Execution of Catherine Hayes at Tyburn.
From a Print in the “Tyburn Chronicle.”
According to the law of the period, those committed for murder and “petty treason” were to be hanged and afterwards burnt at the gallows. The hangman did his work, but the mob of ruffians which surged around got out of all control, and so timoured the officer of the law that the wretched woman was cut down while still alive and conscious, and taken to the stake. The people yelled and shrieked, and tried to force their way towards the blazing pile, and generally behaved in such an uproarious manner that the horrors of death were rendered a hundredfold more hideous by their frantic conduct.
The most astounding thing about this revolting scene is, that the burning alive of a woman at the stake took place in the presumedly civilised days of George the First, and in the last year of his reign.
Society at the commencement of the eighteenth century still read little, and ignorance fed and thrived on the thrilling details of the careers of daring highwaymen. Persons of decent reputation vied with one another to have the latest chat with the manacled prisoners. “His Last Dying Speech and Confession” was shouted about the streets, and the broadside sold in thousands. People still flocked to an execution as to an entertaining show.
It is just as well not to have lived in those gross times. How different has public sympathy and sentiment grown in the comparatively short space of a century. Thackeray was right when he wrote of Tyburn:
“Were a man brought to die there now, the windows would be closed, and the inhabitants would keep their houses in sickening horror. A hundred years ago people crowded there to see the last act of a highwayman’s life, and made jokes of it. Swift laughed at him, cruelly advised him to provide a holland shirt and a white cap, crowned with a crimson or black ribbon, for his exit, to mount the cart cheerfully, shaking hands with the hangman, and so farewell; or Gay wrote his most delightful ballads, and then made merry over his hero.”
The last man hanged at Tyburn was John Austin on 7th November 1783, for robbery and unlawful wounding, and on the following 9th December, the first public execution outside Newgate took place. The Morning Chronicle of that day, in relating the event, added the remark:
“The saving to the State and to individuals from the new method of executing criminals is immense. Many indigent families will feel the good effects of preventing the loss of a day. No longer will thoughtless youth neglect their employment to attend Tyburn executions, where too many have become converts to bad practices.”
Indeed, the rascality attending these scenes almost passes belief. A Tyburn execution, especially if a “fashionable” one, at which the better—or at least wealthier—class gathered, was an occasion for the assembling of all the pickpockets, watch-snatchers, and bad characters of the town, who plied their skill busily while attention was directed upon the expiring struggles and groans of the poor wretch swinging from the tree. One Francis Grey, as he stood on the scaffold, actually exhorted the crowd around him to give up their evil ways, for he saw many bad men there, and bad deeds had never brought him happiness.