Free Olde London Punishments by David Brandon Page B

pickings. Hucksters selling pies, fried fish and all manner of snacks and beverages elbowed their way through the teeming crowds, doing a roaring trade.

    Punch and Judy can be said to represent the boisterous and anarchic nature of London as well as featuring London hangman Jack Ketch.
    On the night before an execution, the peace of the small hours would be disturbed by the sounds of revelry from those who had arrived early to get the best view of the morning’s proceedings. The noise they made would have been audible to the occupants of the condemned cells eking out their last hours. From the condemned cells the prisoners were taken to the Long Room where they were met by a crowd of officials, newspaper reporters and others who had managed to insinuate themselves into the occasion. The irons were struck off the prisoners and their arms were tightly bound. The chaplain or ordinary would be annoying everyone by trying to get the prisoner to blurt out a confession, but all that most prisoners were capable of at this stage was sobbing, sighing or sometimes a frenzied last-minute appeal for clemency. A procession then formed up composed of sheriffs, warders, the hangman and assistants, guards and the prisoner or prisoners and they emerged into Old Bailey through the Debtors’ Door. They were met with a great roar from the crowd, temporarily drowning out the solemn toll of the bell of St Sepulchre’s Church nearby. A cry of ‘Hats off, Hats off’ reverberated through the crowd as headwear was doffed and everyone jostled in the confined space in order to get the best view possible.
    The keenest enthusiasts for a hanging often arrived in Old Bailey the evening before so as to obtain ringside seats. Sometimes there were enough of them to create an unruly mob which spent the night singing, dancing, drinking and, if the mood developed, in brazenly overt individual and group sex sessions. The Governor of Newgate invited friends and family to an exclusive social event in a room with an excellent view overlooking Old Bailey. The ritual was to have a few drinks and then watch and hopefully enjoy the hanging. This was followed by a hearty breakfast which traditionally always included grilled or devilled kidneys. Having gorged themselves, the party then watched the cutting down of the corpse (which took place an hour after the felon’s death). Rooms with a view of proceedings could also be hired, at very considerable expense, in the Magpie and Stump pub in Old Bailey. They advertised ‘execution breakfasts’.
    In 1820 the Cato Street Conspirators, who had plotted to assassinate the entire Cabinet, were the last people to be publicly decapitated. A large crowd gathered outside Newgate. When the executioner raised one of the severed heads to show the crowd and then managed to drop it, there was a chorus of derisory catcalls and shouts of ‘Butterfingers’.
    The last execution outside Newgate took place on 26 May 1868 when hangman Calcraft terminated the life of a young Irish republican called Michael Barrett who had tried to blow up the Middlesex House of Detention in Clerkenwell in order to rescue some fellow nationalists who were detained there. A spectacular explosion brought down some of the prison walls but also demolished a terrace of houses opposite, killing six people immediately and fatally injuring others. For all this effort, the Irish nationalists remained immured in their cells. This was the last public execution in Britain. Hangings within Newgate ended in 1902.
    Tyburn
    Tyburn was London’s major place of execution for hundreds of years. Although it is now very close to the permanent traffic pandemonium around Marble Arch, when Tyburn was used for executions it was a rural spot along the muddy lane which was the old Roman road leading to Oxford. It was about three miles west of the City of London.
    It is thought that the first executions took place at Tyburn around 1196, and from that time many thousands of condemned