A Short History of Capital Punishment in Pictures

Photo: Alexander GardnerThe Execution of Lincoln's Conspirators

Capital punishment has been the hot subject of a very long-running debate. Even today it is assumed that a substantial proportion of the public want to see it restored, although governments are broadly against its return in places where it has already been abolished. When the UK parliament decided to ban all public executions - the last one was as recently as 1868 - the public were outraged, having always enjoyed a good hanging as a kind of spectator sport.

In the days when executions at Tyburn were routine, London's busiest gallows stood on a spot close to modern Connaught Square at Marble Arch. These could accommodate 21 men or women at a time, convention dictating an order of precedence such that highwaymen as the 'aristocrats of crime' were despatched first, then common thieves, with traitors being left to bring up the rear.

Artist's impression of the Tyburn Tree
Photo: unknown via ChrisO

The condemned would be taken to the so-called Tyburn Tree from Newgate Gaol in the City, where the Old Bailey is today. Each would be presented with scented nosegays by crowds which could number up in the tens of thousands. Convicts could also enjoy a last drink free of charge at the Mason's Arms, which is still open for business in Seymour Place, London W1. It wasn't unknown for some to escape the drop, and in 1705 John 'half-hanged' Smith earned his nickname by taking so long to die that the crowd rioted and demanded he be cut down and let loose. Patrick O'Bryan also escaped, but deciding to murder his accuser he was boiled in pitch to stop any such crime happening again.

But hanging is not the only grisly method by which criminals were punished for their deeds.

The barbarity of the electric chair
Photo: William M. Vander Weyde

Some executions were more notorious than others. When Charles II's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, was executed for treason in 1685, it took his executioner Jack Ketch five blows with the axe to kill him. With Ketch almost certainly drunk, even then the job had to be finished off with a knife.
Monmouth had attempted to topple his father, but lost the critical Battle of Sedgemoor.

According to legend, a portrait was painted of Monmouth after his execution. The belief is that after the grisly deed it was realised that there was no official portrait of the Duke. For a son of a King, and someone who had claimed the throne, albeit in vain, this was unheard of. So Monmouth's body was exhumed, the head stitched back on the body, and it was sat for its portrait to be painted.

The Duke of Monmouth
Photo: National Portrait Gallery

Boiling to death was legal punishment in olden times, though instances of it were not as frequent in the annals of crime as some of the other modes of execution. In the year 1531, when Henry VIII was King, an act was passed for boiling prisoners to death. The act details the case of one Richard Rouse, a cook in the diocese of the Bishop of Rochester who had, by putting poison in the food of several persons, occasioned the death of two, and the serious illness of others. He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to be boiled to death without the benefit of celery being present. He was brought to punishment at Smithfield, on the 15th of April, 1532; and the Act ordained that all manner of prisoners should meet with the same doom henceforth. In 1531, a maid-servant was boiled to death in the market-place of King's Lynn for the crime of poisoning her mistress. Then March 28th, 1542, a maid-servant named Margaret Davy perished at Smithfield for poisoning persons with whom she had lived. However, the act was repealed in the year 1547.

The dreadful practice of boiling people alive
Photo: daha.best

Captain William Kidd was hanged in London in 1700 after abandoning piety for piracy. The Scottish sailor started out on the right path but eventually turned to buccaneering at sea. Inevitably the legend is larger than the man, and it seems doubtful that his actual "depredations on the high seas" were any worse than many a lesser-known brigand.

Kidd's capture and trial in 1700 caused a sensation, however, when he fell victim to political points-scoring. Hanged in the traditional manner for pirates - at London's Wapping Stairs, where three tides washed over his corpse - he was then hanged in chains at Tilbury, and his body was left there to rot for 20 years.

Photo: unknown via Wikimedia

Until 1772 the rich could opt for something known as peine forte et dure, French for 'hard and forceful punishment'. This involved being pressed to death beneath a wooden board loaded with weights, a slow and hideously painful process whose sole advantage was avoiding one's property being confiscated by the Crown.

The most famous case of peine forte et dure in the United Kingdom was that of Roman Catholic Martyr St Margaret Clitherow, who was pressed to death on March 25, 1586, after refusing to plead to the charge of having harboured Catholic (then outlawed) priests in her house. She died within fifteen minutes under a weight of at least 700 pounds. Several hardened criminals, including William Spiggot (1721) and Edward Burnworth, lasted half hour under 400 pounds before pleading to the indictment. Others, such as Major Strangways (1658) and John Weekes (1731), refused to plead, even under 400 pounds, and were killed when bystanders, out of mercy, sat on them.

Example of crushing execution in India
Photo: La Tour Du Monde

The largest crowd ever assembled in Britain for a public execution was that which gathered outside Newgate Gaol on 30 November, 1824 to see a sentence of death carried out on Henry Fauntleroy. An estimated 100,000 people thronged the streets, some paying enormous sums for rooms with a clear view of the gallows.

Fauntleroy was a banker who had been convicted of successfully defrauding the Bank of England of £250,000, or more than £20 million at current values. He cheerfully squandered the entire sum, which somehow seemed to make the offence even worse and certainly took the biscuit as far as the crowd was concerned. He was the last person to be hanged for forgery in the UK.

Photo: via executed today

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