Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree (17 page)

Professional thieves found conditions in London in the early part of the eighteenth century particularly favourable. Their activities were supported by a sophisticated, efficient network of receivers who had few scruples concerning the provenance of the goods they were offered. The planning of robberies and negotiations with these receivers frequently took place in ‘flash houses’, usually drinking places located in the rookeries where all concerned enjoyed virtual immunity from the authorities.

Much crime, however, was opportunistic and the result of the dire conditions in which its perpetrators found themselves rather than the work of hardened recidivists. The ragged specimens of humanity that shuffled in front of the magistrates each working morning were hopeless and often helpless victims of circumstance. Desperation had led them to theft and robbery and many of them even lacked the skills to commit these effectively. Much of this miserable flotsam and jetsam consisted of women. There was a considerable if variable and capricious demand for female labour in London, especially in its extremely large service sector. Huge numbers of girls gravitated to the metropolis in search of work. A few made a success of things. Far more found that life was a hand-to-mouth, lonely struggle, in and out of poorly paid, unskilled work with periods of appalling deprivation threatening in the bad times. Many had little or no alternative but to turn to prostitution, crime or both.

In
Industry and Idleness
(1747), William Hogarth illustrates what he saw as the rewards that London offered the diligent and the temptations it presented to the easily led. He traces the divergent lives of Francis Goodchild, the industrious apprentice and Tom Idle, the feckless ne’er-do-well. Goodchild makes the most of his chances and rises to wealth and prestige. Idle, however, starts down the road to perdition by gambling on the Sabbath and then finds himself sucked into an awful maelstrom of degradation and despair. What Hogarth ignores is the fact that many of the nameless thousands of Londoners who lived in permanent want, misery and despair, had never had the opportunity to make anything of life in the first place.

The nature and volume of crime in London reflected wider socio-economic and cultural change. The eighteenth century was pre-eminently the age of drink and the effects of alcohol abuse on criminal activity were all too evident. From around 1690 to the 1750s the villain of the piece was gin. The Dutch were extremely fond of gin but hitherto it had been little known outside the Netherlands. In 1688 the highly unpopular King James II was deposed. The crown was offered to the most acceptable claimant in the circumstances who was James II’s daughter Mary, along with her husband, Prince William of Orange, as consort. The accession to the throne of a Dutchman did not meet with universal approval but it led, among other things, to a revolution in drinking habits accompanied by an explosion of crime and, indirectly, to substantial numbers of miscreants meeting their Maker at Tyburn.

From 1690 onwards Parliament approved a number of measures directly encouraging the distilling of spirits made from English grain. King William provided a fine example to his new subjects and led from the front, consuming prodigious amounts of gin. Drinking gin showed loyalty to the new monarch and was patriotic. Soon gin overtook ale and beer as the drink of the people. It was cheaper and its inebriating effects were more immediate. In 1688 the English consumed about half a million gallons annually. By 1700 they drank four times as much. The government was happy because the sale of gin produced revenue for the government and benefited the farmers. It could not, however, have predicted what happened over the next fifty years. By 1733 in London alone 11 million gallons of gin were produced, this being about twenty-three times as much as had been produced throughout England and Wales in 1688. This figure, however, is only an official one and takes no account of the vast quantities of adulterated gin produced cheaply in innumerable illicit stills. This liquid filth had just two virtues: it was cheap and it brought quick oblivion.

Gin provided short-lived respite for people whose surroundings were comfortless and whose lives were characterised by deprivation and despair. In St Giles, one of the most notorious of London’s rookeries, it was estimated that in 1750 one house in every four sold drink. All classes drank, there being no stigma attached to drunkenness, but the effects of the excessive drinking of the poorer sections of society were more likely to be seen in public and were therefore much more evident. Drunks reeled around the streets, colliding with obstacles, sometimes being run down by riders and carriages or collapsing insensible in the filth that was heaped up everywhere. Many, hopelessly addicted and deprived of the will to do anything positive, drank until they made themselves unconscious or the money ran out and then turned to casual crime in order to pay for the next drink.

In 1751 two powerful pieces of propaganda made a considerable impression on informed opinion. The first was William Hogarth’s famous contrasting prints entitled
Gin Lane
and
Beer Street
. These provided a graphic portrayal of the moral and physical decay linked with the abuse of gin and the robust well-being associated with the moderate drinking of beer. Second was Henry Fielding’s essay
An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increases of Robbers
. Fielding was a highly respected magistrate who explained clearly and simply that much of the criminality he dealt with was caused by the abuse of gin. In 1751 the government prohibited the sale of gin by distillers, by chandlers and grocers and workhouse-keepers. It also increased the duty on spirits thereby depriving gin of its price advantage over beer and ale. Gradually the amount of gin that was consumed declined as did the corresponding death rate.

Over the eighteenth century as a whole, many factors can be seen to have had an effect on levels and types of crime. The streets of London were better lit by the 1790s. This made street crime more hazardous for its perpetrators. By 1800 street robbery had declined while burglary was on the increase. Society as a whole was becoming less violent. Doubt was being cast on the efficacy of the ‘Bloody Code’, itself extremely violent, as a means of deterring crime. Ideas associated with the Enlightenment stressed the rational side of human nature and argued that increased knowledge could be applied to bring about substantial improvements in the human condition.

London underwent a massive transformation in the course of the century. Its population continued to grow although now at a slower rate than some of the places where manufacturing industries were being established. The area under bricks and mortar spread rapidly as many inhabitants of the City left for the more salubrious outer areas while there was a continuous migration into London by those seeking better financial prospects. London was the heart of the country’s government and legal affairs, the focus of the country’s finance and commerce, its literary and intellectual life, the centre of fashionable social activity and it offered the best shopping opportunities in England. However, the economic base of London was changing and while new industries continued to be established, manufacturing industry became relatively less important. London grew more rapidly as a financial centre, as a port and as the location for the developing apparatus of the state. This changed the composition of occupations and incomes and led to relative gentrification.

This process may have had a bearing on the marked contrast between the earlier and the later eighteenth century. The death rate, for example, began to fall gradually after 1750 and quite sharply from the 1780s. Visitors commented on an apparent reduction in the uncouth behaviour of those moving around London’s streets, a phenomenon which may have had something to do with the work of inspirational magistrates such as Colonel de Veil and the Fielding brothers. These men tried to identify the causes of crime and advocated social reform as a means of tackling the poverty and deprivation which were at the root of much criminal activity. They also had a great deal to do with the establishment of a paid and permanent police force, a visible force on the streets to deter crime and provide citizens with some sense of security.

The organs of local government too underwent improvement in the eighteenth century. The vestries of the parishes surrounding the City obtained legal powers to enable them to raise money for watch purposes, to provide lighting and street-cleaning and to ameliorate the conditions of the poor. They effected a very considerable improvement, so much so that a guide book to London in 1802 stated: ‘We venture to assert that no city in proportion to its trade and luxury is more free from danger to those who pass the streets at all hours, or from depredations, open or concealed, on property’.

In the early part of the eighteenth century, crime, disorder and violence had stalked the streets of London and the general belief was that crime was out of control. The weakness of the forces of law and order meant that few offenders were apprehended. Instead the law turned with apparently barbaric ferocity on those who were actually arrested and convicted. The penalty for an ever-increasing range of crimes was hanging, intended to act as a deterrent to potential offenders. At the end of the century, however, opinion in ruling circles was turning away from such an overtly vindictive penal code. Consideration was being given to alternative ways of dealing with what was seen as the continuing threat to life and property posed by the ‘criminal classes’. Hangings at Tyburn and the ritual enactments associated with them had ceased and had been moved to the much more easily controlled area outside Newgate. Opinion had also moved against the systematic infliction of cruelty on animals. The Fielding brothers, the reforming magistrates, for example, had initiated action against throwing at cocks and increasingly such pastimes became punishable offences. The nineteenth century was to see the introduction of professional policing, the development of modern prisons and the concept of custodial sentencing. It also witnessed far-reaching efforts to control those occasions on which huge, boisterous and potentially unmanageable crowds congregated, be it as spectators of sporting activities or as participants in various forms of political activity. Change was the very dynamic of London life.

O
ne constant in the otherwise ever-changing diversity of London life was the spectacle of the ride from Newgate to Tyburn where a wide range of miscreants kept the hangman busy and the crowd entertained right through until 1783 when executions there ceased. This chapter examines the lives and last moments of some of the felons who died at Tyburn during the period 1690 to 1783.

On 23 December 1690 Sir John Johnston was hanged. A Scot, native of Kirkcaldy, Johnston was a rogue who preferred seducing and swindling rich women to working for a living. He had set his sights on a young and wealthy Irish spinster and was winning the battle for her affections when her father found out. He hired a gang of ruffians who beat Johnston up so severely that he decided to abandon his courtship. With a group of accomplices Johnston then kidnapped a wealthy heiress who was forced to marry one of the gang, bringing with her a generous dowry. Johnston was identified as the ringleader and sentenced to death. This unedifying man made a long speech from the gallows in which, ahead of his time, he accused the press of misrepresenting his case!

In October 1693 six men guilty of clipping coin were hanged at Tyburn and in July 1694 ‘Wilkinson the Goldsmith’ was executed for a similar offence. On this occasion one of his companions on the journey from Newgate endeared himself to the crowd by kicking the Ordinary out of the cart. In 1695 John More, described as a rich ‘tripeman’ who had achieved considerable wealth and acquired a country estate, was hanged for clipping coin of the realm. Coining was particularly prevalent at this time and in December 1696 as many as ten men were executed at Tyburn for offences of this sort.

Thomas Cook was a condemned felon who in 1703 gained the uncalled-for distinction of having set off twice from Newgate on what was usually the once-in-a-lifetime journey to Tyburn. He believed a reprieve would arrive on the day before that set for the execution. It did not. He had travelled as far as Tyburn when, to his great joy, the reprieve arrived. Cook was returned to Newgate only to receive notice that the reprieve had been rescinded. He then had an uneasy wait of several weeks before the next Tyburn Fair when he set off from Newgate for the second and last time.

In 1714 Roderick Audrey died at Tyburn aged just sixteen. He had been found guilty of burglary and theft. His unusual modus operandi was to stroll around an area of fashionable houses searching for a convenient open window, carrying a sparrow with him. Looking in at the window, he would quickly ascertain whether the room contained any items worth stealing. If so, he would release the sparrow to fly into the room and climb in after it. Securing any easily removable items, he then climbed out, reunited with his unwitting accomplice, the sparrow. If apprehended in the house his explanation was that he was searching for his pet bird which had unfortunately flown in through the open window. Although this story does not sound very plausible, he apparently used it successfully several times. Eventually, however, he was caught, tried, sentenced and hanged. The records tell us nothing about how he coped with this ordeal. Nor do they reveal the fate of the sparrow.

In May 1723 the government hurried through one of the most far-reaching Acts in British legal history. This came to be commonly known as the ‘Waltham Black Act’ and it created fifty or more new capital offences. The Act’s origins lay with the desire of those landowners who owned game and hunting rights to punish poachers who went to work armed and with their faces blackened or otherwise disguised. However, the Act was drafted in such a way that it could easily encompass a far wider range of offences. As sober an authority on English law as Sir Leon Radzinowicz commented about this Act: