The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 2/2Griffiths, Arthur
History
The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 2/2
Griffiths, Arthur
Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England); Prisons -- England; Punishment -- Great Britain
I propose to return now to the subject of Newgate executions, which we
left at the time of the discontinuance of the long-practised procession
to Tyburn. The reasons for this change were fully set forth in a
previous chapter.[88] The terrible spectacle was as demoralizing to the
public, for whose admonition it was intended, as the exposure was brutal
and cruel towards the principal actors. The decision to remove the scene
of action to the immediate front of the gaol itself was in the right
direction, as making the performance shorter and diminishing the area of
display. But the Old Bailey was not exclusively used; at first, and for
some few years after 1784, executions took place occasionally at a
distance from Newgate. This was partly due to the survival of the old
notion that the scene of the crime ought also to witness the
retribution; partly perhaps because residents in and about the Old
Bailey raised a loud protest against the constant erection of the
scaffold in their neighbourhood. As regards the first, I find that in
1786 John Hogan, the murderer of a Mr. Odell, an attorney who resided in
Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place, was executed on a gibbet in front of
his victim's house. Lawrence Jones, a burglar, was in 1793 ordered for
execution in Hatton Garden, near the house he had robbed; and when he
evaded the sentence by suicide, his body was exhibited in the same
neighbourhood, "extended upon a plank on the top of an open cart, in his
clothes, and fettered." Again, as late as 1809 and 1812, Execution Dock,
on the banks of the Thames, was still retained. Here John Sutherland,
commander of the British armed transport 'The Friends,' suffered on the
29th June, 1809, for the murder of his cabin-boy, whom he stabbed after
much ill-usage on board the ship as it lay in the Tagus. On the 18th
December, 1812, two sailors, Charles Palm and Sam Tilling, were hanged
at the same place for the murder of their captain, James Keith, of the
trading vessel 'Adventure,' upon the high seas. They were taken in a
cart to the place of execution, amidst a vast concourse of people.
"Palm, as soon as he was seated in the cart, put a quid of tobacco into
his mouth, and offered another to his companion, who refused it with
indignation.... Some indications of pity were offered for the fate of
Tilling; Palm, execration alone."[89]
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