Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree Read online

  On 5 May 1760 Lord Ferrers was hanged at Tyburn. In any list of British rotters, Ferrers can be assured a mention. Born into a rich and aristocratic family and grossly indulged as a child and youth, he grew up wilful, spoilt, idle and a bully. When drunk, which he was for much of the time, he could become extremely violent. On one occasion his horse lost a race and Ferrers horsewhipped his groom. When a barrel of oysters was identified as the probable source of an outbreak of food poisoning, the servant who had bought them was stabbed in the chest by Ferrers, beaten unconscious with a heavy candlestick and kicked repeatedly in the groin. The hapless man never completely recovered from the injuries he sustained. Ferrers married for the second time in 1752 and then subjected this wife to six years of systematic violence and cruelty which only ended when she left him after he had knocked her senseless. The household passed into the stewardship of an old and faithful family retainer called John Johnson. Ferrers, seeing plots against him everywhere, then accused Johnson of cheating with the accounts. Johnson protested his innocence. Ferrers told him to get on his knees and beg forgiveness and then shot him, fatally wounding him. A doctor was called who, ascertaining that he could do nothing for the expiring Johnson, contacted the authorities. Ferrers was arrested and tried before his peers in the House of Lords. In his arrogant way, he seems to have assumed that they would acquit him. However his reputation had gone before him. His manner was thoroughly unpleasant; he showed absolutely no remorse and the facts of the case were clear. He was condemned to death. Large crowds gathered to boo him as he made his way to Tyburn in a black coach and wearing a white satin wedding suit. He was the first nobleman to be executed on the common gallows. In fact he was clearly impressed by the size of the crowds, possibly because they had never seen a lord going to be executed.

  On 9 January 1765 John Wesket was hanged at Tyburn for the murder of his master the Earl of Harrington. He treated the crowd to one of the best displays ever of sangfroid, dressing in an eye-catching blue and gold frock coat and wearing, as an emblem of his innocence, a white cockade in his hat. Standing up in the cart for most of the journey to Tyburn, he was applauded by the crowd for his apparent insouciance which he emphasised by eating several oranges as he went and casually throwing the peel into the street.

  The case of Elizabeth Brownrigg has gone down in criminal history as one of the worst examples of cruelty and physical abuse to children. Elizabeth was probably the most hated woman to be hanged at Tyburn. She lived in Fleur-de-Lys Court, Fetter Lane, off Fleet Street. She married a plumber and house-painter by whom she had sixteen children and her employment – an apt one given her considerable personal experience of childbirth – was as a midwife. However, it was for her sadistic cruelty to the female servants in her employ that she is best remembered. As the midwife at St Dunstan’s workhouse she was able to use her position to win the confidence of young vulnerable girl inmates. She brought them back as apprentices to her unsavoury home where they were kept as virtual slaves, although ostensibly working as family servants. Their living quarters were the cellars which they shared with pigs and in which they were systematically starved, whipped, tortured and otherwise abused. One girl had her tongue cut through with scissors and others died from a combination of extreme neglect and physical and mental distress. Elizabeth took the lead in perpetrating this gratuitous sadism but her husband and the one son remaining at home sometimes joined in. The authorities were alerted by the neighbours who heard the girls’ cries of distress over a long period but they took an unconscionable time getting around to doing anything about it. The three Brownriggs were tried at the Old Bailey and convicted of murder. The appalling suffering they inflicted on these unfortunate girls was punished by the husband and son – incredibly – receiving a sentence of just six months’ imprisonment each while Elizabeth was condemned to death. The outrageous nature of these crimes, even at a time when life was held as cheap, incurred widespread anger and Elizabeth had to run the gauntlet of verbal abuse and a hail of dangerous missiles from a huge crowd as she travelled to Tyburn where she ended her days on 14 September 1767. Her body was taken to Surgeons’ Hall, dissected and anatomised. Her skeleton was preserved.

  On 11 March 1768 James Sampson was hanged at Tyburn. In his youth, Sampson had shown evidence of precocious talent as an artist and had been able to attract the patronage of rich and powerful men like the Duke of Richmond and General Conway. They encouraged the development of his talent by paying for him to receive tutoring from some of the most successful artists of the day. His future seemed assured when he married a well-thought-of young lady in the general’s service and he was so highly regarded by the general himself that he was allowed free and full access to the General’s library. The problem was that Sampson, like so many other flawed geniuses before and since, was in thrall to the sins of the flesh. He carried on a number of illicit relationships with women maintaining whose affections depended on him constantly showering them with expensive gifts. This strained his financial resources beyond the limits of his income. Aware that valuable items were kept in a desk in the library, he resolved to steal these and cover his tracks by setting fire to the house. In this he was only partly successful because although he managed to set fire to the library, the desk was recovered and it was evident that some bank notes had been taken and that the fire was far from accidental. Sampson was recognised negotiating a number of cheques. He was arrested, convicted and sentenced to be hanged. His journey in the cart to Tyburn was unusual because it had to be diverted for what are now known as road works. It therefore passed through Smithfield, Cowcross and Turnmill Streets before regaining the usual route. A cringing confession on the scaffold and the prayers he offered up provided poor entertainment for the day’s crowd.

  Samuel Roberts came from the small county town of Shrewsbury where he completed an apprenticeship as a baker. He then decided to improve his career prospects by moving to London where, with the ease so typical of young men up from the country, he fell into bad company. In this case his new companions were a family of coiners by the name of Bacchus. He and Thomas Bacchus were found guilty of coining offences and were sentenced to death, as were all convicted coiners, for treason. They were therefore drawn to Tyburn on hurdles. This otherwise unremarkable pair of felons held forth most eloquently both on the way from Newgate and at Tyburn about how the authorities were totally justified in hanging them for the heinous crimes they had committed. They kept up a constant stream of this obsequious babble and with tears in their eyes implored the crowds to note their fate, respect the law and abjure all criminal temptations. This aroused the scorn and the ire of the crowd who showered them with verbal abuse and urged the hangman to despatch them quickly, if only to shut them up. They died on 31 May 1772.

  ‘Jack’ Rann was born near Bath in 1750 and christened John. A cheerful, quick-witted child, after entering service at the age of twelve he received rapid promotions in recognition of his ability and his pleasing manner. He became a coachman in London and, as a servant in fashionable society, acquired a taste for the good life. He also developed a liking for attractive girls. Unfortunately, a coachman’s pay could not provide him with the lifestyle to which he aspired and so he decided to try his luck as a highway man. Quickly he gained an enviable notoriety for the audacity of his robberies, the courtesy and politeness he employed when demanding that his victims part with their valuables and for the distinctive way in which he dressed. A born extrovert, he acquired the strange nickname ‘Sixteen-String Jack’ in recognition of the breeches of silk with their sixteen strings attached at the knees which he wore when out on the road. This leg gear must have made him rather conspicuous but although he was arrested on many occasions and charged with highway robbery, he was, rather surprisingly, acquitted because the witnesses failed to confirm his identity.

  Rann positively relished the bright lights. On one occasion he was in the crowd attending a hanging at Tyburn and was dressed in such outrageous clothes that he almost stole the
show from the condemned prisoners. Reputedly he laughed and joked with admiring onlookers and told them with some pride that one day they would be looking up at him as he stood on the scaffold. Jack was both charming and engaging. He was caught red-handed carrying out a burglary and when his case came up the magistrate was John Fielding, the ‘Blind Beak’. Although he could expect little sympathy from such a man he went ahead and spun a yarn about how he had not intended to rob the house he had broken into but had actually been keeping a tryst with a young lady by the name of Dolly Frampton. She was a servant girl and the hour was late, well after her employers would allow any admirers to come and go. To support his case, he got Dolly to appear as a witness. This she did sporting a remarkably low-cut and well-filled bodice with which she made a considerable impact in the court, creating an atmosphere which mollified even Fielding’s mood even though, of course, he could not actually see her. To everyone’s amazement, he let Rann off with a warning as to his future conduct. Rann remained cheery to the end. When he was finally in the condemned cell at Newgate, he was visited by an unusually large number of well-wishers, most of them women. He exchanged pleasantries with them as if he did not have a care in the world. He was executed at Tyburn in November 1774 treating the large and hugely appreciative crowd to his latest sartorial creation – a suit of pea-green clothes, equipped with sixteen strings on his breeches of course, and with a large nosegay as an accessory. His carefree manner won him many friends that day.

  In 1777 Tyburn witnessed the end of Dr William Dodd. He was in holy orders but boosted his income by extensive writing and by tutoring. Educated and cultured, he was a genial and popular society host. His main problem was that in order to keep up appearances, he lived way beyond his means. The debts piled up, but when the pressure finally became too much he tried to find a way out of his money problems by forging the signature of his patron on a promissory note. The sum concerned was a then massive £4,300. When the deception was discovered, his patron decided against prosecution but the Lord Mayor of the time, who happened to be a banker, decided that an example should be made of Dodd and he was despatched for trial at the Old Bailey. He spoke up very eloquently in his own defence using a speech written for the occasion by Dr Johnson, who also appealed to the King for clemency for Dodd. The subsequent hanging attracted one of the largest crowds ever seen at Tyburn. The occasion was a sobering one because of the dignified way in which Dodd comforted the other felon who was to be hanged at the same time. Dodd curiously put on a nightcap once he mounted the scaffold. Then perhaps even more curiously, an attendant held an umbrella over him. One wag in the crowd was heard to observe that an umbrella at this stage was quite unnecessary since it was so hot in hell that he would soon be dry! Most striking, however, was the otherwise eerie silence that accompanied these sights. Rumours were circulating that Dodd would be resuscitated after an arrangement with the hangman, Dennis, who figures in the novel Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens. The idea was that Dodd would be taken down as soon as possible and rushed away to an undertaker in Goodge Street where it was hoped that his life could be restored. Treatment involved a physician trying to pump up his lungs to revive him and to administer doses of various supposedly stimulating substances such as peppermint water, extract of horseradish and essence of turpentine. However, despite these efforts, nothing availed to bring Dodd back to life. Dodd’s companion on the gallows that day had no rich friends and received no such attention. He was a fifteen-year-old boy called Harris who had been stupid enough to rob a stagecoach. His takings were less than £2 and he had been swiftly apprehended. The price he had to pay was infinitely higher.

  James Hackman was a native of Gosport in Hampshire and his parents bought him a commission in an infantry regiment. While on recruiting duty he made the acquaintance of a Miss Martha Reay who had served an apprenticeship as a mantuamaker. Being both of good character and pleasing manner, she attracted the patronage of one of the country’s richest aristocrats who took her into his household. Hackman fell desperately in love with her and, deciding that he was not cut out for the army, took holy orders. He became a curate in a very rural benefice. It is not obvious why he took this drastic step because it meant that his financial state was as dire as that of the proverbial church mouse. If he thought that his lady-love would be impressed by such piety, he was mistaken. It eventually dawned on him that he was the victim of unrequited love and that she would not abandon her secure employment and pleasant lifestyle to live with an impoverished priest. One night Hackman saw Miss Reay going to the opera in Covent Garden in her patron’s coach. In a sudden insane burst of frustrated passion, he rushed to his lodgings for his pistols – strange possessions for a man of the cloth. He then made his way to the theatre, shot Miss Reay, fatally wounding her and turning one of the pistols on himself, tried to take his own life. He was unsuccessful and was quickly arrested and lodged in Newgate. There were no mitigating circumstances to take into account although Hackman was so full of contrition that it seemed as if he almost welcomed the attentions of the hangman. He was hanged on 19 April 1779. Some wag penned a piece of doggerel to commemorate this sorry chain of events:

  O clergyman! O wicked one!

  In Covent Garden shot her.

  No time to cry upon her God –

  It’s hoped he’s not forgot her.

  It was unusual for brothers to act as partners in highway robbery which alone makes George and Joseph Weston of particular interest. They were hanged at Tyburn on 3 September 1782. Young men from the provinces who drifted to London in search of wealth and fame, they were seduced by the raffish but expensive delights of the metropolis, turning to crime to be able to engage in them more fully. Horse-stealing, confidence tricks, forgery and smuggling were all attempted before the pair decided to chance their luck as highwaymen. They started by robbing a coach conveying the Royal Mail and successfully made off with bills of exchange and banknotes to an estimated value of £15,000. Time was not on the side of the Weston brothers because they had to cash these bills as quickly as possible before the details were circulated throughout the country. Accordingly, they set off on a high-speed dash around the country in a post-chaise with George disguised as a naval captain and Joseph dressed as his servant. A team of Bow Street Runners was deployed to bring them to justice and set off in hot pursuit every time they heard that the Westons had been recognised trying to negotiate the bills. However, the brothers managed to elude their pursuers and eventually it became obvious that the trail had gone cold. In fact with their ill-gotten gains the Westons had acquired property in the small Sussex town of Winchelsea. There they posed as men of respectability and substance, entering local society. George even managed to be elected a churchwarden, carving himself a unique place in the history of highwaymen by so doing. However, they lived beyond their means and their creditors eventually called on the authorities to help them recover what they owed. This threat to their little idyll on the Sussex coast made them panic and they fled to London where they were soon run to ground by the persistent men from Bow Street. They were locked up in Newgate but their friends managed to smuggle a file and a brace of pistols in to them. The brothers broke out of their fetters, overpowered a warder and managed to get out of the prison but they were recaptured soon after and found guilty of a number of capital offences. They were immortalised, albeit as a pair of scoundrels who thoroughly deserved their fate, by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) in his unfinished and now largely forgotten novel Denis Duval.

  There is some confusion as to exactly who was the last person to die on the scaffold at Tyburn. Some sources cite a William Ryland, forger, hanged at Tyburn on 29 August 1783 but others claim the dubious distinction belongs to John Austin, hanged on the same day. The ending of executions at Tyburn had come about not because of more humane or enlightened attitudes towards penal policy. Far from it. They had ceased because the disorder they created disrupted trade and commerce in the City and along the route from Newgate. They also offended a
gainst the even tenor of life and affected property prices in the highly fashionable streets and squares that were being built in the neighbourhood of Tyburn.

  Calls for the relocation of the Tyburn gallows began to be heard early in the eighteenth century and it was in 1719 that a move to Stamford Hill was mentioned. Another site which was considered for the location of a replacement gallows was Camden Town and the crossroads near the Mother Redcap Inn which was on the road to Hampstead. However, the decision was made to transfer Tyburn’s hangings to a space outside Newgate Prison. The disruption to London’s business that occurred at every Tyburn Fair could now be largely avoided. Even so, this decision did not meet with universal approval. In particular Dr Johnson fulminated: