London in the Sixties (with a few digressions)

by Unknown

And then the “debtors’ door” closed till again required for a similar tragedy, the crowd dispersed, and the sightseers sought their beds to dream of the horrors of the past twelve hours.

After the trapeze performance we have just read of, given by the venerable Calcraft to a delighted audience in front of Newgate Gaol, it appears to have dawned upon the “Hanging Committee” of the Home Office that, although much of the solemnity of the “painful” performance would be lost by the removal of the patriarchal beard, counter advantages might be attained by the substitution of a younger man to fill the Crown appointment so popular amongst the masses. A new era was thenceforth inaugurated. Instead of the length of the drop being left to the discretion of the artiste, the exact measurement was not only fixed, but the rope itself supplied by the Hanging Committee, after a careful calculation by dynamics of the height and weight of the principal performer. But the immediate successor of the venerable Calcraft was found wanting in certain material qualifications, and although admittedly an expert operator, had a habit of talking when under the genial influence of stimulants.

An unrehearsed incident, when the head rolled off at a private execution, thus got into the papers, and it became apparent that a combination of expertness and reticence was the desideratum to be sought and found.

It was thus that the hero we are discussing came upon the scene some few years later.

Marwood allowed nothing to interfere with business, and he would as soon have hanged his grandmother—if duly instructed—as the most brutal ruffian that ever passed through his hands. To arrive over-night with a modest carpet-bag and be up betimes the following morning were to him matters of routine; to truss his subject with a kicking strap 6 in. wide and then drop into the procession with a face like a chief mourner’s were to him sheer formalities; to give evidence later in the day before an enlightened but inquisitive coroner’s jury was to him a matter of courteous obligation; and to step into the street half an hour afterwards with the same bag—but with evidently less hemp in it—all came to him as part of a routine to be henceforth cast from memory till the service of his country again demanded his undivided and best attention.

Any one looking at the retiring little man, dressed in the most funereal of clothes, clutching a pint pot with his long and nervous fingers, would have found it difficult to associate him with anything more formidable than a bagman hawking samples for “the firm,” and it was only when a sort of intimacy had been struck up and a certain quantity of swipes had been consumed that, yielding to pressure, the great man launched out upon his unique experiences.

Marwood’s invariable resort was the Green Dragon in Fleet Street, and so certain as a malefactor met his doom at eight so certain was the hangman to be found at twelve in the “select” section of the pub. This peculiarity, of course, by degrees got to be known, and so it came to pass that young bloods with a thirst for knowledge resorted thither, and “hanging days” raised the “takings” of the fortunate house in Fleet Street.

Incredible as it may appear, this morbid craving is by no means confined to a few, and large sums used to be paid by reckless young scamps thirty years ago to assist at these ghastly functions. It is an undeniable fact, moreover, that a baronet still alive posed as the hangman’s assistant at numerous executions.

But with the reaction that came as regards public hangings, the stringency connected with the private performances made these hobbies impossible, and the present era may take credit for having advanced considerably in this respect on the usages of the long-ago sixties.

Before quitting this dislocating subject, it may interest the student of ancient days to know that where now stands an imposing public-house, next St. Giles’s Church, Bloomsbury, was once the Beer House where every cart freighted with living victims from Newgate to Tyburn pulled up for their “last drink.” After which, wending their way along Oxford Road (Street), they alighted at Tyburn Tree, now the garden of 1, Connaught Place, opposite the Marble Arch.