Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree (21 page)

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 against 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:

No sir; they object that the old method drew together a number of spectators. If they do not draw spectators, they do not answer their purpose. The old method was most satisfactory for all parties: the public was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why has all this to be swept away?

In large part, this chapter has focused on some of Tyburn’s best-known victims and curious or notorious cases. It is important, however, to dispel any impression that Tyburn was the destination only of those whose lifestyles and activities marked them out from the crowd. The felons themselves and the crimes they had committed were usually nothing other than mundane. Many were thieves and robbers. The items they stole were often of little value. They were life’s losers and London’s forgotten criminals.

T
he three miles from Newgate to Tyburn was the last journey on earth for the condemned felons. Although most are unlikely to have been noting their surroundings with any great interest – other than perhaps to look for a way of escaping – they travelled a route imbued with many interesting features. What were some of the major historical and topographical features along or close to the route from Newgate to Tyburn which could have been seen around 1783, the last year in which felons made this dismal one-way journey?

Newgate was an ancient gaol that took its name from the adjacent building of the same name, erected around
AD
200. This was the nearest of London’s six landward gates to the powerful fort that the Romans had constructed in the northwestern corner of their settlement, Londinium, in about
AD
120. Close by was Ludgate and the area between the two gates came to be known as ‘The Bailey’, a bailey denoting a ward or court within an enclosed space. The name ‘Old Bailey’ was applied for the first time about 1760 to a new street that resulted from the demolition of several small alleys in this area. Newgate had a turbulent history but survived until 1777, being the last of the City’s gates to be demolished. It looked rather odd in its last years because it was topped with a curious ventilating device invented by a Dr Hales.

Newgate, the prison, stood some distance to the east of the Fleet River which flowed close to the west wall of the City. Although its origins may have been earlier, it was certainly used as a prison around 1130 for housing people thought to be dangerous to the Crown. It was also the prison for the County of Middlesex and the City of London and was supervised by their respective sheriffs, they in turn appointing the keeper. It gained a fearful reputation both for the horrors of its accommodation and the corrupt and cruel behaviour of its keepers. It is therefore no coincidence that Wat Tyler’s rebels attacked and partly demolished it in 1381. Attacks aside, the fabric was frequently neglected and it had to be extensively rebuilt several times. In 1770 a massive reconstruction programme was embarked upon which was not completed before large parts of it were demolished during the Gordon Riots of 1780 when the mob let the prisoners go free. It was quickly rebuilt but with little improvement to its facilities.

Emerging from Newgate into Old Bailey, the procession turned westwards at the junction with Newgate Street and Giltspur Street. Newgate Street was once known as Blow Bladder Lane because of the butcher’s shambles in that area and the common practice of inserting the bladders of sheep into carcases in order to make them swell. They therefore looked bigger and prices could quite literally be inflated. Giltspur Street had previously been known as Knightrider Street because knights probably used this thoroughfare on their way to do mock battle at the Smithfield tournaments. At a later stage it is likely that gilt spurs were actually made there. The procession then passed through the site of the Newgate itself and stopped outside the church of St Sepulchre on the north side. The full name of this building was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre without Newgate, the name referring to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and probably adopted at about the time of the Crusades. The Great Fire burnt itself out almost exactly on this spot and the church was severely damaged. At midnight before an execution, the sexton of St Sepulchre’s traversed an underground passage from the church to Newgate, rang his handbell outside the prisoner’s cell and offered some salutary advice in verse form. What the other inmates thought about being woken up by this performance has unfortunately not been recorded.

The procession now entered Snow Hill, which wound sharply down to ‘Oldbourne’ or Holborn Bridge over the Fleet. In the eighteenth century Snow Hill gained some notoriety as one of the places where vicious gangs of young rakes congregated. At this point the Fleet was alternatively known as the ‘Holebourne’ or ‘stream in the hollow’, meaning the significant valley that the Fleet had carved for itself at this point shortly before joining the Thames. St Andrews Church, Holborn, situated at the top of Holborn Hill, would have looked down on the passing procession. While resembling many other Wren churches, it had escaped the Great Fire but was so decayed that it was largely rebuilt by the great man himself between 1684 and 1687.

Having crossed the bridge over the Fleet, the procession then made its way up the steep western bank past the junction with Saffron Hill coming from the north. This name commemorates an estate in the vicinity where the Bishops of Ely once had a palace and which became famous for the cultivation of saffron (
Crocus sativus
). This spice has long been valued as an aromatic flavouring for cakes, sauces and rice dishes, as a colouring agent and for a variety of medicinal purposes. The Bishops’ Palace had been demolished in about 1772 and by the second half of the seventeenth century large amounts of the land on which it had stood had been built upon. It soon became notorious for its ramshackle housing and the criminal tendencies and practices of its inhabitants.

Soon after gaining Holborn itself, Fetter Lane was passed on the left. The origins of this name may have been from the Old French
faitor
, a lawyer, because of the numbers of those practising law in the area. However, it appears that members of the legal profession were not always held in high esteem and that ‘faitor’ eventually came to mean idler or vagabond and the lane and its vicinity became a notorious criminal rookery. Another explanation is that the name originates with the fetters worn on the cuirasses of fighting men in the Middle Ages which were made by armourers in workshops in this area. Close to the Holborn end of Fetter Lane had lived Nathaniel Tomkins, the brother-in-law of Edmund Waller who was implicated in Waller’s Plot of 1643 for which he was hanged outside the front door of his residence, no. 5. Other punishments and executions took place in Fetter Lane from time to time. From the middle of the eighteenth century, Fetter Lane became known for its conventicles or clandestine religious meetings and meeting places. The Fetter Lane Independent Chapel was established in 1660 and over the years the voices of many famous preachers, including John Wesley, echoed through its halls. True to the heterodox religious traditions of the area, the first Moravian Chapel in London was erected there. Others who lived in Fetter Lane included Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), the political philosopher, the poet John Dryden (1631–1700) and Tom Paine (1737–1809), the maverick polemicist.