Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree Read online

  There is no doubt that some of those who died at Tyburn gained considerable spiritual strength from the act of doing so in front of an appreciative and supportive audience. As Henry Fielding, the zealous and perceptive magistrate of Bow Street, wrote in 1751:

  The day appointed by Law for the Thief’s Shame is a Day of Glory in his Opinion. His procession to Tyburn, and his last moments there, are all triumphant; attended with the compassion of the meek and tender-hearted, and with the Applause, Admiration, and envy of all the bold and hardened …

  The technology of the hanging process changed over time. In the earliest period, the gallows consisted of two uprights with a cross-beam joining them. The cross-beam could accommodate up to ten victims, although only one could be hanged at a time. The prisoner was forced to mount a ladder placed against the cross-beam in a kind of do-it-yourself form of execution. He already had a noose around his neck which was attached to the cross-beam and he could throw himself off if he chose to do so, death coming by slow strangulation. If he showed understandable signs of reluctance to do this, he was liable to be unceremoniously pushed off as the ladder was twisted and turned. This explains the phrase ‘turned off’ as gallows humour would have it. Later, although this method hardly involved major technological advance, the prisoner was required to stand on the tail of a cart, probably the one in which he had ridden from Newgate. The horses were then lashed and as they lurched forward, the prisoner was left dangling in midair. Several simultaneous executions could be carried out in this way. In 1571 the ‘Triple Tree’ was brought into use at Tyburn. It was a triangular gallows consisting of three uprights joined to each other by cross-beams and it considerably increased the potential productivity of the hangman. Now twenty-four criminals could be hanged at one go, eight on each beam. The only time this happened was in 1649.

  It was not uncommon for a prisoner to give money to the hangman to try to ensure that death was quick. Otherwise he might take twenty agonising minutes to expire. As the prisoner dangled, the hangman might therefore allow his relatives to rush forward and pull on his legs, trying to assist a swift demise. However the hangman had to ensure that they were not rushing forward with the opposite purpose – of lifting him up and preventing strangulation. It was widely believed that if death did not occur on this occasion, the prisoner might be reprieved, a clear case of ‘where there’s life, there’s hope’. Undignified scenes might ensue as fights broke out between the hangman and the guards on the one hand and the relatives and friends of the prisoner on the other. This all helped to provide the spectators with just the kind of knockabout entertainment that many of them had spent good money hoping to see. It was the custom to leave the body hanging for an hour before it was cut down. During that time, women might rush forward to grab the still-twitching hand of the dying convict and press it to their cheeks or bosoms because it was widely regarded as possessing curative powers, especially against skin problems. Additionally, children might be lifted up and made to press any infected limbs in the ‘death sweat’. Pieces of dried skin from those who had been hanged fetched high prices as lucky charms. In 1739 John Morris was hanged at Tyburn for highway robbery. When perpetrating an earlier crime, he had had his jawbone shot off. He had carefully saved all the pieces he could find and while he was waiting execution, he distributed them as good-luck charms to his fellow inmates of Newgate.

  In the crowd there would be veterans of innumerable public executions who provided a running commentary for the benefit of those around who were less well versed in the nuances of a hanging. Perceptive remarks would be made about the prisoner and his demeanour; most particularly about whether he was displaying any signs of fear. Those who seemed stoical were admired but others who were openly defiant were loudly applauded. Especially savoured were tirades which scorned or lambasted the legal authorities, the whole system of justice and the peculations of the powerful for which they seemed to have almost complete immunity. Some prisoners took the opportunity to make jokes and jests and exchange witticisms with those in the crowd. Such prisoners were greatly appreciated but the onlookers took less pleasure in cringing and self-pitying confessions or last-minute appeals for clemency. The barracking might be so loud that the condemned man had little option but to stop. The onlookers did not want the speeches to go on too long because they delayed the day’s main pleasure which was, of course, the one or more hangings. Other perceptive remarks came from experienced spectators who commented on and analysed the skill displayed by the hangman. Although they seem not to have turned a hair as the condemned man twitched and convulsed in his death agonies, they did require the hangman to do all he could to make the execution a quick and clean one. They were swift to spot evidence of nerves or incompetence on the part of the hangman and these would elicit a torrent of jeers and ribald comments. Any hangman making a particularly cack-handed job might have to run from the gallows under a hail of missiles and verbal derision.

  Most felons wished to die well. Folklore is full of examples of gallows humour and last-minute defiance but for all those who went down fighting, there were far more who went to their deaths clearly in the uttermost transports of terror. Few managed a swashbuckling swan song. Most died as obscurely and hopelessly as they had lived.

  The day’s events were not over just because the prisoner was swinging and expiring in mid-air. An undertaker might be on hand to take the corpse away and give it a decent burial but sometimes he had to move very quickly. He might be competing with the relatives of the deceased who believed that the victim might be revived. A surgeon called Chovet had experimented on the windpipes of dogs and supposedly discovered a way of restoring them to life. For these reasons, a pitched battle sometimes took place after the corpse was taken down as the undertaker, if any, or the friends and relatives of the deceased, fought with those who wanted simply to touch the corpse or to remove parts of its anatomy for their allegedly therapeutic properties. Also likely to join in were those who intended to spirit the corpse away and sell it to a school of anatomy where it could serve as an object lesson for those training to be doctors and surgeons. Further chaos might be caused by spectators joining in the fight if they thought that the corpse had been grabbed by the surgeons’ men, because their activities excited almost universal revulsion. In the middle of all this confusion, the hangmen might be desperately trying to hold on to the corpse so that he could sell the clothes, the shroud or the rope with which it had been hanged, all of which had considerable commercial value. The more notorious the dead convict, the higher the price these relics would command. As far back as ancient Roman times, it was believed that wrapping a hangman’s rope round the temples was a sure way of getting rid of headaches. Possession of a hangman’s rope or even one single strand from it was thought to enable a person to fend off all manner of ailments when the relic was worn round the neck. Gamblers also eagerly availed themselves of a piece of the rope believing that it would improve their luck. In the mêlée, some of the crowd would even be trying to prise splinters off the gallows. These were rubbed on the gums as an infallible cure for toothache.

  Sometimes it seems that the hangman was regarded more as the villain of the piece than the condemned felons. He was the person everyone loved to hate and would be on the receiving end of a constant stream of unhelpful advice, ribald comments and barbed witticisms. This explains the public display of approval and pleasure which marked the ride to Tyburn of a young Irish woman called Hannah Dagoe. Clearly a woman of some spirit, she spent part of the journey divesting herself of most of her clothes. These she flung at random into a highly appreciative crowd. By the time she reached Tyburn she was very scantily clad. The crowd scoffed at the frustration and mortification evident on the hangman’s face. Hannah, evidently determined to thwart the hangman, now proceeded to remove most of that small amount of clothing she still had on. The crowd were then not only treated to the sight of Hannah capering about almost naked on the scaffold but also of the hangman, Thomas Turlis, doing all he
could to restrain her and prevent her casting off any remaining precious items of clothing. He tried to pinion her arms and received a hefty kick in the groin for his trouble. This caused him to double up in agony, to the huge delight of the crowd. Somehow or other he managed to drop the noose over Hannah’s head. This only incensed her further and, pushing Turlis aside, she then hurled herself out of the cart only to have her fall fatally arrested by the noose. Hannah had not only prevented Turlis getting what he thought of as his rightful perks but had also made him look a complete fool. Here was a story with which to regale the grandchildren in years to come!

  The best pictorial depiction of Tyburn is in William Hogarth’s ninth illustration, The Idle ’Prentice, in the series entitled Industry and Idleness published in 1747. This is Hogarth’s most ambitious series of engravings and is a moralistic treatise which contrasts the fates of two Spitalfields apprentices going respectively by the suggestive names of Frank Goodchild and Tom Idle. Hogarth has no interest in the significance of genetic or material influences on the formation of character and behaviour. As far as he is concerned, all are born with equal potential to do good and evil but propensities to virtue or to dissipation and wickedness are down to how individuals choose to handle the opportunities that life presents. Thus Frank Goodchild is wholly virtuous and Tom Idle irrevocably wicked.

  Both boys are apprenticed as weavers but in the first illustration a neatly dressed Frank is shown working away on his loom while an unkempt Tom dozes at his post. The second picture shows Goodchild dutifully worshipping in church and sharing a hymn-book with his master’s daughter while in the third Idle is shown gambling in a churchyard during the time of the service and attempting to cheat the three wastrels who are his companions. In the fourth, the deserving Goodchild has been promoted to work in the office while Idle, having exhausted the patience of his master, is depicted in the next engraving being sent off to sea. Time moves on and Goodchild’s diligence and rectitude are rewarded in the sixth illustration which depicts his marriage to his employer’s daughter and his acceptance as a partner in his father-inlaw’s firm. Tom, whose experiences at sea have only served to degrade him further, is depicted in the next plate in the series as destitute in a squalid garret with a harlot who is also a pickpocket. In the next scene Goodchild has become Sheriff of London, a rich man basking in wealth and public esteem while the ninth in the series shows the continuing degradation of Idle. He is being apprehended for robbery and murder in what was known as ‘Bloody Bowl Cellar’, a notorious ‘sanctuary’ in London where fugitives from their debtors and all manner of criminals would resort. In the tenth picture Idle appears in court before a magistrate who, predictably, turns out to be Goodchild, depicted by Hogarth as an alderman. Idle owes his conviction to one of his gambling partners in the churchyard all those years ago, now a fellow criminal, who turns King’s Evidence.

  This pictorial saga seems extremely unctuous by current standards but Hogarth has handed us a uniquely detailed visual presentation of the life of London in his time. The eleventh picture is entitled ‘The Idle ’Prentice executed at Tyburn’. This picture of Tyburn Fair contains a wealth of fascinating detail. The prisoner stands in a cart and is being exhorted to confess by the Ordinary while the hangman, drawing on a foul old pipe, is nonchalantly adjusting the rope on one of the beams of the Triple Tree. Close to the gallows are the grandstands which provide the best view of proceedings. Prominent in them is Mother Douglas, a brothel-keeper who owns the grandstand and is shown standing up and drinking gin. Idle’s mother can be discerned weeping and bemoaning the fate of her son. A cake-seller by the name of ‘Tiddy Doll’ is depicted. He is a familiar sight on all these occasions and is shown hawking his wares. A small boy has overturned a barrow full of apples being pushed by a girl who retaliates by hitting him hard in the face. A man brandishes a little dog that he is about to throw at Idle while a kneeling soldier is seen picking a man’s pocket. A bevy of men are engaged in fisticuffs over some unknown dispute and a well-built woman has put down her baby while she prepares to deliver the coup de grâce to her assailant in some other argument. At the front of the picture, a bedraggled woman is selling ‘The Dying Speech and Confession of Tom Idle’ which will have been written and printed several days before the execution. Hogarth gives a good idea of the rural nature of Tyburn at the time because in the background can be seen the grassy slopes of Notting Hill.

  As the continuously built-up area of London moved westwards, apparently relentlessly, gracious new streets and squares for the wealthy came to characterise the section stretching towards Tyburn. Hangings constituted a threat to law and order, as they drew a ravening mob, and to property. The permanent gallows at Tyburn was removed and on 4 October 1759 the first executions took place on a new gallows that was erected and dismantled for every hanging day. However, pressure developed for the removal of public hangings from Tyburn to a more remote spot and Camden Town was mooted as one possibility.

  From this time executions ordered by the City of London and the Middlesex magistrates took place outside Newgate Prison. This must have been a boon for the authorities who would no longer have to put up with the chaos, disruption to business and frequent lawlessness which ensued at every Tyburn Fair. Hangings would still take place in public but would be much more controllable. This change, however, was not popular. People of all classes railed against it. Dr Johnson argued that Tyburn not only emphasised the power of the law by publicly exposing felons to their fate but that it also provided entertainment for the crowds and gave the felons themselves some support in their last hours. These latter arguments cut little ice with the authorities.

  The old Triple Tree was sold and legend says that some pieces were bought by a local innkeeper, possibly of the Carpenters Arms, to be used as stands on which to place barrels. The Tyburn Convent, close by in Hyde Park Place, keeps what it claims are other fragments as a reminder of the Catholics who suffered for their beliefs at Tyburn.

  From then on a gallows was erected outside Newgate every time executions were to take place. It was portable although heavy enough to need two horses to drag it from its storage place inside the prison. This was a new piece of technology, an advance on the ‘drop’ scaffold which had been tried at Tyburn in 1760 for the execution of Earl Ferrers. This had had some serious design shortcomings, not the least of which was that the drop was insufficient to achieve the required purpose. Ferrers had only been despatched because the hangman had pulled powerfully on his legs. The new device had two parallel crossbeams and a platform containing a hatch. The hatch was operated by the hangman using a lever and being 10 feet long and 8 feet wide, it could accommodate ten felons at a time. Indeed, ten criminals did act as involuntary guinea-pigs and were executed on 9 December 1783. This new scaffold was not without its teething problems. The two executioners had had little previous chance to test their new plaything and they used ropes that were far too short. The result was that, although the felons dropped through the hatch gratifyingly, they could not fall far enough to fracture their spinal columns and they died instead from slow and extremely painful strangulation.

  Few activities seemed to excite more popular disgust in the eighteenth century than the efforts of the medical world to learn more about human anatomy by obtaining cadavers to use as object lessons with which to teach students of anatomy and surgery. To understand why the issue of surgery is so important to the history of Tyburn, we need to consider the manner in which the dead were disposed of.

  The lifeless bodies of criminals have always seemed to attract the attentions of practitioners of the occult arts, especially those pursuing necromancy. People unfortunate enough to be crucified in Roman times were sometimes mutilated even before they had been taken down from their crosses. Allusions in Shakespeare’s Macbeth to ‘Nose of Turk’ and ‘Tartar’s Lip’ suggest continuing interest in these practices. One accusation frequently made during the witch-hunting craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was that witches were
in the habit of visiting churchyards where they dug up bodies and removed such parts as teeth, nails and hair.

  The College of Physicians opened England’s first anatomical theatre in Knightrider Street in the City of London in the seventeenth century. At that time surgeons were not held in high esteem and were certainly thought of as inferior to physicians, who were regarded as men of learning. Surgeons by contrast were ‘sawbones’, rough-and-ready artisans whose skill lay in removing limbs with the greatest possible despatch and who were seen as little different from ‘the poor man’s doctor’, the barber-surgeons. The latter spent much of his time, for example, cutting hair, removing in growing toenails, extracting rotting teeth, treating chilblains and doing what they could for people suffering with piles. The Company of Barber-Surgeons had been founded in the early sixteenth century and in 1540 had obtained parliamentary sanction to dissect the bodies of four executed felons annually. Four specimens were simply insufficient and an increase to six was made in the reign of Charles II. The barbers and the surgeons went their separate ways in 1745 by which time surgeons were getting hold of corpses to use for demonstration purposes. This was unofficial and required back-handers to such people as the Constable of Holborn who on occasion would provide them with the bodies of felons hanged at Tyburn.