The last instance in which the press was inflicted was at Kilkenny in Ireland. A man named Matthew Ryan stood mute at his trial for highway robbery, and was adjudged by the jury to be guilty of "wilful and affected dumbness and lunacy." He was given some days' grace, but still remaining dumb, he was pressed to death in the public market of Kilkenny. As the weights were put upon him the wretched man broke silence and implored that he might be hanged, but the sheriff could not grant his request.
In 1731 a new press was made and fixed in the press-yard, for the punishment of a highwayman named Cook, but it was not used. At length, in 1772, the law on this head was altered and judgment was awarded against mutes as though convicted or they had confessed. In 1778 one so suffered at the Old Bailey. Finally, it was provided that the court should enter a plea of "Not guilty" when the prisoner refused to plead.
The principal forms of capital punishment, however, as the derivation of the expression implies, have dealt with the head as the most vulnerable part of the body. Death has been and still is most generally inflicted by decapitation and strangulation. The former, except in France, where it came to be universal, was the most aristocratic method; the latter was long applied only to criminals of the baser sort. Until the invention of the guillotine, culprits were beheaded by sword or axe, and were often cruelly mangled by a bungling executioner. It is asserted by the historian that the executioner pursued the Countess of Salisbury about the scaffold, aiming repeated blows at her, before he succeeded in striking off her head. This uncertainty in result was only ended by the ingenious invention of Doctor Guillotin, the prototype of which existed in the time of the Scotch "Maiden." The regent Morton, who introduced this instrument into Scotland, and who himself suffered by it, is said to have
patterned it after the Halifax Gibbet.[181:1] Guillotin's machine was not altogether original, but it owed more to the Italian "Mannaïa" than to the "Maiden." Nor, according to Sanson, the French headsman, was he the actual inventor of the notorious instrument guillotine, which bears his name. The guillotine was designed by one Schmidt, a German engineer and artificer of musical instruments. Guillotin enthusiastically adopted Schmidt's design, which he strongly recommended in the assembly, declaring that by it a culprit could not suffer, but only feel a slight freshness on the neck. Louis XVI was decapitated by the guillotine, as was the doctor, its sponsor and introducer.
Strangulation, whether applied by the bowstring, cord, handkerchief, or drop, is as old as the hills. It was inflicted by the Greeks as an especially ignominious punishment. The "sus per coll." was not unknown in the penal law of the Romans, who were in the habit also of exposing the dead convict upon the gibbet, "as a comfortable sight to his friends and relations."
In London various places have been used for the
scene of execution. The spot where a murder had been committed was often appropriately selected as the place of retribution. Execution Dock was reserved for pirates and sea-robbers, Tower Hill for persons of rank who were beheaded. Gallows for meaner malefactors were sometimes erected on the latter place, the right to do so being claimed by the city. In the reign of Edward IV, however, there was a conflict of authority between the king and the Corporation on this point. The king's officer set up a scaffold and gallows on Tower Hill, whereupon the mayor and his brethren complained to the king, who replied, that he had not acted in derogation of the city liberties, and caused public proclamation to be made that the city exercised certain rights on Tower Hill. Executions also took place, according to Pennant, at the Standard in Chepe. Three men were beheaded there for rescuing a prisoner, and in 1351 two fishmongers for some unknown crime. Smithfield had long the dismal honour of witnessing the death-throes of offenders. Between Hozier and Cow Lanes was anciently a large pool called Smithfield Pond or Horse Pool, "from the watering of horses there;" to the southwest lay St. John's Court, and close to it the public gallows on the town green. There was a clump of trees in the centre of the green, elms, from which the place of execution was long euphemistically called "The Elms." It was used as such early in the thirteenth century, and distinguished persons, William
Fitzosbert, Mortimer, and Sir William Wallace suffered here.
About 1413 the gibbet was removed from Smithfield and put up at the north end of a garden wall belonging to St. Giles's Leper Hospital, "opposite the Pound where the Crown Tavern is at present situate, between the end of St. Giles High Street and Hog Lane." But Smithfield must have been still used after the transfer of the gallows to St. Giles. In 1580 another conflict of jurisdiction, this time between the city and the Lieutenant of the Tower. A gibbet was erected in that year in East Smithfield, at Hog Lane, for the execution of one R. Dod, who had murdered a woman in those parts. "But when the sheriff brought the malefactor there to be hanged Sir Owen Hopton, the Lieutenant of the Tower, commanded the sheriff's officers back again to the west side of a cross that stood there," and which probably marked the extent of the liberties of the Tower. Discussion followed. The sheriffs with their prisoner accompanied the lieutenant into a house to talk it over, "whence after a good stay they all departed." The city gave way—the gibbet was taken down, and the malefactor carried to Tyburn in the same afternoon, where he was executed.
The gallows were no doubt all ready for the business, for Tyburn had been used for executions as long as Smithfield. There were elms also at Tyburn, hence a not uncommon confusion between