Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Executions and executioners; Tyburn gallows (London, England)
Who without rapture can thy verses read,
Who hear thy fate, and sorrow not succeed,
Who not condole thee betwixt fear and hope,
Who not admire thee, thus translating Pope?
Translating Pope in never-dying lays,
Bereft of books, of liberty and ease:
Translating Pope, beneath severest doom,
In numbers worthy old Augustan Rome:
Whose ablest sons might glory in thy strains,
Tho’ sung in Massy, Dire, incumb’ring chains.
The catalogue of the library of the British Museum includes ten works by
Usher Gahagan.
=1749.= _October 18._ Fifteen malefactors were executed at Tyburn. There
had been a riot in the Strand, where a number of sailors had wrecked a
house in which a sailor had been maltreated. There exists a well-known
print of the riot. The _London Magazine_ gives the following account of
the execution:—
About nine in the morning the criminals were put into the carts. Mr.
Sheriff Janssen, holding his white wand, and on horseback, attended
the execution, accompanied by his proper officers. At Holborn-bars Mr.
Sheriff dismissed very civilly the party of foot-guards, who otherwise
would have marched to Tyburn. The multitude of spectators was infinite.
Though a rescue had been threatened by many (on account of Wilson and
Penlez, the two ill-fated young rioters, both of whom were expected to
suffer) there yet was not the least disturbance, except during a moment
at the gallows, where a vast body of sailors, some of whom were armed
with cutlasses, and all with bludgeons, began to be very clamorous as
the unhappy sufferers were going to be turned off, which Mr. Sheriff
perceiving, he rode up to them and enquired in the mildest terms the
reason of their tumult. Being answered that they only wanted to save the
bodies of their brethren from the surgeons, and the Sheriff promising
that the latter should not have them, the sailors thanked the above
magistrate, wished every blessing to attend him, and assured him that
they had no design to interrupt him in the execution of his office. The
criminals seemed very penitent, and were turned off about twelve.
It would appear that in 1750 the immemorial custom of halting at St.
Giles’s, for “the bowl,” was abolished:—
=1750.= _February 7._ The criminals on their way to Tyburn were under
double guard. The procession closed with the two under-sheriffs, who did
not permit the carts to stop for the malefactors to drink by the way.
There were thirteen criminals.
=1750.= _May 16._ Thirteen executed at Tyburn.
=1750.= _July 6._ Three women were executed at Tyburn. They were drunk,
contrary to an express order of the Court of Aldermen against serving
them with strong liquor.
=1750.= _August 8._ Six executed at Tyburn. “It is remarkable that the
above six malefactors suffered for robbing their several prosecutors of
no more than six shillings” (_London Magazine_).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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