PLACES OF EXECUTION

See Also: EXECUTIONS; PIRACY Execution Dock; STRAIGHT TO THE HEART; STREET FURNITURE Pillories

Bloomsbury Square

The eminent judge Lord Chief Justice Lord Mansfield lived in a townhouse at the northern end of the eastern side of Bloomsbury Square.¹

Lord George Gordon M.P. organised a march to protest at the repeal of anti-Catholic legislation. On 2 June 1780 the procession degenerated into a series of riots that lasted for six days. Some of the rioters burned down the home of Lord Mansfield because he had publicly supported the Catholic Relief Act. In addition, his prominent judicial career had long made him a deeply unpopular figure. The fire destroyed one of the greatest legal libraries ever to have been assembled in Britain. Many of the rioters went on to try to burn down the peer's country house at Kenwood on Hampstead Heath. However, the landlord of The Spaniards Inn diverted them into drinking in his pub, whereupon he sent for a detachment of soldiers who rounded them up.²

21 of the riots ringleaders were tried, found guilty, and hanged. There was a custom whereby a criminal was sometimes executed at the site of his crime. Two of the ringleaders of the riots, John Gray and Charles King, were dispatched in Bloomsbury Square outside what was left of Mansfield's townhouse.³

Location: Bloomsbury Square, WC1B 4DA (red, brown)

See Also: THE BANK OF ENGLAND The Bank of England Picket

Website: www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/kenwood

¹. The site came to be occupied by a monolith, the upper part of which has slight overtones of an Aztec stepped temple.

². Formerly, the innkeeper had been his lordship's butler.

³. The last time a place of crime execution took place in London was to be in 1816.

Old Bailey

From 1783 to 1868 public executions were conducted in Old Bailey next to Newgate Prison. In 1807 the murderess Elizabeth Godfrey's dispatch attracted a crowd of 40,000 people. A stampede occurred. During it 100 people died.

Charles Dickens wrote a public letter against public executions. He was not opposed to executions. That executions became concealed events was in part a response to a wariness of the mob.

Location: Old Bailey, EC4M 7HS (blue, grey)

See Also: PRISONS, DISAPPEARED Newgate Prison

Old Palace Yard

Old Palace Yard used to be a yard that was enclosed within the Palace of Westminster. It was venue for a number of notable executions, including those of the Gunpowder Plotter Guy Fawkes in 1606 and Walter Raleigh a dozen years later.

Following the fire that destroyed the old palace in 1834, the reconstruction left the Yard open to the public street on two sides. By then the space had not been used for any dispatches for many years.

Location: Old Palace Yard, SW1P 3JY (purple, red)

See Also: PARLIAMENT The Palace of Westminster

The Soldiers' Stone

Soldiers who had been condemned to death by a court martial were executed against a large stone that stood in the north-eastern corner of Hyde Park. The firing squad would use pistols for a horseman and muskets for a foot soldier.

On John Rocque and John Pine's 1738 Map of London the stone is marked with Where Soldiers are shot .

During the 1820s a series of improvements were made to the park. The stone was buried in situ.

Location: Hyde Park, W2 2EU (purple, red)

See Also: THE ARMY

Surrey Gallows

Surrey Gallows were located at the junction Kennington Park and Brixton Road. The final recorded execution there took place in 1799. It was of a forger.

Location: Brixton Road, SE11 4PP

Tibbett's Corner

Tibbett s Corner was an execution site for highway who robbed travellers on the London to Portsmouth road.

Location: Tibbett's Corner, SW19 6AN

Tower Hill

From 1388 onwards Tower Hill was a site for the public execution of prominent people. The first person to be dispatched there was Sir Simon de Burley. He had been the tutor of King Richard II.¹ Over almost four centuries 112 people were executed on the Hill. During the same period only seven people were executed within the Tower of London.

In 1747, at the execution of the Jacobite 12^th Lord Lovat, a stand collapsed killing several people. A stone in the pavement in the Trinity Square Gardens to the north of Tower Hill is supposed to mark the site. The peer s dispatch was the final public execution to be carried out upon Tower Hill. (His lordship was the last person in England to be executed by beheading with an axe.)¹

Tower Hill has since been used for public gatherings, speeches and performances.

¹. It was not an instance of the pupil avenging himself on the teacher. Rather, de Burley's enemies had accused him of having led his charge to form a corrupt court.

Location: Trinity Square Gardens, Tower Hill, EC3N 4DU (orange, turquoise)

See Also: THE TOWER OF LONDON Chapels, The Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula; THE TOWER OF LONDON Tower Green

¹. The final execution within the Tower of London took place in 1941. The person who was shot was a spy who had a broken ankle. He met his end sitting upon a chair.

Tyburn

Tyburn lies on the crossroads of two Roman roads. It almost certainly became a site of execution because it was an important junction on one of the principal routes that ran towards London. The first recorded dispatch that took place there occurred in 1196. In 1388 the site succeeded Smithfield as being London's principal place of execution. It became a source of corpses for doctors to dissect.

Tyburn gallows were located at the junction of Bayswater Road and Edgware Road on what is now the Marble Arch (1827) traffic island. Until 1571 a large elm provided the gibbet from which people were hung. A crime wave prompted the construction of a triple tree gallows that could hang 24 people at a time. Until 1759 the Tyburn Tree was a permanent, triangular, man-made gallows that could be used to hang up to 24 people at a time. Mass hangings took place several times a year. The advent of the colonies led to a reduction in the number of executions. Instead, people were shipped overseas. The crowds at Tyburn continued to be enormous.

The magistrate and writer Henry Fielding formed the view that there were too many executions for them to have any deterrent value and that instead they viewed as being public entertainments.

In 1759 the gallows became a temporary structure. The West End's residents disliked the fact that the throngs that gathered to watch the executions could easily turn into a mob, especially so if a particularly hated figure was reprieved at the last moment. In 1783, in the wake of the Gordon Riots of 1780, the gallows were moved to Newgate Prison in the City of London.

Location: Marble Arch, c.W2 2EN. The gallows were located in the road on the south-eastern side of where traffic now turns northwards into Edgware Road. (orange, pink)

See Also: ROMAN REMAINS Roman Roads, Oxford Street; THE ROYAL PARKS Hyde Park, Speakers Corner

The Journey To Tyburn

A condemned prisoner would travel westwards from the City of London to Tyburn. The phrase gone west refers to someone who has died. Reputedly, it was coined in reference to this journey.¹

St Giles-in-the-Fields had a tradition of concern for outcasts that continued for many centuries. The church extended a cup of charity (the vessel was usually full of beer) to condemned prisoners who were on their way to Tyburn. The Bowl pub in St Giles was the last place that a prisoner could have a drink. The phrases one for the road (for a final drink) and on the wagon (for having given up drinking) may owe their origins to this practice.

Counterfeiting was regarded as being a treason crime. In 1698 the coin counterfeiter William Chaloner (d.1699) was tried at the Old Bailey and convicted. The nature of the crime meant that on the journey to Tyburn he was denied the solace of alcohol and taken there on a sledge rather than a cart.

Location: The Angel, 61 St Giles High Street, WC2H 8LE. The Bowl was succeeded by The Angel. The original Angel building was knocked down in the 1870s. (red, pink)

See Also: PUBS

¹. However, the phrase may also have a root in Celtic mythology.

David Backhouse 2024