IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 22L removed to the gibbets on the banks of the Thames, where they were left to hang in chains. If he entered London Tybumtree. hj Oxford-street, Tyburn tree would certainly attract his attention, especially when ten or twelve criminals were aboat to suffer in the presence of a crowd of people gathered round it, indulging themselves in the sports and pastimes usual on such occasions.* If he passed over any of the heaths, commons, or forests which then surrounded Lon- don — say Blackheath, Wimbledon, or Finchley Common — a gibbet with a highwayman hanging in chains would pro- Highway- bably form a conspicuous feature of the landscape. Even chains, in the crowded streets of the city, he might have seen the gallows standing with its dreadful pendant.f In 1786, a scaffold was erected opposite a house in Charlotte-street, iheioafloid Bathbone Place, formerly inhabited by an attorney who lltreets. had been murdered in it. The murderer was hanged in front of it, according to the prevalent custom of inflicting punishment on the spot where the crime had been com- mitted. Seven years afterwards, a burglar was ordered for execution in Hatton G-arden, near the house he had robbed; but having escaped execution by suicide, his body was exhibited in the neighbourhood, ^^ extended upon aProceseions plank on the top of an open cart, in his clothes and f et* bodies. tered."J This, perhaps the most loathsome practice of the time, continned for many years afterwards. A similar case occurred in 1811, when the cart containing the suicide's body was preceded by a long procession composed of con- stables who cleared the way with their staves, a newly organised horse patrol with drawn swords, parish and peace officers, and the high constable of the county of Middlesex on horseback. § After the Lord George Gordon riots of ^S^^ 1780, the gallows was carried about from street to street
- Hoguth, The Idle Trentioe executed at Tyburn.
t " An the gibbets in the Bdgeware Road, on which many malefactors were hung in chains, were cut down by persons unknown." — Annual Register, 3 April, 1783. t Griffiths, Chionides of Newgate (1884), vol. ii, pp. 232-3. I lb., ToL ii, p. 267. Digitized by Google
