On December 9, 1783, the first executions took place in front of Newgate prison, on the new gallows, with a “drop.” The illustration shows
THE DAWN OF THE NEW ERA.
THE NEW GALLOWS AT NEWGATE, 1783.
The ten persons seem to fill the stage, but it would be doing an injustice to the designer of this national monument to assume that he had not taken into account the possible demands of the State.
On February 2, 1785, twenty men swung in a batch in front of the debtors’ door. Of these, five—FIVE—were hanged for assaulting a man and robbing him of two glass drops, set in metal, value 3d.; a one-inch rule, value 2d.; two papers of nails, value 1d.; one knife, value 1d.; two shillings, and a counterfeit half-penny.
Tyburn gallows was in full vigour when the claims of a “genteel” neighbourhood demanded its abolition. In the last year of its existence one hundred and eight persons were condemned to death at the Old Bailey sessions—fifty-eight in a single sessions. Most of the condemned were reprieved: the crimes of these must have been light, for John Kelly was actually hanged for robbing another of sixpence-farthing.
Within view of the accursed spot Catholics have instituted an Oratory of the English Martyrs. It is well: the world cannot afford to forget the example of those who, whether at Tyburn or Smithfield, gladly faced the most horrible of deaths rather than be false to themselves.
But in honouring them, let us not forget the thousands of martyrs for whom no one has claimed the crown of martyrdom—the martyrs to ferocious laws, not seldom put in force against the innocent, the martyrs to cruel injustice, to iniquitous social conditions. Thousands have had the life choked out of them at Tyburn on whom pity might well have dropped a pardoning tear: to whom compassion might well have stretched out a helping hand.