Contents
| PAGE | |
| TYBURN TREE | [1] |
| PILLORY AND CART’S TAIL | [45] |
| STATE TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT | [68] |
| A PAIR OF PARRICIDES | [88] |
| SOME DISUSED ROADS TO MATRIMONY | [116] |
| THE BORDER LAW | [152] |
| THE SERJEANT-AT-LAW | [185] |
Tyburn Tree
Its Exact Position not known—Near the Marble Arch—Fanciful Etymologies—The Last Days of the Old-Time Criminal—Robert Dowe’s Bequest—Execution Eve—St. Sepulchre’s Bell—The Procession—St. Giles’s Bowl—At Tyburn—Ketch’s Perquisites—The Newgate Ordinary—The Executioner—Tyburn’s Roll of Fame—Catholic Martyrs—Cromwell’s Head—The Highwaymen—Lord Ferrers—Dr. Dodd—James Hackman—Tyburn in English Letters.
To-day you cannot fix the exact spot where Tyburn Tree raised its uncanny form. To the many it was the most noteworthy thing about Old London, yet while thousands who had gazed thereon in fascinated horror were still in life, a certain vagueness was evident in men’s thoughts, and, albeit antiquaries have keenly debated the locus, all the mind is clouded with a doubt, and your carefully worked out conclusion is but guesswork. There is reason manifold for this. Of old time the populous district known as Tyburnia was wild heath intersected by the Tyburn Brook, which, rising near Hampstead, crossed what is now Oxford Street, hard by the Marble Arch, and so on to Chelsea and the Thames. Somewhere on its banks was the Middlesex gallows. It may be that as the tide set westward the site was changed. Again, the wild heath is now thick with houses; new streets and squares have confused the ancient landmarks; those who dwelt therein preferred that there should not be a too nice identification of localities. How startling the reflection that in the very place of your dining-room, thousands of fellow-creatures had dangled in their last agonies! How rest at ease in such a chamber of horrors? The weight of evidence favours (or disfavours) No. 49 Connaught Square. The Bishop of London is ground landlord here; and it is said that in the lease of that house granted by him the fact is recorded that there stood the “Deadly Never-Green.” Such a record were purely gratuitous, but the draftsman may have made it to fix the identity of the dwelling. But to-day the Square runs but to No. 47. Some shuffling of numerals has, you fancy, taken place to baffle indiscreet research. However, you may be informed (in confidence) that you have but to stand at the south-east corner of the Square to be “warm,” as children say in their games.
Let these minutiæ go. Tyburn Tree stood within a gunshot to the north-west of the Marble Arch. Its pictured shape is known from contemporary prints. There were three tall uprights, joined at the top by three cross-beams, the whole forming a triangle. It could accommodate many patients at once, and there is some authority for supposing that the beam towards Paddington was specially used for Roman Catholics. In the last century the nicer age objected to it as an eyesore; and it was replaced by a movable structure, fashioned of two uprights and a cross-beam, which was set up in the Edgware Road at the corner of Bryanston Street, and which, the grim work done, was stored in the corner house, from whose windows the sheriffs superintended executions. To accommodate genteel spectators there were just such stands as you find on a racecourse, the seats whereof were let at divers prices, according to the interest excited. In 1758, for Dr. Henesey’s execution as arch-traitor, the rate rose to two shillings and two and sixpence a seat. The Doctor was “most provokingly reprieved,” whereat the mob in righteous indignation arose and wrecked the stands. Mammy Douglas, a woman who kept the key of one of these stands, was popularly known as “the Tyburn pew-opener.”