Albert Hartshorne

“ Hence, as we have seen, gradually arose, side by side with the capital punishment of hanging on the gallows in its simplicity—which may be almost said to be as old as the world itself—the custom of publicly exposing human bodies upon gibbets as warnings to others. ”

“ The poor muddled man had been beaten to death by one Thomas Nicholson, after a violent struggle with the assassin. The murderer, upon strong circumstantial evidence, was sentenced to be executed, and his body to be hung in chains near where the crime was committed. It so hung for many years, slowly dropping to pieces, until on one stormy night the gibbet was blown down. ”

“ And Bewick chose, like Hogarth, to [Pg 90] portray humanity in some of its degradations, and to call up our feelings against violence and wickedness and the abuse of man’s high quality. He shrank not from the gibbet, he saw its educational value, and, with absolute fidelity, he gives us many examples of the time-honoured horror, standing out stark and bare against the bleak sky. ”

“ And when we recall the calm language in which persons are directed by statute to be boiled, disembowelled, or burnt alive, we may be quite sure that, if the English law had ever contemplated the infliction upon a subject of such lingering torture as gibbeting alive, it would have been as coldly and legally set forth, and, by this time, as legally repealed,—which is perhaps, more to the point still. ”

“ Whether the ensanguined, quivering quarter of a man, uplifted high on a gateway, had a more deterrent effect than a whole body slowly wasting away in chains, we are, fortunately, not now called upon curiously to determine.
It may here be mentioned that the [Pg 18] punishment for high treason differs in one important particular from that for murder. The head must be severed from the body after the hanging. The man must be drawn to the gallows, and may not walk; he must be cut down alive ”

“ It may not be questioned that death under the circumstances and complicated conditions above described cannot have been other than a very shocking spectacle, and particularly when it is noticed from the arrangement of the chains that many a malefactor may in his agony have broken loose from his bonds, and clutched and grappled in his last moments with a decaying carcass at his side. ”

“ Hence the expression to gibbet a man by calling attention publicly to nefarious deeds, and, as the one thing has given us the verb, so the other furnishes the language with an adjective equally expressive, and a person by his “gallous” conduct stands a fair chance of reaching the gallows at last. A gallows may by particular use become a gibbet, but not contrariwise, and the same remark may be said to apply to Potence and Gibbet. ”

“ This discipline Gow endured with much fortitude, but when he had seen the preparations for pressing him to death—the peine forte et dure,—until he died, or pleaded, his courage gave way,—few men, especially bad ones, can look unflinchingly into the dark valley,—and he said he would not have given so much trouble if he could have been assured of not being hung in chains. ”

“ It will be borne in mind that the gallows and the gibbet are the most ancient instruments of capital punishment in the world; as such they have a distinct archæological as well as a legal interest; and, inasmuch as it appears that the custom of exposing human bodies in irons and chains is almost peculiar to this country, doubt [Pg viii] less no further motive need be adduced for now bringing together these scattered English notices. ”

“ It will have been observed in the foregoing remarks that the words “gallows” and “gibbet” have been used indifferently in the quotations both for hanging a man from, and for exposing him upon. It would appear that, at least with us at the present day, gallows is the thing upon which men suffer, and gibbet the object upon which they are set forth. ”

“ And while this course has been pursued,—certainly rather by way of comment and illustration, than with any desire to “accumulate horrors on horror’s head,”—an endeavour has also been made, in carrying down the pitiful story, to dissipate some of the clouds of mystery and fable that have clustered round the Gibbet. Removed, as we happily are by time, from a period when it was lawful, and even accepted as fitting, that men who bore the brand of Cain should be made the subject of a revolting and disgraceful spectacle, [Pg vii] we can approach the matter without prejudice, and with proper calmness ”

“ The victims were sacrificed at the beginning of barley harvest,—the sacred and festal time of the Passover—and in the full blaze of the summer sun they hung till the fall of the periodical rain in October.... She spread on the rocky floor the thick mourning garment of black sackcloth, which as a widow she wore, and crouching there she watched that neither vulture nor jackal should molest the bodies. ”

“ A lady of that neighbourhood, who died a few years ago, aged ninety-four, used to relate, that when she was a girl, she once crossed the gibbet common, and noticed that a starling had built her nest in the man’s ribs; later on some lovers of nature came from Shipdam and stole away the young birds. The remains of Watson’s irons are now deposited in the Norwich Gaol, among a very interesting collection of chains, gyves, irons, gang-chains, and burning girths for the “pale martyrs in their shirts of fire.” ”

“ Tradition often does, but just as often—or oftener does not justify itself. [84]
[Pg 97]
This suggests a few words upon the question of hanging alive in chains. Hollingshed, in his “Description of England” [85] says:—“In wilful murder done upon pretended (premeditated) malice, or in anie notable robbery,” the criminal “is either hanged alive in chains near the place where the fact was committed, or else, upon compassion taken, first strangled with a rope, and so continueth till his bones come to nothing.” ”

“ Thomas Kerrich made sketches of two men hanging in chains upon one gibbet on Brandon Sands, Suffolk. At the present day all other record both of the men (May and Tybald) , their crimes, and their punishment, has, like the coral worm of the completed reef, utterly passed away; all has succumbed to “the tooth of time, and razure of oblivion.” The gibbet post is shown bound with iron bands to prevent cutting down. ”

“ The conduct of Breeds, however, soon cleared up all doubts upon this point. He was tried, and found guilty, and condemned to [Pg 66] death, and to be hung in chains. For this purpose a gibbet was set up in a marsh at the west end of the town now called “Gibbet Marsh.” The carcass of Breeds swung for many years on the morass, and when all but the upper part of the skull had dropped away, the chains and frame were rescued by the Corporation of Rye, and have, by lapse of time, acquired a kind of grim interest, if not exactly to “adorn a tale,” at least “to point a moral.”
BREEDS’S IRONS, 1742. ”

“ He was taken for execution to Gubblecote Cross, in Long Marston parish, thirty miles from Hertford, and so great was the infatuation, and sympathy for the man who had “destroyed an old wicked woman that had done so much mischief by her witchcraft,” that a strong escort of horse was necessary. The body of Colley was afterwards hung in chains on the same gallows, the people of Long Marston, many of whom were present at the murder, having petitioned against the gibbeting near their houses. ”

“ In modern maps the site of the tumulus is forgotten, and the spot being now known as “Gibbet Hill,” the ancient history is wiped out, or, perhaps, to put it more justly, one kind of history replaces another, as it ever has done, in the revolutions of time, and an entirely new train of thoughts is called up.
In 1690 one William Barwick, while out walking with his wife at Cawood, a few miles south of York, threw her into a pond, drowned her, drew her out, and buried her then and there, in her clothes. [Pg 56] Barwick’s brother-in-law’s suspicions arose, and inquiries were set about ”

“ Pliny, in his “Natural History,” [17] tells us that Tarquinius Priscus, who died 578 B.C., ordered the dead bodies of suicides to be exposed on a cross. He was a powerful ruler, and an Etruscan, and made his mark on Rome. He came from Etruria when it was in a high state of development, and, no doubt, the practice of gibbeting on a cross was early in use with that ancient and gifted race.
The Romans dreaded the public exposure of their bodies, and shipwreck, no less than did the Greeks; thus Ovid—
[Pg 10]
“I fear not death, nor value how I die ”

“ They refused sepulture to suicides, for they thought it unreasonable that any hands should bury him whose own had destroyed himself, and they withheld decent burial from criminals.
Albertus Leoninus, from the Low Countries, one of the ablest lawyers of the sixteenth century, says, speaking of the Romans, “If any one killed himself his body was cast out upon a [Pg 11] dunghill to have common sepulture with dogs, &c.; but, however, it was more customary to have his goods confiscated, and his body hung on the furca, or gibbet. ”

“ Drink, drink and live, old man; heaven’s
realm holds no such tide.”
“Childe Harold,” iv. st. 148.
[84] There is a very circumstantial story of one Ambrose Gwinnett, who, according to his own statement, was hung, and hung in chains at Deal in 1709, and came to life again, and escaped to Florida. But, what is more extraordinary still, he fell in with the very man he was supposed to have murdered, survived him for many years, and long swept the way at Charing Cross. The whole thing is in print, and many people are apt to think that what is “in print” must be true. ”

“ This sentence was modified in 30 George III. (1791) to drawing, hanging, and dissecting. It is similarly to the credit of [Pg 53] humanity that the bodies of women were not publicly exposed on gibbets in irons and chains.
In France the same feelings of respect and propriety prevented the hanging of women at the “fourches patibulaires.” The sentence for grave offences was that of “la fosse,” or burying alive, usually in front of the gibbet. ”

“ In a late year of the last century a man was hung in chains in the north of England,—but the particular place we have not been able to identify. And we lift the long-forgotten crime up to notice now because it forms the subject of a tailpiece by Bewick to the Introduction to “Carrion Birds.” [79] The print is here roughly reproduced because it exhibits some particular features. The head is tied up in a [Pg 91] white cloth, with a tender touch of feeling, and the body fastened up in irons with Doric simplicity ”

“ The unfortunate victim had strength enough to reach his house, and sit himself in a chair, out of which he very soon fell, and died, to the great consternation of his servant, who was at once suspected of being the murderer. ”

“ But the system, like all violent systems, was not deterrent—indeed, a multitude of men hanging in chains seems to affect the spectator rather as a curious sight than as the necessary and proper consequence of transgression. ”

“ Of justice, in that earth should be returned to earth, and dust to dust, for what could be more just than to restore to mother earth her children, ... that she might at last receive them again into her bosom, and afford them lodging till the resurrection? The ancients also thought it an act of mercy to hide the dead in the earth, that the organs of such divine souls might not be torn and devoured by wild beasts, birds, &c. ”

“ Thus William Carter, smuggler and murderer, was executed and hung up in chains near Rake, on the Portsmouth road, in 1749. [53] Four others, concerned in the same crime, were similarly gibbeted. One of the [Pg 68] leg pieces of Carter’s irons is in the collection of Lady Dorothy Nevill. Implicated in this affair—namely, the robbery of the Custom House at Poole, and the murder of Mr. Galley and Mr. Chater—was William Jackson. He, also, was condemned to be hung, and gibbeted in chains; but the poor wretch was so ill, and horror-struck when they measured him for his irons, that he died of fright. ”

“ It is a dreadful subject, which one almost shrinks from touching; but it may be added that none of the thirty-two sufferers at Carlisle for “the —45” were hung in chains; they died the ferocious death for high treason. ”

“ It is to be observed that the expression is “irons,” and not chains, and that the fact is mentioned in a simple, natural way, as if the mode of punishment was quite usual for grave offences. Christiana says—“They should never be bewailed by me; they have but what they deserve: and I think it well that they stand so near the highway, that others may see and take warning.” ”

“ Thus the hanging in chains formed part of the sentence in Scotland which it never did in England for any crime, if we except the solitary instance at Easthampstead in 1381. [34]
[Pg 31]
We may now pass for a short time to France. In that country the gallows was a feudal right which, held in the first place in capite, could be sub-infeudated to lesser vassals, but they could at any time be suppressed by the Crown. ”

“ Tailpiece to the Introduction to the Shrike, p. 74—a moonlight scene, with a gibbet in the distance; in the foreground a scared old man is terrified by trees and rocks whose forms assume hob-goblin shapes. Tailpiece to the account of the Chatterer, p. 105—Satan sits upon a rock, smoking a pipe, a gibbet in the distance. Tailpiece to the account of the Whitethroat, p. 261—a gibbet in the distance. “Quadrupeds,” first Edit., 1790. Tailpiece to the account of the Arctic Fox, p. 274—a gibbet in the distance; in the foreground two boys hanging a dog. Tailpiece to the account of the Opossum, p. ”