Enough has probably been said to give a complete picture of the disgraceful state in which Newgate still remained in the early part of the nineteenth century.
CHAPTER VII
INTERESTING INSTANCES
Description of the new gallows at Newgate—"The fall of the leaf"—Great crowds at the Old Bailey, and as brutal as of old—Enormous crowd at Governor Wall's execution—Execution of Holloway and Haggerty—Terrible loss of life in the crowd—Awful levity displayed—Amelioration of the criminal code—Executions more rare—Capital punishment gradually restricted to murderers—Dissection of the bodies abolished—Public exhibition of bodies also discontinued—Exhibition of the body of Williams, who murdered the Marrs—Hanging in chains given up—Failures at executions—Culprits fight for life—Cases of Charles White, of Luigi Buranelli, of William Bousfield—Calcraft and his method of hanging—Other hangmen—The cost of a hangman.
The discontinuance of the long-practised procession to Tyburn, and the reasons for this change have already been fully set forth. The terrible spectacle was as demoralizing to the public, for whose admonition it was intended, as the exposure was brutal and cruel towards the principal actors. The decision to remove the scene of action to the immediate front of Newgate was in the right direction, as making the performance shorter and diminishing the area of display. But the Old Bailey was not exclusively used; at first, and for some few years after 1784, executions took place occasionally at a
distance from Newgate. This was partly due to the survival of the old notion that the scene of the crime ought also to witness the retribution; partly because residents in and about the Old Bailey raised a loud protest against the constant erection of the scaffold in their neighbourhood. As regards the first, I find that in 1786 John Hogan, the murderer of a Mr. Odell, an attorney who resided in Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place, was executed on a gibbet in front of his victim's house. Lawrence Jones, a burglar, was in 1793 ordered for execution in Hatton Garden, near the house he had robbed; and when he evaded the sentence by suicide, his body was exhibited in the same neighbourhood, extended upon a plank on the top of an open cart, in his clothes, and fettered. From 1809 to 1812, Execution Dock, on the banks of the Thames, was still retained. Here John Sutherland, commander of the British armed transport "The Friends," suffered on the 29th June, 1809, for the murder of his cabin-boy, whom he stabbed after much ill-usage on board the ship as it lay in the Tagus. On the 18th December, 1812, two sailors, Charles Palm and Sam Tilling, were hanged at the same place for the murder of their captain, James Keith, of the trading vessel "Adventure," upon the high seas. They were taken in a cart to the place of execution, amidst a vast concourse of people. "Palm, as soon as he was seated in the cart, put a quid of tobacco into his mouth, and offered another to his companion, who refused it
with indignation. . . . Some indications of pity were offered for the fate of Tilling; for Palm, execration alone."
But the Old Bailey gradually, and in spite of all objections urged, monopolized the dread business of execution. The first affair of the kind on this spot was on the 3rd of December, 1783, when, in pursuance of an order issued by the Recorder to the sheriffs of Middlesex and the keeper of His Majesty's gaol, Newgate, a scaffold was erected in front of that prison for the execution of several convicts named by the Recorder. "Ten were executed; the scaffold hung with black; and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, having petitioned the sheriffs to remove the scene of execution to the old place, were told that the plan had been well considered, and would be persevered in." The following 23rd April, it is stated that the malefactors ordered for execution on the 18th inst. were brought out of Newgate about eight in the morning, and suspended on a gallows of a new construction. "After hanging the usual time they were taken down, and the machine cleared away in half-an-hour. By practice the art is much improved, and there is no part of the world in which villains are hanged in so neat a manner, and with so little ceremony."
A full description of this new gallows, which was erected in front of the debtors' door, is to be found in contemporary records. "The criminals are not exposed to view till they mount the fatal stage.