Execution Dock was a grisly place in the River Thames near the shoreline at Wapping, London, that was used for more than 400 years to execute pirates, smugglers and mutineers who had been sentenced to death by Admiralty courts. The "dock" consisted of a scaffold for hanging. Its last executions were in 1830.
The British Admiralty's legal jurisdiction was for all crimes committed at sea. The dock symbolised that jurisdiction by being located just beyond the low-tide mark in the river. Anybody who had committed crimes on the seas, either in home waters or abroad, would eventually be brought back to London and tried by the High Court of the Admiralty.
Capital punishment was applied to acts of mutiny that resulted in death, for murders on the High Seas, and specific violations of the Articles of War governing the behaviour of naval sailors, including sodomy. Those sentenced to death were usually brought to Execution Dock from Marshalsea Prison (although some were also transported from Newgate Prison). The condemned were paraded across London Bridge and past the Tower of London. The procession was led by the High Court Marshal (or his deputy) on horseback. He carried a silver oar that represented the authority of the Admiralty. Prisoners were transported in a cart to Wapping; with them was a chaplain who encouraged them to confess their sins. Just like the execution procession to Tyburn, condemned prisoners were allowed to drink a quart of ale at a public house on the way to the gallows. An execution at the dock usually meant that crowds lined the river's banks or chartered boats moored in the Thames to get a better view of the hanging. Executions were conducted by the hangmen who worked at either Tyburn or Newgate Prison.
With a particular cruelty reserved for those convicted of acts of piracy, hanging was done with a shortened rope. [1] This meant a slow death from strangulation on the scaffold as the drop was insufficient to break the prisoner's neck. It was called the Marshal's dance because their limbs would often be seen to 'dance' from slow asphyxiation. Unlike hangings on land, such as at Tyburn, the bodies of pirates at Execution Dock were not immediately cut down following death. Customarily, these corpses were left hanging until at least three tides had washed over their heads. This practice stopped at the end of the 18th century. In the cases of the most notorious offenders, the Admiralty would order that their bodies be tarred and hung in chains at either Cuckold's Point or Blackwall Point, on the River Thames, as a warning to all seafarers of the fate awaiting those who turned to piracy. [2]
An account from The Gentleman's Magazine , dated 4 February 1796, gives a vivid portrayal of a typical execution at London's Execution Dock.
This morning, a little after ten o'clock, Colley, Cole, and Blanche, the three sailors convicted of the murder of Captain Little, were brought out of Newgate, and conveyed in solemn procession to Execution Dock, there to receive the punishment awarded by law. On the cart on which they rode was an elevated stage; on this were seated Colley, the principal instigator in the murder, in the middle, and his two wretched instruments, the Spaniard Blanche, and the Mulatto Cole, on each side of him; and behind, on another seat, two executioners.
Colley seemed in a state resembling that of a man stupidly intoxicated, and scarcely awake, and the two discovered little sensibility on this occasion, nor to the last moment of their existence, did they, as we hear, make any confession. They were turned off about a quarter before twelve in the midst of an immense crowd of spectators.
On the way to the place of execution, they were preceded by the Marshall of the Admiralty in his carriage, the Deputy Marshall, bearing the silver oar, and the two City Marshals on horseback, Sheriff's officers, etc. The whole cavalcade was conducted with great solemnity. [3]
The infamous Captain Kidd, who had been convicted of piracy and murder, was taken from Newgate Prison and executed at the dock in 1701. During his execution, the rope broke and Kidd was hanged on the second attempt. His remains were gibbeted by the river Thames at Tilbury for three years. [4]
George Davis and William Watts, convicted for piracy for the Cyprus mutiny, were the final hangings at the dock on 16 December 1830.
Execution Dock was also popular in literature. Proof of this is the classic tale Peter Pan, in which the infamous Captain Hook's crew was said about them, "A more villainous-looking lot never hung in a row on Execution dock." [5]
Some sources state there is a large "E" on the Thames side of the building at Swan Wharf, indicating the site of Execution Dock. [6] Another source states it was approximately where the London Overground station now stands. [7] [8]
William Kidd also known as Captain William Kidd or simply Captain Kidd, was a Scottish privateer. Conflicting accounts exist regarding his early life, but he was likely born in Dundee and later settled in New York City. By 1690, Kidd had become a highly successful privateer, commissioned to protect English interests in North America and the West Indies.
Tyburn was a manor (estate) in the county of Middlesex, England, one of two which were served by the parish of Marylebone. Tyburn took its name from the Tyburn Brook, a tributary of the River Westbourne. The name Tyburn, from Teo Bourne, means 'boundary stream'.
Newgate Prison was a prison at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey Street just inside the City of London, England, originally at the site of Newgate, a gate in the Roman London Wall. Built in the 12th century and demolished in 1904, the prison was extended and rebuilt many times, and remained in use for over 700 years, from 1188 to 1902.
Wapping is an area in London, England and is located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is in East London and part of the East End. Wapping is on the north bank of the River Thames between St Katharine Docks to the west, and Shadwell to the east. This position gives the district a strong maritime character.
Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature. Hanging has been a common method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and is the primary execution method in numerous countries and regions. The first known account of execution by hanging is in Homer's Odyssey. Hanging is also a method of suicide.
Capital punishment in the United Kingdom predates the formation of the UK, having been used within the British Isles from ancient times until the second half of the 20th century. The last executions in the United Kingdom were by hanging, and took place in 1964; capital punishment for murder was suspended in 1965 and finally abolished in 1969. Although unused, the death penalty remained a legally defined punishment for certain offences such as treason until it was completely abolished in 1998; the last execution for treason took place in 1946. In 2004 the 13th Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights became binding on the United Kingdom; it prohibits the restoration of the death penalty as long as the UK is a party to the convention.
William Marwood was a British state hangman. He developed the technique of hanging known as the "long drop".
A gibbet is any instrument of public execution. Gibbeting is the use of a gallows-type structure from which the dead or dying bodies of criminals were hanged on public display to deter other existing or potential criminals. Occasionally, the gibbet was also used as a method of execution, with the criminal being left to die of exposure, thirst and/or starvation. The practice of placing a criminal on display within a gibbet is also called "hanging in chains".
A gallows is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sacks of grain or minerals, usually positioned in markets or toll gates. The term was also used for a projecting framework from which a ship's anchor might be raised so it is no longer sitting on the seabed, riverbed or dock; "weighing [the] anchor" meant raising it using this apparatus while avoiding striking the ship's hull.
John "Jack" Sheppard, or "Honest Jack", was a notorious English thief and prison escapee of early 18th-century London.
Capital punishment – the process of sentencing convicted offenders to death for the most serious crimes and carrying out that sentence, as ordered by a legal system – first appeared in New Zealand in a codified form when New Zealand became a British colony in 1840. It was first carried out with a public hanging in Victoria Street, Auckland in 1842, while the last execution occurred in 1957 at Mount Eden Prison, also in Auckland. In total, 85 people have been executed in New Zealand.
The Carthusian Martyrs of London were the monks of the London Charterhouse, the monastery of the Carthusian Order in the City of London who were put to death by the English state in a period lasting from the 4 May 1535 until the 20 September 1537. The method of execution was hanging, disembowelling while still alive and then quartering. Others were imprisoned and left to starve to death. The group also includes two monks who were brought to that house from the Charterhouses of Beauvale and Axholme and similarly dealt with. The total was 18 men, all of whom have been formally recognized by the Catholic Church as martyrs.
John Austin was an English footpad who became the last person to be hanged at the Tyburn gallows outside London. He was sentenced to death for the murder of a labourer called John Spicer from Kent. The Recorder of London, James Adair, described it as a "robbery with violence" that involved "cutting and wounding [...] in a cruel manner." This hanging would mark the end of Tyburn, a village then in the county of Middlesex, being a place of executions for almost 600 years.
There are obvious inconsistencies between this article and James Botting, see talk page
Catherine Hayes, sometimes spelled Catharine Hayes, was an English woman who was burned at the stake for committing petty treason by killing her husband.
In England, burning was a legal punishment inflicted on women found guilty of high treason, petty treason, and heresy. Over a period of several centuries, female convicts were publicly burnt at the stake, sometimes alive, for a range of activities including coining and mariticide.
William Spiggot was a highwayman who was captured by Jonathan Wild's men in 1721. During his trial at the Old Bailey, he at first refused to plead and was therefore sentenced to be pressed until he pleaded. This was called Peine forte et dure. He was later executed, after a second trial when he pleaded not guilty, on 11 February 1721 at Tyburn, London.
The Captain Kidd is a pub in Wapping, East London, that is named after the seventeenth century pirate William Kidd, who was executed at the nearby Execution Dock. The pub is a Grade II listed building, and was historically used as a coffee warehouse.
John Prie was a minor pirate in the Caribbean.
The 1807 Newgate disaster or the Old Bailey Accident of 1807 was a crowd crush that occurred outside London's Newgate Prison on 23 February 1807. The disaster occurred when part of a large, dense crowd that had gathered to witness a triple execution, was destabilised after being disturbed by a collapsing wooden cart, which triggered a chain of events leading to a fatal crowd crush. Many fatalities and severe injuries resulted, with newspapers reporting that at least 27 perished in the accident and one observer counting at least 34 dead.
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