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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.
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.
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.
Holy Sepulchre London, formerly and in some official uses Saint Sepulchre-without-Newgate, is the largest Anglican parish church in the City of London. It stands on the north side of Holborn Viaduct across a crossroads from the Old Bailey, and its parish takes in Smithfield Market. During medieval times, the site lay outside ("without") the city wall, west of the Newgate.
Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers was an English nobleman, notable for being the last peer to be hanged, following his conviction for murdering his steward.
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.
"Captain" James Maclaine was an Irish man of a respectable presbyterian family who had a brief but notorious career as a mounted highwayman in London with his accomplice William Plunkett. He was known as "The Gentleman Highwayman" as a result of his courteous behaviour during his robberies, and obtained a certain kind of celebrity. Notoriously, he held up and robbed Horace Walpole at gunpoint: eventually he was hanged at Tyburn.
William Calcraft was a 19th-century English hangman, one of the most prolific of British executioners. It is estimated in his 45-year career he carried out 450 executions. A cobbler by trade, Calcraft was initially recruited to flog juvenile offenders held in Newgate Prison. While selling meat pies on streets around the prison, Calcraft met the City of London's hangman, John Foxton.
Spence Broughton (c. 1746 – 14 April 1792) was an English highwayman who was executed for robbing the Sheffield and Rotherham mail. After his execution he gained notoriety because his body was gibbeted at the scene of the crime on Attercliffe Common between Sheffield and Rotherham, where it hung for 36 years.
To be hanged, drawn and quartered became a statutory penalty for men convicted of high treason in the Kingdom of England from 1352 under King Edward III (1327–1377), although similar rituals are recorded during the reign of King Henry III (1216–1272). The convicted traitor was fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn behind a horse to the place of execution, where he was then hanged, emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered. His remains would then often be displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge, to serve as a warning of the fate of traitors. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burned at the stake.
John Smith (c. 1661 – after 1727), also known by the alias John Wilson, was a London housebreaker, most notable for his three evasions of execution. His first evasion earned him the nickname of Half-hanged Smith.
William Duell was 17 years old when he was convicted of being an accessory to the rape of Sarah Griffin in Acton, London, England. He was sentenced to death. On 24 November 1740, he was hanged in Tyburn, along with four others, but survived the hanging; his sentence was commuted to transportation to America, where he died at an advanced age following the revolution.
James Pratt (1805–1835), also known as John Pratt, and John Smith (1795–1835) were two London men who, in November 1835, became the last two to be executed for sodomy in England. Pratt and Smith were arrested in August of that year after being spied on through a keyhole allegedly having carnal knowledge of each other in a room rented by William Bonill a friend or acquaintance of one of the men, or possibly both. Bonill, although not present when the men were spied on, was nevertheless transported to Australia as an accessory to Pratt and Smith's alleged crime, where he died.
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.
Hannah Dagoe was an Irish basket-woman, sentenced to death for burglary. On the day of her execution, 4 May 1763, in what The Newgate Calendar described as an "extraordinary and unprecedented scene" she struggled violently with the executioner, and with the noose about her neck, flung herself from the cart before the signal was given, dying instantly.
Thomas Cox, known as "The Handsome Highwayman", was an English highwayman, sentenced to death and hanged at Tyburn. He had a reputation for a spirited nature and it is reported that when asked if he wished to say a prayer before being hanged, he kicked the ordinary and the hangman out of the cart taking him there.
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.
Joseph "Jody" Hamilton was an American mass murderer who was executed in Missouri. On October 12, 1906, he murdered five members of the same family, including three young children, during an argument over a horse saddle. After his arrest, Hamilton pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death. Dismissing any offers for leniency, Hamilton was executed in December of that year.
References
- 1 2 3 Marks, Alfred (1908). Tyburn Tree: Its History and Annals. London: Brown, Langham & Company. pp. 266–268.
- ↑ "Account of the Trial and Execution of John Austin". London Ancestor.