Executioners

by Phil Clarke

  An unfortunate few were unfairly prohibited from taking part in the custom, one being Lord Ferrers who, on reaching Drury Lane, announced he wished to quench his thirst with a glass of wine. He was prevented from doing so by the sheriff on account of the lively crowd that had assembled to see him drop. Rather than cause a fuss, the Earl – the first aristocrat to hang at Tyburn – agreed with the authorities and he swung from the noose dry.

  The legend of this final drink lives on through language. It has left us with two terms that hark back to those pub stops on the way to the main event at Tyburn. The phrase ‘one for the road’ evidently describes the last pint before departing for a less salubrious locale. In addition, the term ‘on the wagon’ is believed to derive from the custom, although there seems to be some conflict as to how it relates. Many believe it came from the fact that the prisoners who returned to the wagon would certainly never get the chance to drink again while others think it refers to the guards who were forced to remain with the wagon while the condemned enjoyed a drink.

  Whatever the derivation, the drunken party would soon leave the last watering hole and make the now short trip down Tyburn Road (now Oxford Street) to the gallows which awaited the condemned. Along with the structure that would see to their deaths, crowds of tens of thousands who had waited all through the night gathered to watch the prisoners pay for their crimes. Not dissimilar to a present day football stand, there was a gallery full of people desperate to see the main event of the day — the hangings. Those who wanted to guarantee the best seat in the house, booked a place in ‘Mother Proctor’s’ pews, because from there you could hear the prisoners’ last speeches and also their cries and screams in their final death throes.

  The journey of the condemned was at an end and the main event, along with the final curtain, was now close at hand. Mind you, it wasn’t the end for their bodies — anatomists stood close by considering which of the prisoners would be best for dissection later. Occasionally fights broke out as the anatomists struggled with friends and family for possession of the deceased’s body. It was believed that the body had to be totally intact when buried to ensure that it could receive life after death.

  PART SEVEN: THE GUILLOTINE

  Before the Guillotine

  The guillotine may have been the brainchild of Dr Joseph Guillotin in 1789, but the idea of decapitation by means of a machine existed hundreds if not thousands of years before. In fact, some believe the origins of the guillotine go back as far as Biblical times with the death of tax collector turned apostle, Matthew. The instrument of his demise may actually have been something similar to a halberd – a long spiked pole with an axe head. If an appliance existed in ancient times, it would have been of rudimentary construction, possibly something akin to that used by tenth-century Persians, which required an executioner to wield a mallet, striking the blade down­wards onto the neck of the condemned. However, this is some considerable way from the mechanism used in France to such notorious effect from the 1790s.

  The first clear indication that there existed a pre-guillotine mechanism appeared in Holinshed’s chroni­cles published in 1577, which revealed pictorial evidence in the form of a woodcut entitled, ‘The Execution of Murcod Ballagh near Merton in Ireland 1307’. The depicted Celtic device bears a striking resemblance to the Gallic machine. The woodcut shows an executioner holding a rope which is attached to the top part. The blade is raised and his assistant is holding Ballagh’s head in place below it. The Germans also had their own machine around this time. According to records, five men were executed using this method in Zittau in 1300. No formal name was given to this machine (it may well have been called the Diele) and there exists barely any infor­mation on this German version.

  Evidence is murky regarding many of these contraptions, ensuring that the question of who invented the first guillotine will be argued over ad infinitum. We may never know who was responsible, but it is known that mechanised instruments for decapitation did exist well before the creation of the guillotine. There are three devices that help to establish the ancestry of the guillotine.

  The Mannaia

  The Italians had their own decapitation device. This was called the mannaia and it was reserved for the nobility, or as one chronicler puts it, ‘gentlemen and ecclesiastics’. The mannaia allowed the condemned to avoid being tainted by the hands of the hangman and to be dispatched with superior efficiency, rather than risking numerous swings of the axe – a fate afforded to those lacking in wealth and title. The first record of its use was upon Conradin Hohenstaufen of Swabia in 1268, after his failed attempt to retake the island of Sicily. He was arrested and handed over to Charles of Anjou who had him thrown into the prison of Castel dell’ Oro in Naples. He was tried as a traitor and beheaded by the mannaia on 29 October, bringing the Hohenstaufen line to an end.

  A comprehensive account of its construction comes from a Dominican priest, Father Jean-Baptiste Labat in his Voyage en Espagne et en Italie written in 1730. He tells of a scaffold 1.2–1.5 metres (4–5 feet) high comprising of two uprights joined together by three transversal cross-pieces containing a large sharp blade which was 23–25 centimetres (9–10 inches) long and 15 centi­metres (6 inches) across and weighing in at 27–36 kilograms (60–80 pounds). With this sub­stan­tial blade raised, the captain of the guard gave the signal for the executioner to cut the attached cord, allowing the blade to drop, thus severing the victim’s head.

  The mannaia is mentioned even before this. There exists an eyewitness account concerning the contraption from 13 May 1507, with the execution of Demetrius Giustiniani. It is also thought to have been used to execute Beatrice Cenci, a young Italian noblewoman who was found guilty of murdering her incestuous father. In the early hours of 11 September 1599, a veiled Beatrice was escorted to the local piazza where, along with her mother Lucrezia, she was executed by the mannaia.

  The Scottish Maiden

  The Scottish maiden achieved consider­able notoriety and took over 120 heads in as many years during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its existence is attributable to just one man – James Douglas, the fourth Earl of Morton. In 1563, he was appointed lord chancellor of Scotland and it is believed that during this time he visited West Yorkshire, where he witnessed an execution by the Halifax gibbet. So enamoured was he with the swiftness and efficiency of the device that he decided to develop a Scottish version to be used in Edinburgh.

  By 1564, the Earl of Morton’s commissioned model was complete; its appearance being described as, ‘in the form of a painter’s easel’. It was made of oak and comprised of a single 1.52-metre (5-foot) beam into which were set two vertical posts standing

  3.4 metres (10 feet) high. These were capped by a cross-piece 60 centimetres (2 feet) in length and 8 centi­metres (31⁄4 inches) thick. A hinged iron cross-bar was used to keep the felon’s head in place during the procedure – something that was lacking on the gibbet but would later be a distinctive characteristic of the guillotine. The blade itself was made of iron and steel and measured 33 centimetres (13 inches) long and 26.6 centimetres (101⁄2 inches) wide and on its upper side 34 kilograms (75 pounds) worth of lead weights were attached to allow for an extremely potent and forceful drop. This weighty blade was able to slide in grooves cut on the inner edges of the vertical posts which were lined with copper to give a clean line. Attached to the axe was a peg upon which a rope was fastened. The line was cut by the designated execu­tioner, causing the downfall of the blade and subse­quently its victim.

  It was christened ‘the maiden’ not, as many believed, because it took so long to be used after its creation. It owes its name to the Celtic word ‘mod-drun’, pertaining to a place where justice was adminis­tered. Having said that, the maiden’s official debut did not come until 1566. Those unlucky recipients of the new punishment were those accused of assassinating David Rizzio, an Italian courtier and private secretary to Mary Queen of Scots. Thomas Scott and others were found guilty of stabbing the royal confidante an
alleged fifty-seven times at Holyrood Palace on the 9 March 1566 in front of the Scottish monarch in what was considered an Elizabethan-funded murder to unsettle the rival sovereign.

  The next major execution by the maiden came fifteen years later and its victim was a shocking one – none other than its architect, the Earl of Morton. In a cruel twist of fate, the Lord Chancellor and Regent in Scotland faced his own invention after being accused of involvement in the murder of Mary Queen of Scot’s husband, Lord Darnley. The earl was imme­diately arrested and received an initial sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering. However, the punishment was soon com­muted to decapitation, and on the 2 June 1581, Morton was led to the City Cross in Edinburgh’s High Street and beheaded upon the maiden. His head was placed upon a spike on the nearby Tolbooth – the town’s council building – where it stayed for six months. His body was allowed to remain with his creation for a further day after execution, before being removed for burial in a common grave.

  The maiden had not finished dispensing its swift justice. There were many more executions, although none more surprising than that of the Earl of Morton. Benefiting from the civil unrest that existed in the middle of the seventeenth century, the maiden took many a noble head, including Sir John Gordon, the first Baronet of Haddo. A renowned royalist, he had been granted the title by King Charles I in 1642, only to lose it as well as his head two years later on 19 July 1644. Sir Robert Spottiswoode suffered the same end for supporting the king not long after he was royally appointed secretary of state for Scotland. He was cap­tured at Philiphaugh whilst marching his army south and a maiden was brought from Dundee to the Cross of St Andrews for his execution on the 17 January 1646.

  Nearly fifteen years later it proved advantageous to favour the sovereign when Archibald Campbell, the first marquis of Argyll, was arrested for collaborating with Cromwell’s Parliamentarians and specifically for the part he played in the death of Charles I. He was sent to Edinburgh to stand trial for high treason. An acquittal seemed on the cards due to the lack of evidence – that is until a collection of letters written by Argyll were found, providing conclusive proof of his guilt. He knelt before the maiden on 27 May 1661. The executioner clearly wished for a head start, as it has been alleged that, at the time of his decapitation, the marquis’ death warrant had not yet been signed by the king.

  The final victim to be touched by the maiden was Archibald Campbell, the ninth Earl of Argyll, who took to the scaffold on Monday 30 June 1685. He was accused and found guilty of complicity in the Rye House Plot of 1683 – a failed assassination attempt to kill both King Charles II and his brother, James, the Duke of York. He also led an unsuccessful Highland rebellion against the monarchy two years later. He was captured and sent to meet his maker via the Scottish machine. On coming face to face with it, Argyll is said to have placed his head on the block, stating that it was the sweetest maiden he had ever kissed.

  The device could have made a surprise return if Simon Fraser, the eleventh Lord Lovat, had got his way. Condemned to death for supporting the Jacobite rebellion in 1745, he is believed to have asked for the maiden, but this request was declined and he fell not by the machine but by the hand-held axe of executioner John Thrift on 9 April 1747. His appeal goes some way to attesting the proficiency of this device. The main reason why Lord Lovat was not allowed to be ‘kissed’ by the maiden must have been due to the fact that the device had not been in operation for forty years, having been withdrawn from use in 1708. The maiden remains the only forerunner of the guillotine to survive to this day. It has been preserved and can be seen at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

  The Halifax Gibbet

  This device is not to be confused with the gibbets used to hang the bodies of criminals that were common during the eighteenth century. The Halifax gibbet was, in fact, the most famous precursor to the guillotine. Its location is evident from its title although it is believed the Halifax model was just one of many similar contraptions used in England at the time, all with designs peculiar to their region.

  The lack of hard evidence makes it impossible to secure a date for its first performance, but it has been suggested that it was imported by the Normans, or may even have been in existence before William’s conquest. It is thought to have been used for the first time in 1286 for the execution of John of Dalton, but even then its use was only officially chronicled as late as 1541. From that date, the Halifax gibbet took no more than fifty-one heads, six of which belonged to women such as Sarah Lum and Anna Fairbank, who were both executed during the 1620s. The number of lives taken by the Halifax gibbet, however, pales in comparison with the number taken by the guillotine in France.

  The English machine has been described in some detail and it certainly bears a striking resemblance to the guillotine. It comprised of two 4.57 metres (15 feet) high uprights crowned by a horizontal crossbeam. The blade was an axe head attached to a 1.37 metres (4.5 feet) wooden block which slid up and down between the vertical struts, and the axe itself was held in place by a wooden pin. This pin was attached to a long rope. All this was mounted on top of a raised stone platform 1.21 metres (4 feet) from the ground and is locally believed to have been brought out during times of considerable social unrest.

  Gibbet Law

  The use of the Halifax gibbet was not limited to the town but was applicable throughout the entire parish. Its jurisdiction extended to cover the surrounding hamlets and villages such as Ovenden, Illingworth and Sowerby and many other estates belonging to ruling landowners. The gibbet is thought to have been introduced in order to deal with the regular theft of cloth and material; the area’s main product at that time. Whether this is true or not, the device was used mostly as a form of capital punishment for grand theft; this was defined as anything to the value of 13.5 pence or over, and was calculated by four constables appointed from four separate towns within the parish.

  There were three scenarios whereby a thief could find himself sentenced to death by the gibbet. If he was caught ‘hand-habend’ – with the stolen goods in his hands – or in the process of stealing, ‘back-berand’ – carrying the stolen goods on his back or person – or if the accused actually confessed to stealing.

  The punishment of thieves was a very serious matter. This was not solely illustrated by the severity of the penalty, but also by the ancient custom of enforced prosecution. The Halifax authorities de­manded official justice. If the victim refused to prosecute or it was dis­covered that they had attempted to handle the matter privately, then the victim would risk forfeiture of goods as well as conviction as an accessory to the crime.

  The Executioner Was A Beast!

  Once the death penalty had been decreed, the con­demned thief was taken to the machine on one of the three market days of the week. These fell on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The prisoner was often placed in the stocks to wait for the appropriate day. When that came the prisoner, accompanied by the bailiff, the clergyman and attending witnesses, would mount the raised plat­form. The 4th psalm was played on the bagpipes while the condemned looked up at the glinting blade that would soon seal his fate.

  The executioner was rarely one man when it came to the Halifax gibbet. It was common for every person present to take hold of the rope that was fixed to

  the pin holding the blade in place. The ‘collective’ approach meant that no one person was fully accountable for the act and it went some way to creating a sense of community spirit. This was far from the strangest scenario. If the prisoner was guilty of stealing livestock, then that animal in question – be it a sheep, a horse or even a pig – was granted the honour of performing the execution. The rope would be tied to the creature and when it moved away from the gibbet the pin was released, freeing the hefty blade and allowing it to drop, thus completing the sentence. It is fair to say many executioners throughout history were animals, but it was never more true than in Halifax, West Yorkshire!

  Escaping The Gibbet

  This most sever
e reprimand was not without its loopholes. In fact there were two known methods of avoiding death by the Halifax gibbet. Local law stated that if the prisoner was cognisant and quick enough, he could flee the scaffold as there were no restraints preventing escape. If the condemned was afforded a window of opportunity, then he had several direc­tions in which to run in order to cross the parish border and so be beyond the jurisdiction of Halifax. If he chose north he was lucky, for it was a mere 600 paces to the boundary, if he chose south the distance grew to 1.6 kilometres (1 mile), but the unluckiest of all fugitives elected to go west, as freedom from decapitation lay 16 kilometres (10 miles) away! Those that reached the border were not eternally free from the gibbet curse, however, for if they returned to the parish at any time in the future they could find themselves upon that raised platform once more, facing the gibbet’s blade.