Читать книгу Bygone Punishments - Andrews William - Страница 7

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Instances are not wanting of criminals being driven in their own carriages to the place of execution. The story of William Andrew Horne, a Derbyshire squire, as given in the "Nottingham Date Book," is one of the most revolting records of villainy that has come under our notice. His long career of crime closed on his seventy-fourth birthday, in 1759, at the gallows, Nottingham. He had committed more than one murder, but was tried for the death of an illegitimate child of which he was the father. His brother laid the information which at last brought him to justice. This brother requested him to give him a small sum of money so that he might leave the country, but he refused to comply. He then said he should make known his crime, but that did not frighten Horne. He replied, "I'll chance it," and this gave rise to a well-known saying in the Midlands, "I'll chance it as Horne did his neck." He was hanged at Gallows-Hill, Nottingham, and was driven in his carriage by his own coachman. We are told as the gloomy procession ascended the Mansfield Road the white locks of the hoary[17] sinner streamed mournfully in the wind, his head being uncovered and the vehicle open, and the day very tempestuous. He met his doom with a considerable degree of fortitude, in the presence of an immense crowd of spectators, including hundreds of his Derbyshire neighbours and tenantry.[2]

A year later Earl Ferrers was hanged for the shooting of his own steward. On May 5th, 1760, he was driven from the Tower to Tyburn in a landau drawn by six horses. His lordship was attired in his wedding clothes, which were of a light colour and richly embroidered in silver. He was hanged with a silken rope, and instead of being swung into eternity from a common cart, a scaffold was erected under the gallows, which we think may be regarded as the precursor of the drop. Mr. T. Broadbent Trowsdale contributed to "Bygone Leicestershire" an informing paper on "Laurence Ferrers: the Murderer-Earl."[3] We reproduce an illustration of the execution from a print of the period.

Some interesting details occur in Notes and Queries for May 28th, 1898, respecting "The Colleen Bawn." It is stated that when John[18] Scanlan had been found guilty of the murder of Ellen Hanley, the gentry of the county of Limerick petitioned for a reprieve, which was refused. They next requested that Scanlan be hanged with a silken cord, though whether for its greater dignity or because it offered a possibility of more rapid strangulation in short drop, we cannot tell. The Lord Lieutenant thought hemp would serve the purpose. According to Haydn's "Dictionary of Dates," Scanlan was executed 14th March, 1820.

[19] EXECUTION OF EARL FERRERS AT TYBURN. (From a print of the period.)

Mr. Gordon Fraser, of Wigtown, has collected much interesting local lore respecting the town, which was made a royal burgh in 1341. In bygone times it had the distinction of having its own public executioner. According to traditional accounts he held office on somewhat peculiar conditions. The law was, we are told, that this functionary was himself to be a criminal under sentence of death, but whose doom was to be deferred until the advance of age prevented a continuance of his usefulness, and then he was to be hanged forthwith. If, it was said, the town permitted the executioner to die by the ordinary decay of nature, and not by the process of the cord, it would lose for ever the distinguished honour of possessing a public hangman. The story of the last official who held the[21] tenure of his life upon being able to efficiently despatch his fellows is sufficiently interesting. He was taken ill, and it was seriously contemplated to make sure of having a public hangman in the future by seizing the sick man and hanging him. His friends, hearing of this intention, propped the dying Ketch up in bed, and he, being by trade a shoemaker, had the tools and materials of his trade placed before him. He made a pretence of plying his avocation, and the townsmen, thinking his lease of life was in no danger of a natural termination, allowed him to lie in peace. He then speedily passed away quietly in his bed, and the outwitted burghers found themselves without a hangman, and without hope of a successor.

A good story is told by Mr. Fraser of the last man hanged at Wigtown. His name was Patrick Clanachan, and he was tried and found guilty of horse-stealing. His doom was thus pronounced:—"That he be taken on the 31st August, 1709, between the hours of twelve and two in the afternoon, to the gyppet at Wigtown, and there to hang till he was dead." Clanachan was carried from the prison to the gallows on a hurdle, and, as the people were hurrying on past him to witness his execution, he is said to have remarked, "Tak'[22] yer time, boys, there'll be nae fun till I gang." We have heard a similar anecdote respecting a criminal in London.

At Wicklow, in the year 1738, a man named George Manley was hanged for murder, and just before his execution he delivered an address to the crowd, as follows: "My friends, you assemble to see—what? A man leap into the abyss of death! Look, and you will see me go with as much courage as Curtius, when he leaped into the gulf to save his country from destruction. What will you say of me? You say that no man, without virtue, can be courageous! You see what I am—I'm a little fellow. What is the difference between running into a poor man's debt, and by the power of gold, or any other privilege, prevent him from obtaining his right, and clapping a pistol to a man's breast, and taking from him his purse? Yet the one shall thereby obtain a coach, and honour, and titles; the other, what?—a cart and a rope. Don't imagine from all this that I am hardened. I acknowledge the just judgment of God has overtaken me. My Redeemer knows that murder was far from my heart, and what I did was through rage and passion, being provoked by the deceased. Take warning, my comrades; think[23] what would I now give that I had lived another life. Courageous? You'll say I've killed a man. Marlborough killed his thousands, and Alexander his millions. Marlborough and Alexander, and many others, who have done the like, are famous in history for great men. Aye—that's the case—one solitary man. I'm a little murderer and must be hanged. Marlborough and Alexander plundered countries; they were great men. I ran in debt with the ale-wife. I must be hanged. How many men were lost in Italy, and upon the Rhine, during the last war for settling a king in Poland. Both sides could not be in the right! They are great men; but I killed a solitary man."

It will be seen from the following account, that in the olden time the cost and trouble attending an execution was a serious matter:—

To the Right Honourable the Lord Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury.

The humble petition of Ralph Griffin, Esq., High Sheriff of the County of Flint, for the present year, 1769, concerning the execution of Edward Edwards, for burglary:—

Sheweth.

That your petitioner was at great difficulty and expense by himself, his clerks, and other messengers and agents he employed in journeys to Liverpool and Shrewsbury, to hire an executioner; the convict being of Wales it was almost impossible to procure any of that country to undertake the execution.

[24]

£	s.	d.
Travelling and other expenses on that occasion	15	10	0
A man at Salop engaged to do this business. Gave him in part	5	5	0
Two men for conducting him, and for their search of him on his deserting from them on the road, and charges on inquiring for another executioner	4	10	0
After much trouble and expense, John Babington, a convict in the same prison with Edwards, was by means of his wife prevailed on to execute his fellow-prisoner. Gave to the wife	6	6	0
And to Babington	6	6	0
Paid for erecting a gallows, materials, and labour: a business very difficult to be done in this country	4	12	0
For the hire of a cart to convey the body, a coffin, and for the burial	2	10	0
And for other expenses, trouble, and petty expenses, on the occasion at least	5	0	0
Total	£49	19	0

Which humbly hope your lordships will please to allow your petitioner, who, etc.

Feasting at funerals in past time was by no means uncommon in Great Britain, and perhaps still lingers in some of the remoter parts of the country. In Scotland until the commencement of the present century before or after executions, civic feasts were often held. After every execution,[25] at Paisley, says the Rev. Charles Rogers, LL.D., the authorities had a municipal dinner. Thomas Potts was hanged at Paisley, 1797, at a cost to the town of £33 5s. 3½d., of which the sum of £13 8s. 10d. was expended on a civic feast, and £1 14s. 3d. on the entertainment of the executioner and his assistants. At Edinburgh, the evening prior to an execution, the magistrates met at Paxton's Tavern, in the Exchange, and made their arrangements over liquor. These gatherings were known as "splicing the rope."[4]

During the distress which, owing to the scanty harvests of the later years of the last century, prevailed throughout the country, but more especially in the north, attention was drawn to an extremely curious privilege claimed by the public executioner of Dumfries. From old times a considerable portion of the remuneration for his hanging services was in kind, and levied in the following manner. When the farmers and others had set out in the public market their produce of meal, potatoes, and similar provender, the hangman, walking along the row of sacks, thrust into each a large iron ladle, and put the result of each "dip" into his own sack. This tax, from the[26] odious occupation of the collector, was regarded by the farmers and factors with particular abhorrence, and numerous attempts were made at different periods to put a stop to the grievous exaction, but the progress of public opinion was so little advanced, and the regard for the ancient trammels of feudal arbitrariness so deep-seated, that not until 1781 was any serious resistance made. In that year a person named Johnston stood upon what he considered his rights, and would allow no acquaintance to be made between his meal and the iron ladle of the Dumfries hangman. The latter, seeing in this the subversion of every fundamental principle of social order, to say nothing of the loss threatened to his means of subsistence, carried his complaint to the magistrates. Consequently the Dumfries Hampden was forthwith haled to prison. He was not, however, long detained there, as his judges were made aware by his threats of action for false imprisonment that they were unaware of the position in which they and the impost stood in the eyes of the law. To remedy this ignorance, and be fore-armed for other cases of resistance, which it was not unlikely to suppose would follow, the Corporation of Dumfries, in the year we have mentioned, had[27] recourse to legal advice. That they obtained was of the highest standing, as they applied to no less a personage than Andrew Crosbie, the eminent advocate, who has been immortalised in the Pleydell of "Guy Mannering." It will be interesting to quote from the document laid before him on this occasion, containing as it does several particulars about the hangman of the town. One part describes the office, duties, and pay of the hangman, "who executes not only the sentences pronounced by the magistrates of the burgh, and of the King's judges on their circuits, but also the sentences of the sheriff, and of the justices of the peace at their quarter sessions. The town has been in use to pay his house rent, and a salary over and above. Roger Wilson, the present executioner, has, since he was admitted, received from the town £6 of salary, and £1 13s. 4d. for a house rent. Over and above this salary and rent, he and his predecessors have been in use of levying and receiving weekly (to wit each market day, being Wednesday,) the full of an iron ladle out of each sack of meal, pease, beans, and potatoes, and the same as to flounders." The history of the impost is next very briefly dealt with, the gist of the information on the subject[28] being that the tax had been levied from a period beyond the memory of the "oldest people" without quarrel or dispute. That the resistance of Johnston was not an isolated instance we likewise learn from this statement of the case, for it says "there appears a fixed resolution and conspiracy to resist and forcibly obstruct the levy of this usual custom," and as the result of the tax according to the executioner's own version amounted to more than £13 annually, it was of sufficient moment to make sound advice desirable. The opinion of Crosbie was that rights obtained by virtue of office, and exercised from time out of mind, were legal, and might very justly be enforced. While commending the imprisonment of the dealer Johnston, he suggested that the process of collection should be made more formal than appears to have been the case in this instance. Officers should assist Jack Ketch in his rôle of tax-gatherer, and all preventers should be formally tried by the magistrates. The tax continued to be levied. The farmers either gave up their meal grudgingly, or, refusing, were sent to gaol. In 1796, when the towns-people were in the utmost need of food, riots and tumults arose in Dumfries, and as one means of allaying the popular frenzy it was proposed[29] by the leading member of the Corporation, Provost Haig, that the ladle's harvest should be abolished, and his recommendation was immediately put into effect. The hangman of Dumfries was then one Joseph Tate, who was the last of the officers of the noose connected officially with Dumfries; for the loss of his perquisite he was allowed the sum of £2 yearly. It is satisfactory to learn that the ladle itself, the only substantial relic of this curious custom, is, in all probability preserved at the present time. A footnote in W. McDowall's valuable "History of Dumfries," says: "The Dumfries hangman's ladle is still to be seen we believe among other 'auld nick-nackets' at Abbotsford." It was for many years lost sight of, till in 1818, Mr. Joseph Train, the zealous antiquary, hunted it out, and, all rusty as it was, sent it as a present to Sir Walter Scott.[5]