Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree (20 page)

James Maclaine is the archetypal ‘gentleman highwayman’. Maclaine’s father, a parson, died leaving his son a sizeable inheritance when he was just eighteen. He got through this speedily and then took a job as a butler. Maclaine thought this demeaning and enjoying an expensive lifestyle he could not afford, started stealing from his employer; he was caught and dismissed. Moving to London, he tried to find further domestic employment while developing a sideline in seducing rich women. This latter endeavour was partially successful because he married one such woman, a widow, lured by the prospect of the sizeable dowry she commanded. Maclaine pragmatically took on the grocery business that she brought with her. It bored him to distraction until she very obligingly died. With the remains of her money he bought himself several suits of fine clothes and decided to try his luck as an eligible widower at fashionable spas like Bath and Tunbridge Wells. Maclaine had charm and style and he used these to seduce a substantial number of women and to try to persuade them to part with their money. He found the former much easier to achieve than the latter. Although the occupation had its compensations he was disappointed to find that the money was usually only available after a public promise of matrimony. This did not accord with Maclaine’s strategy. He employed a bankrupt apothecary called Plunkett to act as his footman. Keeping up appearances and treating the ladies in the way they expected was extremely expensive and funds became scarce. When Plunkett politely suggested that they should enhance their income by a little highway robbery, Maclaine jumped at the idea.

They made an ill-assorted pair out on the road because Maclaine was a total coward and the prospect of physical danger made his face twitch and his knees knock. He therefore lurked close by while Plunkett undertook the actual robberies. Maclaine found the seduction part of the business much more congenial and several times nearly contracted marriages which would have brought large dowries with them. However, the ladies concerned always seemed to smell a rat at the last minute and so Maclaine was left with nothing material to show for his efforts. Nevertheless, the pair continued to have their successes on the road and one of their best-known encounters was with the writer Horace Walpole (1717–97), the son of the man usually regarded as Britain’s first Prime Minister. This robbery took place on a moonlit night in Hyde Park in 1749, and this time Maclaine must have plucked up courage because it was he who carried it out. Walpole wrote a daily journal in which he made much of the encounter. He was shot at by Maclaine and wrote that Maclaine’s pistol, ‘going off accidentally, grazed the skin under my eye, left some marks of shot on my face, and stunned me. The ball went through the top of the chariot, and if I had sat an inch nearer to the left side, must have gone through my head.’ Next morning he received a very polite, even apologetic letter from Maclaine saying that he was sorry for the unpleasantness and inconvenience he had caused. Walpole commented that the encounter with the highwayman was carried out ‘with the greatest good breeding on both sides’. Plunkett and Maclaine’s genteel depredations on the King’s Highway could not last forever and eventually Maclaine was arrested. Plunkett simply disappeared. Maclaine declared that he had never intended to rob anyone but had been forced to do so by his greedy and belligerent partner. He called numerous witnesses, all society ladies with whom he had enjoyed intimate relations, who attested to his character and probity although he himself made a very poor impression. After being found guilty, he was lodged in Newgate where he received numerous visitors, the majority, true to form, being dowager lady socialites. Large crowds turned out to watch him on his way to Tyburn in 1750 but he proved a great disappointment. He gave no rousing speech to provide a piquant taster for the main item of the day’s entertainment which, of course, was the hanging, nor were his sufferings on the gallows prolonged.

On 7 June 1753, a Doctor Cameron died at Tyburn, his being the last judicial killing associated with the uprising of the so-called ‘Young Pretender’ Bonnie Prince Charlie. In 1744–5 Louis XV of France, then at war with the British, encouraged the Prince to launch a war from Scotland in an attempt to reclaim the British throne for the Stuarts and, at the same time, confound the British by opening up hostilities on another front. He duly landed in the Hebrides in July 1745, defeated a government force at Prestonpans near Edinburgh and advanced on England, hoping to pick up support as he went. But few rallied to his banner and by the time he got as far south as Derby, it was evident that his cause was lost. He retreated northwards, pursued hotfoot by the Duke of Cumberland who inflicted a crushing defeat on Prince Charlie’s clansmen at the battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746. This ended any hopes he might have had of winning the throne. Dr Cameron had been a medical practitioner in the small town of Lochaber in the Highlands when the Rebellion of ’45 broke out. Despite the advice of his brother, he attended the Young Pretender as his physician. Although he had not fought, he was clearly a wanted man and after the debacle of Culloden, he made his escape to France. Cameron failed to prosper there and in 1752 returned to England, believing that past events had been forgotten and trying to contact friends who might help him regain his position in society. However, bygones were not bygones and he was captured and placed in the Tower of London. He was charged with treason and found guilty. His case had attracted a great deal of interest and large, not unsympathetic crowds lined his route to Tyburn. They were greatly impressed with his dignity and general fortitude.

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.