Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree (3 page)

The gallows are depicted in a number of illustrations from the seventeenth century and these allow a picture to be built up of the site and its immediate surroundings while making due allowance for artistic licence. An illustration of 1680 shows preparations being made for an execution. A pair of ladders is propped against the gallows, on the top of which are three men who have been getting the rope ready. The condemned man stands in a horse-drawn cart beneath the gallows with the rope around his neck. The prison Ordinary or chaplain, also standing in the cart, reads prayers to the prisoner. A man stands by the head of the horse ready for the command to pull the horse away and leave the prisoner suspended. There is another horse and cart waiting in the foreground which contains a coffin ready to receive the body. In the distance stands a large crowd.

Despite the expansion of London, particularly to the west of the City, Tyburn’s rural location can still be seen depicted, as it appeared at the time of the last execution in 1783, by the Norwich-born artist William Capon. The scene looks towards Hyde Park from the last house in Upper Seymour Place. In the forefront on the right-hand side is a wooden viewing gallery from which spectators could get a grandstand view of the executions. Over twenty years later Capon reworked this sketch into a watercolour which emphasised Tyburn’s earlier rural nature. It gives a very strong sense of a location well beyond the urban sprawl. Interestingly, Capon’s painting does not show the gallery but there is a shadow cast in the right foreground where the gallery had been on his original drawing.

Even if the exact spot where the first executions took place cannot be identified, there remains the question of why the Tyburn district was chosen in the first place. The answer probably lies with its rural location. Tyburn had gibbets as well as the gallows. It was the practice to display the remains of certain criminals in gibbets or open cages after they had been executed and removed from the gallows. They were intended to act as a mute warning to the living of the wages of sin. At times there would have been an accumulation of dead bodies poisoning the air and while viewing the bodies may have been a popular diversion, no one wanted to live too close to the stench that would have been created (Marks 1908: 62). At Tyburn, at least until the eighteenth century, the sight and smell of these corpses were some distance from major human habitation. However, London was no stranger to smells or the poisoning of the air. Noxious aromas emanated from breweries, slaughterhouses, dung-heaps, vinegar works and other commercial premises and from waste and refuse piled in the streets or thrown unceremoniously into open watercourses.

Other explanations of the origin of Tyburn’s location suggest that the prominent group of elms growing in the area would have been used regularly for executions before the later invention of the gallows (Baker, 1989: 190). It may also have been significant that they were located at, or close to, a crossroads. In many cultures, crossroads have been seen as a place of supernatural significance symbolising a portal, gate or door providing a transition from this life to the next. Additionally, crossroads have often been thought of as the meeting places of witches or demons. It is probably no coincidence that in Christian countries, crosses and statues of saints or other objects of reverence were often established at crossroads.

For the ancient Greeks the elm was a symbol of death and for the Normans it was the tree of justice. An early name given to Tyburn was ‘The Elms’ but this is not particularly illuminating because there were other locations known by the same name including Smithfield, the precincts of Westminster (Dean’s Yard) and the abbey lands at Covent Garden. Was ‘The Elms’ a generic name for places of execution? Particular confusion surrounds Tyburn and Smithfield, which were both places where executions took place from early times. For example, different accounts claim Tyburn and Smithfield as the places which witnessed the deaths of both FitzOsbert in 1196 and William Wallace in 1305.

An iron plaque is set in the pavement opposite the end of Edgware Road about 50 yards west of Marble Arch, claiming to mark the spot where the gallows stood. Exactitude, however, is probably unachievable, because the claims of 49 Connaught Square are advanced as also are those of the junction of Edgware Road and Bryanston Street, both sites being a little to the north of Marble Arch. It may well be that the site changed from time to time. In 1759 a movable gallows was erected as and when needed, the site of the old triangular gallows being required for the toll house built to serve the new turnpike. Although the toll house was demolished in 1829, its site is shown on old maps and should provide a pretty exact location for the ‘Triangular Tree’.

When the turnpike was removed the site of the gate was recorded in a monument on the south side of the road, somewhat to the east of Marble Arch. It consisted of a slab of cast iron with a gable top bearing on both sides the legend ‘Here stood Tyburn Gate 1829’, this being the year in which Tyburn Turnpike was abolished. This monument made no pretence at showing the position of the gallows and itself succumbed to road improvement works early in the twentieth century.

Today, standing among the fumes and the constant roar of the traffic around Marble Arch, it takes a considerable effort of the imagination to bring to the mind’s eye the vast crowds, many of them drunken revellers, for whom Tyburn Fair provided a free, regular and welcome diversion from the everyday tedium of life in the metropolis.

I
t is difficult to establish whether any executions took place at Tyburn before 1196. Capital punishment is said to have been abolished by William I but reinstated under Henry I (r. 1100–35) so it is possibly during that time that the first executions were staged at Tyburn. Records of criminal activity and punishment are sparse but certainly in 1177 in the reign of Henry II a large gang of rich and well-connected young men carried out a series of attacks and robberies on private houses. One of the gang was John Senex, a Londoner who was caught and possibly executed at Tyburn.

William FitzOsbert, also known as ‘Longbeard’, is frequently identified as the first person to be hanged at Tyburn, the year being 1196 and his crime sedition, but Smithfield is also claimed as his place of execution (Richardson 2000: 23; Ackroyd 2000: 57). FitzOsbert led a revolt of merchants and artisans against taxes resulting from the ransom paid for the retrieval of Richard I. On his return from the Crusades in 1193, Richard had been captured on his way through Austria by Duke Leopold who, clearly a shrewd businessman, sold him to the Emperor, Henry VI. Ransom was set at 150,000 marks and the burden of paying this fell largely on better-off Londoners. They got poor value for money for Richard only briefly touched English shores before hastening off abroad once more in an attempt to consolidate his continental possessions. He never returned. FitzOsbert’s insurrection was quickly and ruthlessly put down and William was seized in the church of St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside where he and some of his supporters had taken refuge. The accounts of FitzOsbert differ according to the prejudices of the chronicler. Matthew Paris views him with some sympathy calling him the ‘defender of the poor against the royal extortioners’. William of Newburgh, however, claims that FitzOsbert’s motives were base.

The dean of St Paul’s, Ralph of Diceto, and Gervase of Canterbury both offer contemporary accounts of FitzOsbert’s execution. Gervase states that FitzOsbert was suspended by his feet from the neck of a horse, where he ‘was drawn from the aforesaid Tower through the City to the Elms … bound by a chain … he was hanged in company with his associates and perished’. Gervase does not mention Tyburn but refers to the Elms which might have been Smithfield and this clearly confuses the issue of the location of this execution. However, Ralph of Diceto comments that FitzOsbert, ‘his hands bound behind him, his feet tied with long cords, [was] drawn by means of a horse through the midst of the City to the gallows near Tyburn [where] he was hanged’ (Gomme 1909: 5): a clear reference to Tyburn by a contemporary writer.

Another source of confusion between the Elms at Tyburn and those at Smithfield concerns an execution that took place in 1222. Two different accounts record a civil disturbance in London. One states that it resulted from a wrestling match that got out of hand and led to an armed confrontation between the citizens of Westminster and those of the City. The other suggests that there were strong disagreements over the succession to the throne of Henry III. At that time, London and much of south-east England was in the hands of the French Dauphin, Louis, while much of the north was controlled by rebellious barons. One of the Dauphin’s supporters, Constantine FitzAthulf, who had been a sheriff of London in 1197, caused a riot at a tournament when he proclaimed his allegiance to Louis. FitzAthulf was subsequently executed at the Elms. It is not clear whether this refers to Smithfield or Tyburn. We know that FitzAthulf was sent by water to his place of execution, which was not an uncommon practice when there was a fear of popular intervention. A condemned person could be taken to Tyburn by water from Westminster or the Horseferry, or to the vicinity of Smithfield via the Fleet River. Knowing that Henry III ordered the sheriff of Middlesex to build two good gibbets at Tyburn, the royal gallows, it could be that Tyburn has a strong claim to be the place of FitzAthulf’s death. These were to replace older and presumably decaying ones, which suggests that punishment and execution were well established at Tyburn by that time.

The punishment of drawing the condemned on a hurdle pulled by horses to the place of execution, hanging the prisoner and taking him down before death, disembowelling, beheading and then cutting into quarters, appears first to have been recorded for an execution in 1241. A later case in 1242 concerning William de Marisco, or William Marsh, highlights the brutality of this particular form of punishment which featured so largely in the history of Tyburn. Marsh, who was the son of Geoffrey, Justiciar of Ireland, was accused of murdering Henry Clement, a messenger sent by the Irish peers to the King. He was also accused of attempting to assassinate Henry III. Having protested his innocence, Marsh fled to Lundy Island off Bideford Bay where he resorted with other fugitives to robbery and piracy. Marsh and sixteen of his men were eventually captured and thrown into the Tower. Gregory’s Chronicle (Camden Society 1876: 65) records that ‘William Marche was drawe and hangyd at Tyburne.’ Marsh is depicted in a contemporary illustration being drawn by a horse from the Tower to Tyburn to suffer his punishment. He was hanged, disembowelled and then his bowels were burnt. His body was quartered and the parts were despatched for display in four provincial cities. Prior to his death, Marsh confessed his sins to a friar, John of St Giles, who told him to suffer his punishment with patience as a means of penance (Luard 1890: iv 193–6). It is not known whether Marsh found this advice helpful under such trying circumstances. The confessing of sins by the condemned was to take on a much more public, ritual and ideological significance during the period from the sixteenth century.

After the death of William Marsh, executions continued at Tyburn during the rest of the thirteenth century although records are not specific. It was towards the end of this century that the persecution and eventual expulsion of the Jews from England reached its height. The Jews had been subjected to the systematic seizure of their assets from the reign of Henry III and although they were by now largely impoverished, their presence was still resented by many. Almost three hundred Jews in London were sentenced to be hanged and drawn in the late thirteenth century and it is possible that some of these executions took place at Tyburn.

Punishments varied in the type and severity of the pain and humiliation they inflicted. In October 1295, Sir Thomas de Turberville, who may have been executed at Tyburn, was condemned to death for entering into treasonable communication with France as well as suggesting a French invasion in support of William Wallace, the Scottish patriot and hero. Before he was hanged, he was drawn to the gallows on a bull’s hide and attended by hangmen dressed as devils who taunted him all the way and hit him with cudgels.

The beginning of the fourteenth century witnessed the execution of William Wallace for his stand against the English. In August 1305 Wallace was brought to London after his capture and accused of treason. However, as he had never sworn allegiance to the English king he could not be justly accused of this particular offence. From the point of view of the English prosecutors this was a mere technicality. Nothing very definite is known about Wallace’s birth or early life and the same seems to be the case with regard to the place of his death. Many accounts state that he was executed at Smithfield but some suggest Tyburn. He was taken from the Tower through the City to ‘the Elms’ where he was hanged, beheaded and his various bodily parts burnt. In the case of Wallace’s execution it appears that the ritual included ‘abscisis genitalibus’ – cutting off the privy parts of the condemned (Marks 1908: 32). The execution of Wallace also established the gruesome precedent of displaying the heads of executed felons on the Drawbridge Gate of London Bridge, a practice that was to continue for at least 350 years. There is a memorial outside St Bartholomew’s Hospital which claims that Wallace was executed near that spot in Smithfield in 1305.

The year after Wallace’s execution two other Scottish leaders were brought to London. One of them was Simon Fraser. According to the chronicles, Fraser was drawn from the Tower through the streets to the gallows as a traitor, hanged as a thief and beheaded as a murderer (Luard iii: 134–5). His head was fixed on a pole alongside that of Wallace on London Bridge. Although there is no specific reference to Tyburn, it was claimed in a ballad that Fraser was taken from Cheapside to Tyburn wearing a garland on his head and fetters on his legs.

Although evidence for the period from the mid-fourteenth to the sixteenth century is somewhat patchy, Tyburn is known to have played its part in connection with some of the notable people and events of the time. Roger Mortimer, the exceptionally ambitious Earl of March, had become the lover of Queen Isabella and conspired with her to depose the weak Edward II. Although the King was indeed deposed and later horribly murdered, their efforts rebounded on them because they resulted in the accession to the throne of the young Edward III, a man of very different kidney from his father. He initiated a covert raid on Nottingham Castle in which Mortimer was seized and dragged off to London. He was placed in the Tower and then, according to John Stow, he was ‘drawne to the Elmes and there hanged on the common gallows’ (Stow 1605: 229–30). Other chronicles have stated that Mortimer was drawn from the Tower to the Elms about a league outside the City of London. The Grey Friars Chronicle, however, is more specific, stating that he was ‘Hangyd and drawne at Tyburn for tresoun’. Mortimer was left to hang for two days and two nights before being buried in Greyfriars Church.