Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree (23 page)

At 173 Oxford Street the procession would have passed the ‘Pantheon’ which had been opened in 1772. This was a fashionable resort for affluent Londoners and was described as ‘a winter Ranelagh’, the latter being one of London’s best-known pleasure gardens. It was a kind of winter garden, performing many of the same functions as Ranelagh but open all the year round and with the advantage of being entirely protected from the elements. Concerts and masked balls were among the favourite activities. Among its early patrons were literary figures of stature such as Oliver Goldsmith, Fanny Burney and Edward Gibbon. In its heyday the Pantheon excited comments verging on the hyperbolic. Horace Walpole declared it ‘the most beautiful edifice in England’; Gibbon thought it the wonder of the eighteenth century and of the British Empire. The socialites of fashionable London were a capricious lot, however, and by the time of the last procession to Tyburn, they were drifting off elsewhere in search of new experiences and sensations with which to counter their ennui. At 441 Oxford Street the procession passed a hostelry called the Man Loaded with Mischief, which at one time displayed a sign painted by none other than William Hogarth depicting a man staggering along bearing on his back a woman, a magpie and a monkey.

The procession crossed a somewhat rickety bridge over the Tyburn stream itself and then the outer fringes of the built-up area were reached. Ahead was the large expanse of Hyde Park, part of a tract of land bequeathed to Westminster Abbey in the eleventh century. It was sequestered by Henry VIII at the dissolution of the monasteries and used for hunting, deer still being hunted there by royalty as late as 1768. The park was opened to the public early in the seventeenth century. Its strategic position on London’s north-western extremity meant that it had been used periodically for military purposes and as recently as 1780 troops had been encamped there during the Gordon Riots. It had become a place attracting fashionable society and those who were well-heeled but had more raffish propensities. An observer around 1700 described a bevy of showily dressed ladies enjoying refreshments that had been brought to them in their coaches. He reported that some of them were loudly and ostentatiously ‘singing, others laughing, others tickling one another, and all of them Toying and devouring Cheese Cakes, Marchpane and China Oranges’. Strenuous efforts were made to encourage a greater sense of decorum among those seeking their pleasures in Hyde Park. It seems that these endeavours were doomed to failure because in the 1770s the
Westminster Gazette
wrote rather disapprovingly of the men of fashion who disported themselves in the park. According to the correspondent, ‘The men imitate the women in almost everything. Perfumes, paint, and effeminate baubles engross most of their time, and now learning is looked upon as an unworthy attainment.’ The writer waxed even more indignant when he caught sight of a Guards officer who, while engaged in military exercises, had the temerity to wear a white frock coat, generously ornamented with gold cord, over a waistcoat and breeches of blue satin. To cap it all, the same officer brandished a scented handkerchief to offset the unpleasant smell of gunpowder. As the writer despairs at the behaviour of the younger generation, he ruminates gloomily over the amount of tea-drinking he saw taking place. According to him the habit was degenerate, unmanly and undermined the virility of commissioned officers.

The park and the area around it had a bad reputation because of the activities of highwaymen and footpads. It also became notorious as the place where bored, tetchy and vainglorious so-called gentlemen of the eighteenth century sought to resolve their differences by duelling. Although quick to take offence, those who participated in duels usually conducted them with great mutual courtesy. In 1762, John Wilkes, the controversial political maverick known for his irreverent and acerbic wit, fought Samuel Martin, a notoriously cantankerous MP who had referred to him in the House as ‘a stabber in the dark, a cowardly and malignant scoundrel’. Seething with injured pride and lusting for revenge, Wilkes called Martin out immediately after the speech and they made their way to Hyde Park. In both cases their opening shots missed their targets but then Wilkes fell, wounded in the abdomen. Martin, full of concern, hurried over as Wilkes lay writhing on the ground. The latter, determined not to be outdone so far as courtesy was concerned, then urged Martin to hurry away from the scene before the authorities arrived. Most duels in Hyde Park were carried out in a circular area called the Ring in the northeast of the Park close to the Tyburn gallows.

At the Tyburn corner of Hyde Park was the ‘Donkeys’ Dairies’. Here several dozen mother asses were kept and their milk bottled for sale to the residents of the fashionable streets and squares developing in the district. Asses’ milk was highly thought of and sold at twice the price of cows’ milk. This was also available, being taken straight from cows that grazed in Hyde Park. Its vendors would have been busy on Tyburn Fair days.

Proceeding south from the site of the gallows was Park Lane, a narrow rutted lane which for centuries had been bounded on its west side by the high brick wall enclosing the east side of Hyde Park. By the 1780s some select development had taken place in Park Lane which included Somerset House at the corner of Oxford Street which had been built for Viscount Bateman in 1770.

This, then, was the well-beaten route from Newgate to Tyburn. It was followed by the regular processions of condemned felons, riding in the cart with their coffins, their armed guards and the necessary functionaries, until 1783. The ending of Tyburn Fair deprived London of one of its most popular spectacles, albeit one which is now thought of as utterly distasteful and pointless. Its passing marked the end of centuries of a ritualised exhibition and was mourned by many, applauded by a few. London would never be quite the same again.

I
t is possible that the use of hanging as a legal execution was introduced to England by the Anglo-Saxons. Sparse records make some reference to hanging in Norman and Plantagenet times and suggest that the profession of hangman did not emerge until later. Indeed, it appears that when a miscreant was condemned to death, the individual prosecuting had to obtain the services of an executioner or, if none was available, do the job himself. Failure to do so could render the prosecutor himself liable to imprisonment. Playing a supporting role to the gallows was decapitation with the axe and block which was generally reserved for the execution of the high-born and those found guilty of treason and sedition.

Given England’s established reputation for hanging, it is perhaps understandable that when Anne Boleyn went to the block in 1536, a headsman had to be brought over from Calais to do the job. In Tudor times large numbers were executed, usually for their heterodox political or religious views. Many of them were burned at the stake. A hangman would partly strangle the victims and then ignite the faggots around them. Others were hanged, drawn and quartered, which required of the hangman some elementary skills in butchery. Records of executioners from the Tudor period are scanty, but there was one in the reign of Henry VIII (1509–47) by the name of Cratwell. Although his professional duties probably kept him busy, like so many other executioners he was unable to resist some illegal freelance work and was eventually hanged for theft.

Derrick, forename apparently unknown, was an important hangman around the end of the sixteenth century. Etymological dictionaries claim that Derrick gave his name to the device still used as a hoist which bears some resemblance to a gallows. He is likely to have had a hand in torturing and executing Guy Fawkes. The torture was extremely thorough and the unfortunate Fawkes was so enfeebled that he could only ascend the scaffold with assistance. Derrick had an assistant by the name of Gregory Brandon who served as a hangman, combining this function when required with that of axeman and torturer. Gregory passed on his trade to his son Richard, who is reputed to have prepared assiduously for his role in life by cutting the heads off live cats and dogs. Richard Brandon was certainly one of England’s most famous executioners and numbered among his illustrious victims Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, executed for treason in 1641, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, who was executed in 1645. Brandon reached the peak of his career when he removed Charles I’s head in 1649. Although the axeman was disguised, the dextrous way in which the job was done bore the hallmarks of the skill for which Brandon was renowned. He is said to have suffered such feelings of remorse for his work as a regicide that he died shortly afterwards.

‘The Deadly Nevergreen’ at Tyburn was fully occupied in the summer of 1649 when twenty-three men and one woman were hanged on the same occasion by William Lowen, of whom little is known except that his main occupation was that of refuse collector. He was replaced by Edward Dun whose notoriety lies in his almost certainly having been the executioner ordered to disinter the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw from Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey and place them in full view on poles on the roof of Westminster Hall. Cromwell’s head remained there until the death of Charles II in 1685 but his torso had been thrown contemptuously into a pit near Tyburn. To Dun probably also fell the task in 1660 of publicly burning John Milton’s work
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
. Published in 1649, in it Milton had defended the execution of Charles I.

Upon Dun’s death in 1663 John Ketch, commonly known as Jack, took over. As with many other members of his profession, he had earlier found himself on the wrong side of the authorities but this did not prevent him plying his trade for twenty-three years, which is surprising because he was universally regarded as both brutal and incompetent. In 1682 he is supposed to have gone on strike for better wages – and obtained them – before going on to end his career in a blaze of notoriety. One celebrity whom he despatched with an axe was Lord William Russell, arraigned for high treason in connection with the Rye House Plot to assassinate Charles II. The date set for the execution was 21 July 1683 and the place Lincoln’s Inn Fields. As was traditional when dealing with the high-born, Ketch as executioner asked his victim to forgive him. Having obtained Russell’s pardon, Ketch then received 10 guineas as an incentive to do the job quickly and effectively. Even with this cash bonus he bungled the job. The first blow of the axe merely wounded Russell who had to endure three more blows before his head was severed from his body. Rumours circulated to the effect that Ketch had been bribed not to kill Russell with the first blow of the axe. Ketch denied this strenuously, blaming his victim for moving his head at the last moment. In 1685 Ketch was given the task of beheading the Duke of Monmouth on Tower Hill. Again money changed hands but did not guarantee the quality of Ketch’s work. Gallows lore is unreliable historical evidence, but Monmouth is supposed to have asked to handle the axe. Running his finger along the blade he reputedly commented that it was not sharp enough for the job it had to do. In the event five blows were required to end Monmouth’s life and Ketch had to finish the job by using a knife to sever the unfortunate man’s head. Monmouth was no darling of the crowd but they were so incensed by Ketch’s incompetent butchery that he had to be escorted away under military guard to avoid the possibility of being lynched.

To Ketch also fell the job of inflicting punishment on the egregious Titus Oates, a monumental perjurer whose false accusations sent many innocent people to an unjustified judicial death for being implicated in the so-called ‘Popish Plot’ of 1678–9. Oates’s initial punishment was to be pilloried and then whipped at the cart’s tail the relatively short distance from Aldgate to Newgate and, a couple of days later, to be whipped the considerably longer distance from Newgate to Tyburn. Ketch seems to have inflicted floggings on Oates with a malignant relish and efficiency markedly missing from his work with the axe, but it may have helped that this time he had the watching crowds eagerly urging him on. They did not like Ketch but they positively loathed Oates. The treatment Oates received nearly killed him. This episode only added to the innumerable tales, both true and false, which centred on Ketch. Ironically, he had already been involved in the hanging, drawing and quartering of various Catholic men, implicated for their involvement in the plot by none other than Oates himself. As well as the Punch character Ketch’s name lived on as a bogeyman with which to frighten children.

A later hangman for the City of London and the County of Middlesex was John Price, who took on the role in 1714. Following the example of others of his kind he got into debt and spent time in the Marshalsea Prison in Southwark. He managed to escape in 1718 but a few weeks later attempted to rape an elderly woman at Bunhill Fields. She was selling apples and it may be that Price mistook this for a cover for prostitution, which indeed it frequently was. That did not, however, excuse him. He assaulted her so brutally that she died four days later of her injuries. This crime excited popular revulsion and large hostile crowds turned out to abuse him as he was transported from Newgate to Bunhill Fields, ‘going east’ rather than the more customary ‘going west’ of a condemned felon. It was a common practice to execute some convicts at the scene of their crimes, especially if their offences were seen as particularly heinous. Apparently Price met his end at the hand of a hangman named Banks, who was then given the job of placing Price’s inert remains on a gibbet which was put on display at Holloway.

Price’s successor was noted less for his professional expertise than because he had a hand in executing some of the very last Jacobite rebels in the early eighteenth century. His name was William Marvell and he was yet another executioner who had previously fallen foul of the law. Criminal antecedents apart, Marvell was well equipped for the job. His experience as a blacksmith had allowed him to build up the physique and bulging biceps which must have impressed both victims and spectators. He executed two of the leading Jacobites, Lord Kenmure and the Earl of Derwentwater, at Tower Hill and not only collected a useful fee from the authorities but another from the victims who tried to ensure that he did his work quickly and efficiently. Lord Kenmure would have been justified in asking for a refund because Marvell had to use two blows to sever his head from his body. Marvell’s greatest claim to fame is probably that he himself was arrested while riding in a cart at the head of a procession to Tyburn to hang three condemned criminals. Executioners were not popular people and it mattered little to the exultant crowd that his arrest was for debt rather than a serious crime. They seized him, gave him a good thrashing and threw him into a pond before the authorities restored order. Marvell was dismissed a few days later and soon ended up in court charged with theft. He was transported to the American penal colonies and disappeared from the records.