as the High Court had not sentenced anyone to be hung in chains since the 1750s (see Table 7.1). Young, Encyclopaedia of Scottish Executions, 53. An additional explanation can be found when providing an analysis of the locations where offenders were gibbeted. He lost huge sums, and when personal and family funds ran dry, Broughton turned to theft to support his dissolute habits. It was rich in punitive, and even political, currency as the staging of the death sentence and subsequent post-mortem punishment near the crime scene, but also in an area populated by many who sympathised with his plight, acted as a marked example of justice being seen to be done. The corpse was brought by cart from the place of execution, which might be near to or identical with the selected gibbet site, as discussed above. Sarah Tarlow, “The Technology of the Gibbet”, International Journal of Historical Archaeology 18 (2014): 668–699, 675–680. In over half of the cases where the victim was not a family member, the murders had occurred with a property offence. According to the Murder Act of 1752, the bodies of executed murderers would either be dissected or hung in chains. 11 Donald McIlroy was convicted of the murder of Kenneth Happy in Urquhart in 1756. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. 22 For the State, gibbeting was intended to restore social and State cohesion and function following a transgression, while simultaneously reducing the probability of future incidences of the crime being committed by others. 25 In early modern France, such chivalrous concern for decorum sometimes led to the refusal to execute women by hanging, preferring instead to bury them alive. Caledonian Mercury, Monday, 9 June 1755, 3. When Fairles rode by Turner’s public house at about five o’clock, Jobling approached him, laid a hand on that of Fairles, and with good grace asked for money for a drink. However, the four men sentenced to be hung in chains following trials before the High Court in Edinburgh between 1746 and 1755 were instead executed at the Gallowlee between Edinburgh and Leith. However, this must be measured alongside the more practical and logistical considerations that impacted upon the disappearance of the gibbeted body in Scotland. In terms of the exposure of criminal corpses outside the town walls, Spierenburg Prior to the murder, James was employed by Colin Campbell of Glenure, also known as the ‘Red Fox’, as his assistant. Though nearly 200 years have since passed, representations of hanging in chains arise often in Britain and North America. Under the Murder Act, gibbeting became a much more complex practice than these various later representations normally portray, in terms of both the legal procedures leading to the punishment, and the requirements of the physical process. 41 Taylor shouted at the men to be off, and the two assailants ran away. Her mangled body was found concealed in the nearby woods. rebellion. A broken socket stone at Gonerby Hill Foot, Lincolnshire, is believed locally to have supported a gibbet at one time (http://www.lincstothepast.com/photograph/290331.record?pt=S). (2015), ‘The Landscape of the Gibbet’, Landscape History, Vol. Caledonian Mercury, Thursday, 7 July 1748, 2. Under Earl Grey’s leadership the reforming Whig government had not only passed the First Reform Act … 57 The location was chosen due to its proximity to the murder scene and as the nearby Ballachullish was Stewart’s home. Leasley testified that a mile-and-a-half from Rotherham, he was stopped by two men whose faces he could not see who compelled him to leave the road, ‘one tied his hands and fastened him to the hedge, whilst the other cut away the bag containing the letters, with which they made off.’ 59 A foreign bill of exchange worth £123 was taken from the mail, with the help of a French dictionary the bill was exchanged successfully and Oxley ‘decamped with all the proceeds except for £10’. In 1823, an act of Parliament authorised the transportation of British convicts to any colony designated by the Crown. will offer details of some of the outward responses to the gibbet in this period. at another, with more discretionary power afforded to local authorities, namely the sheriffs. 127–174, p. 77. This chapter reviews what was involved practically in gibbeting a body (or ‘hanging in chains’ as it was known), including the locations chosen, and the technology of the gibbet. See, Tarlow, S. (2014), ‘The Technology of the Gibbet’, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Vol. Despite this, and the fact that the authorities had ordered his gibbet to be set at a great height to act as a stark illustration of the reward for murder, his body was removed. Therefore, in Scotland, the implementation of gibbeting was more explicitly linked to the public execution and, crucially, to the changes that occurred to its location as this period progressed. they were referring to the nature of the crime as well as to the nature of the punishment. 6, Edinburgh University had become a centre for medical education by the second half of the eighteenth century and, within this, received a sizeable proportion of all offenders executed for murder and sentenced to be dissected. He committed no murder, on that point both victim and accused agreed. However, there is also the issue of when the murder and punishment took place with relation to the political situation. Others were taken and afforded a kind of burial, even if this was makeshift at best. Four straps passed from the hoop, up the body, to a ring at the neck. To conclude, this chapter has provided an in-depth study of the post-mortem punishment of hanging in chains in Scotland. The Punishment of Death, etc. In addition, the will investigate the implementation of gibbeting, questioning who was sentenced to it, the chronology of the punishment and the locations at which it was carried out. 16 In Scotland, James Davidson was tried in Aberdeen in May 1748 for robbery and housebreaking and his case was explicitly linked to the government’s efforts to purge the north of the country of its Jacobite sympathisers. If material is not included in the book's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. THE LAST MAN GIBBETED (JAMES COOK 1832) The Morning Chronicle (London England), Saturday 4 August 1832. These generalities aside, however, the historical life of the gibbet is diverse and complex. (eds. by Kevin Reynolds (USA: Warner Bros.); Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) [film], dir. The humiliating, powerless exposure and display of one’s body, and the knowledge of how the impending punishment affected the condemned before death—including stories of ‘hard men’ such as Lambert Reading in 1775 who were unfazed by the idea of execution but could not hear the sentence of gibbeting with equanimity—were intended as an instructive lesson to the many who witnessed, read about, or spoke of the punishment. 202, pp. He cut her throat in a botched robbery attempt and, despite an apparent lack of premeditation to murder, he was sentenced to their bodies to be hung in chains so they could “wither in the winds.” However, due to a “consideration of the uneasiness it must occasion to the innocent neighbourhood”, they instead sentenced them to be executed at the scene of their crime and their bodies were to be sent for dissection. gibbeting of his body embodied various themes that are presented here, namely the importance of location and potential threats to the security of the gibbet. 18, Issue 4, 668–699. Gibbeting was formally legalised in Britain by the Murder Act of 1752 and was regularly used up to 1834. 63. 35. Of the 22 men hung in chains in this period, only three were gibbeted for property offences. However, other murders were committed with property offences that did not result in the offenders being hung in chains. Sheffield Independent (Sheffield, England), 4 March 1896, Issue 12931, p. 8. He claimed the bills belonged to Shaw, and directed the thief-takers to Shaw’s lodgings, but on arrival found Broughton there and after a chase, apprehended him. offences in Scotland and that it was likely used against Davidson as he was part of a gang armed with banned weapons and had likely been involved in the 1745 30 Following a guilty verdict, one of the judges stated that, due to the circumstances of the case, he did not want to hang Campbell in chains or go further in the post-mortem punishment of the body than was obliged by the Murder Act. However, what is also likely is that they just did not want the sight or presence of a dead body gradually decaying where they would see it daily and so they stole it a second time and successfully disposed of it. It is interesting to note here that when reporting upon the execution and hanging in chains of Francis Anderson at the Gallowlee in Edinburgh in September 1746, the Caledonian Mercury stated that he was hanged, then his entrails were taken out before the body was hung up in chains. Although a constant guard being required at the gibbet for 18 months does not necessarily suggest that his gibbeted body answered the purpose of deterrence. By combining information from these sources, it has been possible to construct an accurate idea of the gibbet as built and used by civil authorities during the life of the Murder Act. In addition to the method of killing used in the murders, a degree of importance can also be attached to the victim or the particular circumstances His corpse had swung in its cage for only about a month. 45 He pleaded not guilty. The words gallows and gibbet have often been used interchangeably to describe the apparatus on which the criminal was to be executed See Caledonian Mercury, Tuesday, 11 September 1746, 4. The second half of this chapter They threatened his life, shot his daughter in the arm and stole over £5 in silver as well as a quantity of gold and bank notes. Nicol Brown was executed and his body hung in chains in April 1755 between Edinburgh and Leith at the Gallowlee for the murder of his wife. Primarily for what happened to his body after his death, and the years it spent on display as it mouldered, rotted and fell to pieces. This chapter has shown that, following these moves, in circuit cities such as Aberdeen, Inverness, Perth, Ayr and Glasgow, no further offenders were sentenced to be hung in chains and instead murderers were exclusively sent for dissection. The neck ring was attached to the head cap by four straps passing on each side of the head to meet at the top. Some secondary literature makes reference to covering the corpse in tar or pitch, 21 as in the case of Tom Otter whose body was said to have been covered in a layer of pitch before being reclothed, presumably to aid with identification, and enclosed in the gibbet cage. 13. See, ‘America and West Indies: May 1737 16–31’, in Davies, K.G. 26 The proportions found in Scotland are relatively similar as, of 104 convicted male murderers between the passing of the act and the repeal of gibbeting in 1834, thirteen were sentenced to be hung in chains. Also known as ‘hanging in chains’, gibbeting was a spectacular post-mortem punishment whose impact far exceeded the relatively small number of criminal corpses that were suspended between earth and sky to be displayed for days, weeks, months, years and even decades. Rogers 1760s. Gibbeting was much more expensive per body than anatomisation and dissection and was much more spatially intensive—the display of the anatomised body required a suitable room for a day or two, but the gibbet required an open plot of land for decades. In Scotland, the death sentence pronounced by the judge stipulated the logistics of the public execution, such as the time, date and location at which it would be carried out as well as the details of any post-mortem punishments to be enacted. In addition, this study has found no other reports to suggest that the removal of the entrails of the executed criminal before the body was put in the gibbet cage was the common practice. When investigating both the chronology of gibbeting and the location chosen for it in various parts of Scotland, it becomes apparent that gibbet sites were not within city centres. In effect this meant their names would be called in the court and when they did not appear it would be ordered that any goods could be seized and their names would be publicly denounced, in Scots law this was referred to as their being “put to the horn.” The group were all part of a gang who had committed several robberies, terrorised the area and gained a degree of notoriety. commented, believed to be a barbarous practice of an earlier age, despite the offence committed. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. Even empty, its shape continued—and continues—to evoke the body it once held (or would hold). found by the current study is the one used for Kenneth Leal in 1773. 78 That she was sentenced to post-mortem punishment on the gibbet in addition to execution on the gallows also followed the precedent set in the 1761 case. hanging in chains in Scotland needs to be examined further. The day before the incident, Joseph Corriveau had complained about his son-in-law during a visit to the local priest and it was said that Marie-Josephte had asked her father to beat her husband. 228, Issue 1, 159–205. Eyewitnesses saw two men setting upon the Magistrate and all three struggling on the ground. Post of a gibbet (possibly Parr’s) with nails used to reinforce it and make it harder to saw through, now in Banbury Museum (Sarah Tarlow), The crossbeam of a gibbet allowed the caged body to swing freely (Sarah Tarlow), Hook of Breads’s gibbet, Rye, showing wear (Sarah Tarlow), Keal’s gibbet, Louth Museum, only encloses the head and torso (Sarah Tarlow), Punched holes on the gibbet allowed adjustment to fit the body of the criminal (Sarah Tarlow). However, the 1752 Murder Act made explicit that the bodies of executed murderers were to be either dissected or hung in chains “in the same manner as is now practiced for the most atrocious offences.” 1 A total of 22 men were hung in chains, or gibbeted, in Scotland between 1746 and the final case in 1810. The Piracy Act only now imposes Death Penalty where there is an intent to Murder. The punishment for murder under the Act therefore stripped the murderer of their own life and debased the body as murder did to the victim, in this case by denying proper burial. by Richard Ward, 102–125, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015; Nicholas Rogers, Mayhem: Post-War Crime and Violence in Britain, 1748–1753 (London: Yale University Press, 2012), 60. ed. (2009), The Death of Nicholas Fairles: Law and Community in South Shields, 1832 (North East England History Institute). He had been imprisoned for 6 months before his life ended at the end of a rope. There were probably multiple factors in this decline, including the cost, space needed, and ever-increasing need of bodies for surgical practice and training. Stewart had claimed Campbell was “no friend of his” and had accused him of carrying out his business with a “high hand.” 55, From the beginning of the legal proceedings the odds were stacked against Stewart as he was to be tried before the Western Circuit at Inveraray, a Campbell stronghold, as opposed to the High Court in Edinburgh which may have been more appropriate for such a high-profile case. 27 In Scotland, following the case of James MacLauchlan in 1779, another 31 years would pass before the next offender was hung in chains. In addition, as discussed in Chap. 43 This pitman who had also been in the employ of the Jarrow Colliery, was ‘about 44 Years of Age, 5 feet 9 inches high, stout made, Dark Complexion, Blue Eyes, large Mouth, large turned-up Nose and Brown Hair’, 44 and was never caught. by N. T. Phillipson and Rosalind Mitchison, 24–46, 25, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970. See, Andrews, W. (1899), Bygone Punishments (London: W. Andrews & Company), p. 63. Though distinctly unbloody, the nature of his transgression threatened the security of property and movement of finance, which sat at the heart of the capitalist values on which the nation was built, and so warranted severe punishment in the eyes of the law. Stewart was indicted and convicted of being guilty “art and part” of the murder. When passing a gibbeted body in Bawtry, England, an early nineteenth-century diarist commented that he regretted the “barbarity of a practice which wounds only the living.” 2 The punishments of dissection and hanging in chains were comparable in that both involved the dismembering of the criminal corpse but, in Scotland, during dissection this was carried out before a predominantly medical audience. prior to execution. However, as soon as the guard was withdrawn, Jobling’s remains were removed under cover of night. We tell these stories here, together and assembled in this way, to move from historical summary to more individual detail, and to try to create a view into the historical use of the gibbet that may allow us to connect our own ideas, assumptions, and feelings with an event and experience that is otherwise alien. Although a similar source does not appear to have survived for Scotland, or perhaps it is yet to be located, it is still possible to discern the role of the various legal authorities involved in shaping execution practices from other sources such as court records and newspapers. Alex F. Young, The Encyclopaedia of Scottish Executions 1750–1963 (Tunbridge Wells: Eric Dobby Publishing, 1998), 47. Convicted murderers William Jobling and James Cook were gibbeted in Jarrow and Leicestershire respectively. 1 Here we take a more specific temporal and judicial focus, using the Murder Act to frame our examination of the formalised use of the gibbet by civil authorities in Britain from 1752–1834. He named Jobling as the man who had held him down, and Ralph Armstrong, a pitman of Jarrow colliery, as the man who had attacked him from behind, and battered his head with stones and the heavy, horn stick Fairles was accustomed to carry. From these, the presiding judge would choose the 15 to hear the case. We have identified six distinct elements that comprise all gibbets used during our period of study: a corpse, metal cage, hook and/or short chain, crossbeam, post and erection site. When addressing Gillan, the Lord Justice Clerk stated: “I look upon any punishment which you can receive in this world as mercy.” He added that the enormity of the crime called for the most severe and lasting punishment. This chapter She had been herding her father’s cattle when Gillan barbarously assaulted her and beat her about the head with a large oak stick. It will then 38 Locations in England were usually chosen due to their proximity to the crime scene and visibility from public roads, thus away from densely populated areas. The last hanging for arson was that of Daniel Case at Ilchester in Somerset on the 31st of August 1836. Letter of Governor Robert Hunter to the Lords of Trade, in O’Callaghan, E.B. and, due to the nature and locations of his crimes, a very poignant example, especially as he was the ony one of the group the authorities were able to successfully apprehend and punish. He was reputed to be from an honest and hardworking family, but was eloquently described in a small volume devoted to his life and crime as ‘a degenerated plant from a good tree’. Further, as the cage was designed to be form fitting, a thick layer of pitch might have caused difficulties for properly placing and securing the corpse. 35, Replica of Jobling’s gibbet, South Shields Museum (Sarah Tarlow). However, the interruption and discontinuation of transportation to the American Colonies in 1775, following the American Revolution, forced British authorities to rethink their punishment practices. Tarlow, “The Technology of the Gibbet”, 681. See, Fielding, S. (2013), Hanged at Durham [ebook] (The History Press), Appendix II. Historically, the displaying of the criminal corpse was used as the final part of either an aggravated execution or a post-mortem punishment in the most atrocious criminal cases. V. A. C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770–1868 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 269. Stamford Mercury (Stamford, England), 10 May 1867, Issue 8977, p. 3. But this additional absence has not deterred those drawn to his story and its enduring meaning, nor does it seem likely to. Having seemingly fallen into disuse in the early c19th it reared its ugly head two final times in the 1830s, both with fascinating consequences. ‘Execution of William Jobling for the Murder of Mr. Fairles’, Times (London, England), 6 August 1832, p. 5. the historic belief that it was indecent to display their corpses. 50. Note that in 1825 the criminal law was reformed to permit the balloting of juries in Scotland. (Whiskey Priests). As Luc Lacourcière noted in his seminal article on this history and phenomenon in 1969, scarcely a year has gone by since 1763 that this story, and the figure at the centre of it, have not been the subject of new literary and artistic representations. Derived from Roman law, lex talionis—captured succinctly by the adage ‘an eye for an eye’—refers to the reestablishment of social order following a severe transgression by inflicting upon the malefactor the harm they visited on their victim. It replaced the corresponding provision in section 16 of the Anatomy Act 1832 ( as amended by section 1 of the next mentioned Act ) and replaced section 2 of the Hanging in Chains Act 1834 ( 4 & 5 Will 4 c 26 ). a Caxton gibbet (Sarah Tarlow) and b Winter’s gibbet (Patrick Low). Much about the gibbet has relied on secondary literature and repeated some things as ‘facts’ which are otherwise unsubstantiated. So, in the eyes of the law at least, Jobling’s execution seems to have been inevitable. surrounding it. Robust, young bodies were in demand for medical purposes and those of the aged or infirm, much less so. Gibbet with Wooden Head, in memoriam. Alexander Gillan, a farmer’s servant in the parish of Speymouth, Elgin, was convicted at the Inverness Circuit Court in September 1810 for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Elspeth Lamb. In addition to the material technique of gibbeting, involving the physical elements (place, post, crossbeam, hook and chain, cage and corpse), the gibbet was and remains a product of discrete but connected discourses of punishment. 7 Women were not subjected to the punishment in either Scotland or England due to This in itself demonstrated the determination of the authorities to see someone capitally punished for the crime as another man, one Allen Breck Stewart, suspected of being a principal actor, was never found nor tried for the murder. Joseph Mawman, An Excursion to the Highlands of Scotland and the English Lakes (London: 1805), 29. The son’s body was taken by the surgeons, but the older man was hung in chains, perhaps because his body was a less desirable anatomical object. This led to its near disappearance from par-circulation after 1834. The assembly was attached to a strongly riveted swivel-link which allowed the contraption to rotate. Although the practice of gibbeting did not stop completely, the council decided to relocate the standing gallows, which was also used for the exposure of criminal corpses, away from the Utrecht main road. Following a concentration of gibbeting in the late 1740s and 1750s, three of the remaining cases occurred in the 1760s, four in the 1770s and one final case in 1810. In 1849, workers digging behind the church of Saint-Joseph-of-Bellechasse as part of renovation efforts discovered an iron body-shaped cage still containing a few bones. However, shortly afterward, Joseph made a confession. Targeting the Cambridge Mail the day after the Newmarket races meant that the mail was packed with the bank bills of London’s gentleman gamblers. After identifying the dominance of penal dissection throughout the period, it looks at the abandonment of burning at the stake in the 1790s, the rapid decline of hanging in chains just after 1800, and the final abandonment of both dissection and gibbeting in 1832 and 1834. This is discussed further below in the context of the social discourse around gibbeting. In January 1755, it was reported to the High Court that the body had blown down but the Lord Justice Clerk ordered it to be speedily hung up again before the news spread and attempts could be made to bury the body. The body of Mary-Josephte was gibbeted for five weeks at a crossroads in St. Joseph, Point Levy, Québec before being removed and taken away for burial at a nearby churchyard, whose specific location was not made public, still encased in the gibbet irons. In Scotland, prior to the mid-eighteenth century, it … Joseph was proclaimed innocent, and once she had made a confession, Marie-Josephte was convicted of the murder of her husband. The hand that struck the ultimately fatal blow was not that of William Jobling, but his involvement in the mortal attack on Nicholas Fairles on 11 June 1832 was never in question. One contributory factor The Anatomy Act of 1832 brought the post-mortem punishment of dissection, for the crime of murder, to an end. The standing position, the swaying, swinging, or turning in the wind, all created an uncanny and paradoxical impression of ‘life’. The degree of his involvement was contested at trial, but under the law failure to decisively act to prevent murder carried the penalty of death on the gallows. We are not the first, nor will we be the last to tell the stories of Jobling, Broughton, and Corriveau. 42 In the earlier case of David Edwards, surviving records detailing the cost of gibbeting his body include two carts of lime being delivered to the place of execution. In fact, in 1867 ‘Many hundreds of persons’ came to see the excavated remains of Broughton’s gibbet post 72 —a piece about four-and-a-half feet long and 18 inches square black with age—which was unearthed during excavations for new houses in Clifton Street on what was once Attercliffe Common.