that she should claim her expenses from the sheriff. However, on Tuesday, the 16th March, Mrs. Pinckhard was executed before an immense number of persons, estimated at ten thousand, the day fixed having by some means or other got known."[7] The conduct of the crowds which gathered before Newgate and other prisons was long a blot on the boasted civilisation of this country, and there can be little doubt that public executions had a baneful influence on the public.
It will not be without historical interest to state that the last execution for attempted murder was Martin Doyle, hanged at Chester, August 27th, 1861. By the Criminal Law Consolidation Act, passed 1861, death was confined to treason and wilful murder. The Act was passed before Doyle was put on trial, but (unfortunately for him) did not take effect until November 1st, 1861. Michael Barrett, author of the Fenian explosion at Clerkenwell, hanged at Newgate, May 26th, 1868, was the last person publicly executed in England. Thomas Wells (murderer of Mr. Walsh, station-master at Dover), hanged at Maidstone, August 13th, 1868, was the first person to be executed within a prison.
Footnote
[1] "St. Botolph, Aldgate: the Story of a City Parish," 1898.
[2] "The Nottingham Date Book," 1880.
[3] Andrews's "Bygone Leicestershire," 1892.
[4] Rogers's "Social Life in Scotland," 1884.
[5] McDowall's "History of Dumfries."
[6] Stevenson's "Bygone Nottinghamshire," 1893.
[7] Markham's "History of Ancient Punishments in Northamptonshire," 1886.
Hanging in Chains.
The time is not so far distant when the gibbet and gallows were common objects in this country. In old road books, prepared for the guidance of travellers, they are frequently referred to as road marks. Several editions of Ogilby's "Itinirarium Angliæ" were published between 1673 and 1717, and a few passages drawn from this work relating to various parts of England show how frequently these gruesome instruments of death occur:—
"By the Gallows and Three Windmills enter the suburbs of York."
"Leaving the forementioned suburbs [Durham], a small ascent passing between the gallows and Crokehill."
"You pass through Hare Street, etc., and at 13'4 part of Epping Forest, with a gallows to the left."
"You pass Pen-meris Hall, and at 250'4 Hilldraught Mill, both on the left, and ascend a small hill with a gibbet on the right."
"At the end of the city [Wells] you cross a brook, and pass by the gallows."
"You leave Frampton, Wilberton, and Sherbeck, all on the right, and by a gibbet on the left, over a stone bridge."
"Leaving Nottingham you ascend a hill, and pass by a gallows."
Pictures found a prominent place in Ogilby's pages, and we reproduce one of Nottingham.
It will be noticed that the gallows is shown a short distance from the town.
It is twenty-six miles from London to East Grinstead, and in that short distance were three of these hideous instruments of death on the highway, in addition to gibbets erected in lonely bylanes and secluded spots where crimes had been committed. "Hangman's Lanes" were by no means uncommon. He was a brave man who ventured alone at night on the highways and byways when the country was beset with highwaymen, and the gruesome gibbets were frequently in sight.
Hanging was the usual mode of capital punishment with the Anglo-Saxons. We give a representation of a gallows (gala) of this period taken from the illuminations to Alfric's version of Genesis. It is highly probable that in some instances the bodies would remain in terrorem upon the gibbet. Robert of Gloucester, circa 1280, referring to his own times, writes:—
"In gibet hii were an honge."
"The habit of gibbeting or hanging in chains the body of the executed criminal near the site of the crime," says Dr. Cox, "with the intention of thereby deterring others from capital offences, was a coarse custom very generally prevalent in mediæval England. Some early assize rolls of the fourteenth century pertaining to Derbyshire that we have consulted give abundant proof of its being a usual habit in the county at that period. In 1341 the bodies of three men were hung in chains just outside Chapel-en-le-Frith, who had been executed for robbery with violence. In the same year a woman and two men were gibbeted on Ashover Moor for murdering one of the King's purveyors."[8]
An early record of hanging in chains is given in Chauncy's "History of Hertfordshire." It states, "Soon after the King came to Easthampstead, to recreate himself with hunting, where he heard that the bodies hanged here were taken down from the gallowes, and removed a great way from the same; this so incensed the King that he sent a writ, tested the 3rd day of August, Anno 1381, to the bailiffs of this borough, commanding them upon sight thereof, to cause chains to be made, and to hang the bodies in them upon the same gallowes, there to remain so long as one piece might stick to another, according to the judgment; but the townsmen, not daring to disobey the King's command, hanged the dead bodies of their neighbours again to their great shame and reproach, when they could not get any other for any wages to come near the stinking carcases, but they themselves were compelled to do so vile an office." Gower, a contemporary poet, writes as follows:—
"And so after by the Lawe
He was unto the gibbet drawe,
Where he above all other hongeth,
As to a traitor it belongeth."
Sir Robert Constable was gibbeted above the Beverley-gate, Hull, in 1537, for high treason. "On Fridaye," wrote the Duke of Norfolk, "beying market daye at Hull, suffered and dothe hange above the highest gate of the toune so trymmed in cheynes that I thinke his boones woll hang there this hundrethe yere."
According to Lord Dreghorn, writing in 1774:—"The first instance of hanging in chains is in March, 1637, in the case of Macgregor, for theft, robbery, and slaughter; he was sentenced to be hanged in a chenzie on the gallow-tree till his corpse rot."
