Another practice appears to have been to carry the body of an executed
criminal to the doors of those who had been the chief cause of the
criminal being brought to justice. We read in "The Annual Register,"
for 1763. "As soon as the execution of several criminals, condemned at
last sessions of the Old Bailey, was over at Tyburn, the body of
Cornelius Sanders, executed for stealing about fifty pounds out of the
house of Mrs. White, in Lamb Street, Spitalfields, was carried and laid
before her door, where great numbers of people assembling, they at last
grew so outrageous that a guard of soldiers was sent for to stop their
proceedings; notwithstanding which, they forced open the door, pitched
out all the salmon-tubs, most of the household furniture, piled them on
a heap, and set fire to them, and, to prevent the guards from
extinguishing the flames, pelted them off with stones, and would not
disperse till the whole was consumed." In the same work for the
following year another instance is given. "The criminal," says the
record, "condemned for returning from transportation at the sessions,
and afterwards executed, addressed himself to the populace at Tyburn,
and told them he could wish they would carry his body and lay it at the
door of Mr. Parker, a butcher in the Minories, who, it seems, was the
principal evidence against him; which, being accordingly done, the mob
behaved so riotously before the man's house, that it was no easy matter
to disperse them."
Curiosities of the Gallows.
Instances are not wanting of criminals being driven in their own
carriages to the place of execution. The story of William Andrew Horne,
a Derbyshire squire, as given in the "Nottingham Date Book," is one of
the most revolting records of villainy that has come under our notice.
His long career of crime closed on his seventy-fourth birthday, in 1759,
at the gallows, Nottingham. He had committed more than one murder, but
was tried for the death of an illegitimate child of which he was the
father. His brother laid the information which at last brought him to
justice. This brother requested him to give him a small sum of money so
that he might leave the country, but he refused to comply. He then said
he should make known his crime, but that did not frighten Horne. He
replied, "I'll chance it," and this gave rise to a well-known saying in
the Midlands, "I'll chance it as Horne did his neck." He was hanged at
Gallows-Hill, Nottingham, and was driven in his carriage by his own
coachman. We are told as the gloomy procession ascended the Mansfield
Road the white locks of the hoary sinner streamed mournfully in the
wind, his head being uncovered and the vehicle open, and the day very
tempestuous. He met his doom with a considerable degree of fortitude, in
the presence of an immense crowd of spectators, including hundreds of
his Derbyshire neighbours and tenantry.[2]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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