by Phil Clarke
This was not the only reason for the final stage of this most brutal of capital punishments. The quartering of the body had a religious significance as well. It was the Christian belief that the body must remain intact to ensure successful passage to Heaven and so physical damage to the corpse would act as a further punishment post mortem.
In France, quartering would often be facilitated by horses. A wild stallion was tethered to each of the victim’s arms and legs and then whipped into a gallop, thus wrenching the limbs savagely from the body. This was not always as easy as it sounds. As in the case of Robert-Francois Damiens in 1757, the four horses of his own personal apocalypse were not sufficient to tear out his limbs and so the executioner was forced to make cuts on the relevant joints to facilitate the quartering.
Today, there exists considerable divergence of opinion over the actual meaning of the term: hanged, drawn and quartered. There is two beliefs, both of which have an undeniable logic attached to them. The issue is primarily with the definition of the ‘drawing’ part of the procedure. Some believe the phrase should more accurately read: ‘drawing, hanging, quartering’ as they define drawing as the act of dragging the prisoner to the execution site. Some others disagree with this definition, believing instead that the word ‘drawing’ refers to the removal of the intestines from the body, much like the practice of preparing poultry prior to cooking it.
The Hanged, Drawn and Quartered
The first recorded execution of this kind appears to have occurred in 1241 upon William Maurice, who had been convicted of piracy. Further information regarding this debut remain scarce, and many believe that it was in fact Edward Longshanks, during his sixty-eight year reign of England, who firmly established the threefold punishment as a penalty befitting traitors to the Crown. Also known as Edward the Lawgiver, he gave out this cruel sentence to two major opponents during his border conflicts to the North and West.
The first to feel the wrath of this boundary-breaking monarch was David, the Prince of Wales. His downfall came after he betrayed Edward (with whom he had grown up as a child) when he chose to side with his brother Llywelyn in the fight for Welsh independence. This treachery coupled with the loss of a worthy ally ensured a harsh punishment would be forthcoming. In 1283, David was hanged, drawn and then divided into four, and the quarters of his body were scattered throughout the expanding kingdom. This last Welsh Prince of Wales then joined his brother when their heads met atop stakes fixed at the Tower of London.
With the suppression of Welsh opposition, Edward I was then able to focus his attention to the North, where he came up against the Scottish nationalist William Wallace. After the defeat at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298, Wallace avoided capture for seven years until he was duped by Scottish knight John de Mentieth. Transported to London and found guilty of treason, the Scottish rebel was dragged to the Smithfield gallows in London on the 23 August 1305, where the rest of this sadistic sentence was carried out in full. Wallace’s parboiled head decorated the Tower while his four quarters were sent to Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Aberdeen in an attempt to quash the Scots.
It was 200 years later when this most violent of judicial practices began to flourish once more. The sixteenth century saw great change in matters of religion initiated by Henry VIII’s creation of the Church of England which, in turn, bred considerable discontentment among the clergy. Friar John Houghton was one of 105 Catholic martyrs who were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn during the 1500s for failing to recognise the monarch as the supreme head of the Church.
The Carthusian priest made the hurdle ride to the famous execution site in 1535 where he was turned off the ladder in the customary way. A short time later he was sent crashing to the ground writhing in asphyxiating agony. Once stripped of his clothes, his belly was cut open and the executioner fetched out his bowels with the necessary tool – an image made all the more disturbing with the friar continuing to pray. After gutting, the executioner moved up to the chest cavity and, while in the process of wrenching out the heart, the friar was heard to exclaim, ‘Good Jesus, what will you do with my heart?’ Thankfully, these were his final words, but to make doubly sure the head was hacked off immediately afterwards and the torso was carved into four. One quarter of his corpse was suspended over the gate of the Carthusians’ quarters in London.
Thomas Douglas: A Glutton for Punishment
It was not just active enemies of the king who found themselves fighting for air as their innards were forcefully ejected. The definition of treason could stretch to petty crimes, as Thomas Douglas discovered in 1605. He conspired with a man named James Steward in forging the King James I’s signature. Their plan was to use this forgery to obtain the Great Seal of England with which they could then legally acquire land held by the Crown. The scam was discovered but while Steward was executed for his involvement, no solid case could be made to convict Douglas and he was allowed to go free. He failed to learn his lesson and foolishly continued with his swindling ways. He managed to fake the king’s Privy Signet in letters to German royalty asking for capital. This plan was as successful as the initial one and he was sentenced to this vicious capital punishment, which was performed in all its grisly glory on 27 June 1605 in the Smithfield district of London.
The Gunpowder Plot
While Douglas’s parts made their respective journeys to publicise the king’s displeasure, there were seven fervent Catholic men planning to commit high treason. Their plot was an audacious one: they were going to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and with it the country’s Catholic-hating sovereign, James I. Of course, this was the notorious Gunpowder Plot which resulted in the most famous victims of the three-act punishment. The authorities were informed by one of the conspirators who had little faith in the plan and they caught Guy Fawkes attempting to light the barrels of gunpowder on the 5 November 1605. Under torture Fawkes confessed the names of his co-conspirators and they were quickly rounded up and tried at Westminster Hall in January 1606. All seven men were given the brutal sentence to take place in two locations: St Paul’s Church and the Old Place Yard, before the very Houses of Parliament they had attempted to destroy. The ferocity of this punishment must have gained much notoriety by the seventeenth century for Guy Fawkes found it necessary to cheat the full agonising process. He flung himself from the gallows thus snapping his neck to ensure he avoided the ordeal of living through the rest of the sentence. Fellow plotter Robert Keyes had the same idea. Unfortunately for him, the rope snapped and he was subjected to the full treatment; his intestines were torn from his body, allowing all to see that he did, in fact, have the stomach for such punishment.
In 1660, during the executions of those responsible for the 1649 execution of King Charles I – Major General Thomas Harrison was brought before the gallows and the assembled crowd of witnesses which included Charles II, the son of the executed king. Harrison swung from the gallows and after only a few minutes he was cut down, his oxygen-starved lungs gasping for air. He was then laid out on the boards where the executioner selected a cutting device to slit open the stomach and pull out his entrails. It is reported that on having his torso cut open and his slippery innards stolen from him, the major promptly sat up, leaned forward and struck his executioner across the head! The executioner – while surely surprised at this – did not delay in completing the punishment and swiftly removed the head of Harrison before burning his intestines in a nearby fire.
Overseas and Overkill
Hanging, drawing and quartering was not solely confined to England. The punishment was also adopted in Rhode Island in the United States. In 1676, the English colonist Joshua Tefft was executed at Smith’s Castle for fighting alongside the Narragansett tribe of Native Americans versus the colonial leaders. This is considered to be the only time that this vicious sentence was carried out on US soil. On 21 July 1797, David McLane was hanged, drawn and quartered in what is now Quebec, but early nineteenth century Canada began to show signs of retraction. In May
1814, seventeen traitors to Canada in the 1812 war against America were given the threefold death sentence. However, ultimately only eight were executed without being quartered and the rest were given a reprieve. England, too, was becoming more moderate.
The practice of this disagreeable punishment was slowly being phased out during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. No doubt spurred on by the horrified reactions of those who witnessed the gory goings-on. Governments were concerned that they may be alienating their people with such judicial barbarism and so began to reduce the punishment, omitting the more gruesome aspects. Such an example of this commutation took place in 1817 when riots broke out in Derbyshire as a result of grievances against the high level of unemployment and general living conditions. To bring an end to this Midland melee the authorities sentenced the main agitators, Jeremiah Brandreth, Isaac Ludlam and William Turner, to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Their sentences were eventually commuted to one of hanging till dead, followed by a post mortem beheading. The condemned trio were hanged before the crowd outside Derby Gaol for a full hour before being cut down, where a local miner – not the official executioner – was called to don the mask for the decapitation. One hopes that the rope had done its job for this makeshift axeman took several swings at the first head before using a knife to finish the job. It is chronicled that the crowds fled the scaffold in horror at the mess that was this ineffectual display of justice.
In 1820, a similarly reduced capital punishment took place as a result of the Cato Street Conspiracy. Discontent towards social conditions caused a troubled few to plot the downfall of the government by murdering a selection of the Cabinet. The police caught wind of their designs and the gang of five, led by Arthur Thistlewood, were cornered by police in a house on Cato Street. They were all found guilty of high treason, but instead of facing the three dreaded steps to death they were all hanged before having their heads surgically removed while their corpses laid in their coffins. The records show that the three- phase punishment was slowly being phased out and this brutal tripartite execution was eventually omitted from the Statute Books in 1870 by the Forfeiture Act.
William Calcraft
William Calcraft is best remembered as the hangman with the longest career and the shortest rope! Calcraft’s method left a lot to be desired, and most condemned prioners would have counted themseves lucky to have been executed by his successor, the eminent William Marwood, who ridiculed Calcraft, with the statement ‘He hanged ‘em, I execute ‘em.’
A journalist once asked Calcraft whether his profession ever gave him cause for agitation, and this fascinating exchange took place:
Calcraft: ‘No, not a bit. Why should I be. I am only doing my duty.’
Journalist: ‘Still it is a very dreadful duty; and even as a matter of duty, few persons could kill a man without . . .’
C: ‘Kill a man!, who kills a man? I never killed a man, they kill themselves. I merely put a rope around their necks and knock away the platform beneath them. I don’t kill ‘em; it’s their own weight that does it.’
Cassell’s Saturday Journal, 23 january 1892
In fact, Calcraft’s use of the short drop method meant that quite often the victim’s own weight didn’t kill them, and he had to descend the gallows and add his own weight to the rope in order to cut short his victim’s suffering.
William Calcraft was born in 1800, in Little Baddow near Chelmsford, Essex to ‘humble but industrious’ parents. One biographer describes him as an adventurous but impatient child, who had a great affection for animals, particularly rabbits, a passion which would last throughout adulthood. He left Essex for Hoxton, London, at the age of ten, and having ‘graduated from the gutter, with a degree in petty crime’, he began his working life as a shoemaker before becoming a pie salesman at public executions. This is how he became aquainted with the hangman Thomas Cheshire (Old Tom) and eventually Calcraft became apprenticed to him.
Calcraft’s very first execution was that of the hated child murderer and sweatshop owner, sixty-one-year-old Ester Hibner in April 1829, who had to be put in a straight jacket for her execution at Newgate, because she proved to be such a violent prioner.
Calcraft received one guinea a week retainer from his London employers, plus one guinea for a hanging at Newgate and a further half a crown for a flogging. His earnings were greatly enhanced by hangings at other prisons, for which he could charge between ten and fifteen pounds. He was also allowed to keep the clothes and personal affects of the people he executed, which he sold to people such as Madame Tussaud to dress the models in her Chamber of Horrors. The rope used to hang a particularly notorious criminal could also fetch good money because people considered it lucky.
Between 1829 and 1874, William Calcraft is thought to have carried out between 400 and 450 hangings, and at least thirty-five of these victims were female. During this period capital punishment was carried out by high sherrifs for the area in which the sentence had been passed. Therefore the executioner was an employee of the local authority rather then the national government. Calcraft was made executioner in London and Middlesex, but he was also employed at Horsemonger Jail in Surrey and at Maidstone Prison. Later in his career Calcraft took his services all over the country, he apparently loved to travel.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Elizabeth Martha Browne became posthumously famous for providing a sixteen-year-old Thomas Hardy with the inspiration for the character of Tess in his novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and the young man himself was present at her execution. Elizabeth was an attractive but ordinary woman of humble origins who grew up to become a housemaid and marry a fellow servant, John Browne. It was an unhappy marriage almost from the beginning, and the pair argued non-stop. The constant quarrelling came literally to a head when Elizabeth caught John in bed with another woman and, in a furious rage, struck out at him. John then beat her with his whip. In retaliation, Elizabeth struck her husband several times in the head with a wood-chopping axe, fatally bashing in his skull.
During her trial at Dorchester, Dorset, Elizabeth claimed that her husband had died when he was kicked in the head by a horse, but no one believed her story. She was swiftly found guilty and given a mandatory death sentence. Her case attracted much sympathy from the public in view of her attractive demeanor as well as the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her husband. However, no repreive was granted and on Saturday, 9 August 1856, the executioner beckoned.
Calcraft travelled to Dorchester by train, arriving with his assistant the day before the hanging was due to take place. The gallows were erected outside the gates of Dorchester Prison that evening. The next morning a crowd of between 3,000 and 4,000 people had gathered to witness the momentous event. Given the circumstances, Elizabeth remained unruffled and appeared almost callous. She had chosen to wear a tight-fitting black silk dress and refused to be transported to the scaffold in the prison van, preferring to walk in the heavy rain. She climbed the first eleven steps where Calcraft pinioned her arms in front of her. He then led her up up to the trap. He had to be reminded to pinion her legs. In those days it was very important to ensure that a female prisoner’s skirt was secured so that she retained her decency even in death. The rain rendered the white hood damp so that it clung to her features like a shroud. When Calcraft released the trap, Mrs Browne fell just 30 centimetres (1 foot) with a thudding noise. She struggled for a number of minutes as her body ‘wheeled half round and back’ on the end of the noose.
Mary Ann Cotton
On the 24 March 1873, William Calcraft was given the dubious honour of executing England’s greatest mass-murderess, Mary Ann Cotton, at Durham Jail. Mrs Cotton was found guilty of murdering four husbands, a lover and a great number of her own children, bring the final body count to twenty people, possibly more. Originally, the deaths were put down to gastric fever and her friends and neighbours saw Mary as an object for pity. But as the number of dead family members began to mount up, it soon became cl
ear that arsenic poisoning was to blame. By the time of her sentence, hanging was conducted in private, much to the dissapointment of thousands of people who would otherwise have flocked to see Cotton do the jig. The Times newspaper later reported that Cotton died slowly, Calcraft having miscalculated the length of rope required to cleanly break her neck.
Calcraft never admitted any failure in his duties as a hangman, and as an elderly man he would boast that he was ‘capable of doing his duty with the most accomplished and practised person in his profession’. Given the number of disastrous mistakes he made over the years, one seriously doubts whether his contemporaries, or indeed any of his many victims, would have agreed with him.
William Marwood
Remarkably, William Marwood was fifty-six years of age when he took over from the short-drop bungler William Calcraft as Britain’s top executioner. He would go on to become something of a celebrity – perhaps the first of this type of high-profile hangman. He became so well-known in England that this popular riddle could be heard in homes all over the nation.