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
The gallows were no doubt all ready for the business, for Tyburn had
been used for executions as long as Smithfield. There were elms also
at Tyburn, hence a not uncommon confusion between the two places of
execution. Tyebourne has been ingeniously derived from the two words
"Tye" and "bourne," the last a bourne or resting-place for prisoners
who were taken bound. Pennant gives the derivation "Tye," the name of a
brook or "bourne" which flowed through it.
In Loftie's "History of London" he points out that the Tyburn of
earliest times was a bleak heath situated at the end of the Marylebone
Lane as we know it, and which, as it approached the town, had two
branches. He suggests that the brook or "bourne" also divided into
two, hence the name "Teo Burne," or two streams. Mr. Waller gives the
same derivation, and in one of the earliest mentions of the Tyburn, an
ancient chapter at Westminster, dated 951, it is called Teoburne.
There were many Tyburns, however, and as in London the gallows were
moved farther and farther westward of the building of houses, so the
name of Tyburn travelled from Marylebone Lane to Edgeware Road. As time
passed on it came to be the generic name for all places of execution,
and was used at York, Liverpool, Dublin, and elsewhere. Tyburn was a
kind of Golgotha, a place of infamy and disgrace. When Colonel Blood
seized the Duke of Ormond in St. James's Street it was with the avowed
intention of carrying him to Tyburn, there to be hanged like a common
criminal.
The exact position of the Tyburn gallows has been a matter of some
controversy. Mr. Robins places the Elms Lane as the first turning
to the right in the Uxbridge Road after getting into it from the
Grand Junction Road opposite the Serpentine. In Smith's "History of
Marylebone," he states that the gallows stood on a small eminence at
the corner of the Edgeware Road near the turnpike. Other authorities
fix the place in Connaught Square; because in a lease of one of the
houses, No. 49, granted by the Bishop of London, the fact that the
gallows once stood on the site is expressly mentioned in the parchment.
It was commonly reported that many human bones were exhumed between
Nos. 6 and 12, Connaught Place, as well as in the garden of Arklow
House, which stands at the southwest angle of the Edgeware Road. But
Mr. Loftie states as a matter of fact that no such discovery was ever
made. A careful but fruitless search at the time Connaught Place was
built produced a single bone, probably part of a human jaw-bone, but
nothing more. As to Arklow House, the report is distinctly denied by
the owner himself. It is, however, pretty certain that at a later date
the gallows were kept at a house at the corner of Upper Bryanston
Street and the Edgeware Road, in front of which they were erected when
required.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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