The evils it was hoped might be obviated "were public executions conducted with becoming form and solemnity, if order were preserved and every tendency to disturb it suppressed." Hence the place of execution was changed in 1784 from "Tyburn to the great area that has lately been opened before Newgate." The sheriffs were doubtful of their power to make alterations, and consulted the judges, who gave it as their opinion that it was within the sheriffs' competence. "With this sanction, therefore," the sheriffs go on to say, "we have proceeded, and instead of carting the criminals through the streets to Tyburn, the sentence of death is executed in the front of Newgate, where upwards of five thousand persons may easily assemble; here a temporary scaffold hung with black is erected, and no other persons are permitted to ascend it than the necessary officers of justice, the clergyman, and the criminal, and the crowd is kept at a proper distance. During the whole time of the execution a funeral bell is tolled in Newgate, and the prisoners are kept in the strictest order." The horrors of executions were but little diminished by the substitution of the Old Bailey as the scene. Seventy-four years were to elapse before the wisdom of legislators and the good sense of the public insisted that the extreme penalty of the law should be carried out in strictest privacy within the walls of the gaol. FOOTNOTES: [162:1] No. 45 of the _North Briton_ charged the king with falsehood, and was the basis of the prosecutions; forty-five became in consequence a popular number with the patriots. Tradesmen called their goods "forty-five;" and snuff so styled was sold in Fleet Street for many years. Horne Tooke declares that the Prince of Wales aggravated his august father, when the latter was flogging him, by shouting "Wilkes and forty-five for ever!" [164:1] Lords of Leet were obliged to keep up a pillory or tumbrel, on pain of forfeiture of the leet; and villages might also be compelled to provide them. [165:1] "Punishments in the Olden Time," by William Andrews, F. R. H. S., to which I am indebted for many of my facts. [167:1] This was not an uncommon offence. One Mary Hamilton was married fourteen times to members of her own sex. A more inveterate, but a more natural, bigamist was a man named Miller, who was pilloried, in 1790, for having married thirty different women on purpose to plunder them. [172:1] Bernardo Visconti, Duke of Milan, in the 14th century, made a capital punishment, or more exactly the act of killing, last for forty days. [181:1] By "Halifax law" any thief who within the precincts of the liberty stole thirteen pence could on conviction before four burghers be sentenced to death. The same law obtained at Hull, hence the particular prayer in the thieves' Litany, which ran as follows: "From Hull, Hell, and Halifax, good Lord, deliver us."