Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 1: From the twelfth to the eighteenth centuryGriffiths, Arthur
History
Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 1: From the twelfth to the eighteenth century
Griffiths, Arthur
Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England); Prisons -- England; Punishment -- Great Britain
In London various places have been used for the scene of execution.
The spot where a murder had been committed was often appropriately
selected as the place of retribution. Execution Dock was reserved
for pirates and sea-robbers, Tower Hill for persons of rank who were
beheaded. Gallows for meaner malefactors were sometimes erected on the
latter place, the right to do so being claimed by the city. In the
reign of Edward IV, however, there was a conflict of authority between
the king and the Corporation on this point. The king's officer set
up a scaffold and gallows on Tower Hill, whereupon the mayor and his
brethren complained to the king, who replied, that he had not acted in
derogation of the city liberties, and caused public proclamation to be
made that the city exercised certain rights on Tower Hill. Executions
also took place, according to Pennant, at the Standard in Chepe. Three
men were beheaded there for rescuing a prisoner, and in 1351 two
fishmongers for some unknown crime. Smithfield had long the dismal
honour of witnessing the death-throes of offenders. Between Hozier and
Cow Lanes was anciently a large pool called Smithfield Pond or Horse
Pool, "from the watering of horses there;" to the southwest lay St.
John's Court, and close to it the public gallows on the town green.
There was a clump of trees in the centre of the green, elms, from which
the place of execution was long euphemistically called "The Elms." It
was used as such early in the thirteenth century, and distinguished
persons, William Fitzosbert, Mortimer, and Sir William Wallace
suffered here.
About 1413 the gibbet was removed from Smithfield and put up at the
north end of a garden wall belonging to St. Giles's Leper Hospital,
"opposite the Pound where the Crown Tavern is at present situate,
between the end of St. Giles High Street and Hog Lane." But Smithfield
must have been still used after the transfer of the gallows to St.
Giles. In 1580 another conflict of jurisdiction, this time between the
city and the Lieutenant of the Tower. A gibbet was erected in that year
in East Smithfield, at Hog Lane, for the execution of one R. Dod, who
had murdered a woman in those parts. "But when the sheriff brought the
malefactor there to be hanged Sir Owen Hopton, the Lieutenant of the
Tower, commanded the sheriff's officers back again to the west side
of a cross that stood there," and which probably marked the extent of
the liberties of the Tower. Discussion followed. The sheriffs with
their prisoner accompanied the lieutenant into a house to talk it over,
"whence after a good stay they all departed." The city gave way—the
gibbet was taken down, and the malefactor carried to Tyburn in the same
afternoon, where he was executed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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