Alfred Marks - Tyburn Tree: Its History and Annals

Transcribers Note: Corrections have been made to a small number of evident typos, but otherwise the text is as printed, with inconsistent spelling, hyphenation, punctuation and general style.

TYBURN TREE
ITS HISTORY AND ANNALS

GIBBET ON KENNINGTON COMMON, ABOUT 1748.

Ther bith therfore mo men hanged in Englande in a yere ffor robbery and manslaughter, then ther be hanged in Ffraunce ffor such maner of crime in vij yeres. Chief Justice Fortescue , about 1476.

Je suis persuad que dans les treize cantons et leurs allis, on pend moins de voleurs dans un an, que lon ne fait Londres dans une seule assise. Csar de Saussure , Lettres et Voyages, 1725-1729.

Many cart-loads of our fellow-creatures are once in six weeks carried to slaughter. Henry Fielding , Enquiry, etc., 1751.

The following malefactors were executed at Tyburn John Kelly, for robbing Edward Adamson in a public street, of sixpence and one farthing.Gentlemans Magazine, March 7, 1783.

It is frequently said by them [the prisoners in Newgate] that the crimes of which they have been guilty are as nothing when compared with the crimes of Government towards themselves: that they have only been thieves, but that their governors have been murderers.Mrs. Fry , 1818, quoted in Romillys Life, ii. 486-7.

How our fathers lived is a subject of never-failing interest: of some interest it may be to inquire how they diedat Tyburn. The story has many aspects, some noble, some squalid, some pathetic, some revolting. If I am reproached with dwelling on the horrors of Tyburn, I take refuge under the wing of the great Lipsius, who, in his treatise De Cruce, has lavished the stores of his appalling erudition on a subject no less terrible.

But the subject has an interest other than antiquarian. We are to-day far from the point of view of Shelley

The general tendency is all towards extending the power of governments. Some would fain extend the sphere of the States activity so as to give to the State control over almost every action of our daily lives. It may therefore be not without use to recall how governments have dealt with the people in the past. The State never voluntarily surrenders anything of its power. Less than a hundred years ago, ministers stoutly defended their privilege of tearing out a mans bowels and burning them before his eyes. The State devised and executed hideous punishments, sometimes made still more hideous by the ferocity of its instruments, the judges. All mitigation of these punishments has been forced on the State by idealists. The State dragged its victims, almost naked, three miles over a rough road. The hands of compassionate friars placed the sufferer on a hurdlenot without threats of punishment for so doing. In the end, the State adopted the hurdle. So it has always been. Not a hundred years ago, Viscount Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, could see no reason for altering the law which awarded the penalty of death to one who had stolen from a shop goods to the value of five shillings. To Romilly, though he did not live to see this result of his untiring labours in the cause of humanity, we may gratefully ascribe the abolition of the extreme penalty for this offence.

On this field, as on others, the victories of civilisation have been won by the individual in conflict with the community.

I desire to thank Mr. C. W. Moule, the Librarian of Corpus Christi College, and the College authorities, for permission, most courteously granted, to reproduce the drawing by Matthew Paris showing Sir William de Marisco being drawn to the gallows.

I am indebted to Mr. Herbert Sieveking for permission to reproduce, from a photograph taken for him, the print from the Gardner Collection showing an execution at Tyburn. I am in an especial degree obliged to him for calling my attention to Nordens map of Middlesex, the subject of an article by him in the Daily Graphic of September 4, 1908.