree it became a riotous mob, and their wantonness of speech broke forth in profane jokes, swearing, and blasphemy." The officers of the law were powerless to check the tumult; no attention was paid to the convict's dying speech-"an exhortation to shun a vicious life, addressed to thieves actually engaged in picking po

ations, and consulted the judges, who gave it as their opinion that it was within the sheriffs competence. "With this sanction, therefore," the sheriffs go on to say, "we have proceeded, and instead of carting the criminals through the streets to Tyburn, the sentence of death is executed in the front of Newgate, where upwards of five thousand persons may ea

tion upon this scene of awful ceremony, it will feel with becoming dread the pain of disobedience and the terror of example. Nor will the effect of this change be lost upon the criminal: his spirits will be composed by the decorum of the place, and he may prepare his soul for its dissolution by calm meditation, which he could not have exercised under the former noise and disorder; the fearful may gather strength and the hardened yield to remorse from the awe and reverence with which they view their fate. To those in confinement, who feel the heavy hand of justice so near the

minished by the substitution of the Old Bailey as the scene. Seventy-four years were to elapse before the wisdom of legislators and the go