Tyburn Tree. Alfred Marks
Something must be said about that useful public servant, the executioner. Selected by the State to carry out its decrees, it would seem that he should have been invested with a dignity but little inferior to that of the judges who pronounced the sentence carried out by him in co-partnership. Without the practical assistance of the executioner, the solemn sentence of the robed, ermined, and full-bottom-wigged judge would be of no effect. Nevertheless, this officer of the State, practically inculcating on the scaffold the great truths of morality impressed on the public from the bench, this great public officer has never received the homage due to him. In France the executioner is—or was—“the executor of high works,” with us he has always been merely “the common hangman.” Of the many instances of public ingratitude, this is perhaps the most scandalous. Nor have posthumous honours in the smallest degree compensated for want of respect during life. The statues of London are, with few exceptions, and these recent, almost wholly devoted to royal personages, to soldiers, and to ground landlords. Among them we seek in vain monuments to the executive officer, without whose aid law and order would have been mere empty names. That great work, the Dictionary of National Biography, has done something to redeem this neglect by recording such rare facts as may be discovered in the biographies of hangmen. For this we may be grateful: it is at least a beginning.
Cunningham, in his “Handbook of London,” a compilation displaying marvellous industry, says that “the earliest hangman whose name is known was called Derrick.” This is a mistake. There are two, or perhaps three, predecessors whose names have been recorded. Of these predecessors of Derrick, the first is Cratwell, whose execution was witnessed by the chronicler Hall in 1538. Then comes an officer whose name a careless country has omitted to preserve, “the hangman with the stump-leg,” who, alas! was also hanged, reaching this end to his career in 1556.[65] A third possible predecessor of Derrick is known only by name. At the trial of Garnet, in 1606, the Earl of Northampton made a speech of which he thought so highly that he afterwards amplified and enlarged it for publication. Here is a specimen of what he would have liked to say had he been permitted:—
“The bulls which by the practice of you and your Catiline, the lively image of your heart, should by loud lowing, have called all his calves together with a preparation to band against our sovereign, at the first break of day, and to have cropped those sweet olive-buds that environ the regal seat, did more good than hurt, as it happened, by calling in a third bull, which was Bull the hangman, to make a speedy riddance and dispatch of this forlorn fellowship.”[66]
Bull is also mentioned in “Tarlton’s Jests.”
Either before or after Bull came Derrick, hangman in the reign of James I. He is mentioned in Dekker’s “Bellman of London,” 1608, and was famous; for half a century later his name was a term of abuse.[67] It is said that in some way, not clear, he gave his name to the form of crane known as a derrick.
According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Derrick was succeeded by Gregory Brandon. When Cunningham wrote there was a tradition that Brandon was of good family, and had a grant of arms. But it has since been found that the story had no better foundation than a practical joke:—
January, 1617. “York Herald played a trick on Garter King-at-Arms, by sending him a coat of arms drawn up for Gregory Brandon, said to be a merchant of London, and well-descended, which Garter subscribed, and then found that Brandon was the hangman; Garter and York are both imprisoned, one for foolery, the other for knavery.”[68]
Gregory was succeeded by his son Richard, famous as the executioner of Charles I.
After him came Lowen, an obscure hangman, known only by mention in the account of an execution.[69]
Later came Edward Dun, known as “Esquire Dun,” mentioned in Butler’s “Hudibras” (pt. iii. c. ii. l. 1534). He was followed by the most famous of all the hangmen of Tyburn, Jack Ketch, hangman from about 1663 to 1686. In January of this year he was for a time superseded by Pascha Rose, a butcher, who was hanged at Tyburn, on May 28th, when Ketch resumed office. Ketch is twice mentioned in Dryden, in the epilogue to the Duke of Guise:—
“Jack Ketch, says I’s, an excellent physician,”
and again in “The Original and Progress of Satire”:—
“A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch’s wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging: but to make a malefactor die sweetly, was only belonging to her husband.”
Dr. Murray’s Dictionary attributes something of Ketch’s fame to his introduction into the “puppet-play of Punchinello introduced from Italy shortly after his death”: but Cunningham quotes from the Overseers’ Books of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields entries of sums “received of Punchinello the Italian popet player, for his Booth at Charing-cross,” in March, 1666. But something of his notoriety was due to his bungling in the executions of Lord Russell in 1683, and of the Duke of Monmouth in 1685. As to Lord Russell, “Ketch the executioner severed his head from his body at three strokes, very barbarously.”[70] It was worse with Monmouth:—
“He sayd to the executioner, ‘Here are six guinies for you. Pray doe your business well: don’t serue me as you did my Lord Russell. I haue heard you strooke him three or fower tymes. Here (to his seruant), take these remaininge guinies, and giue them to him if he does his worke well.’ And to the executioner he sayd, ‘If you strike me twice I cannot promise you not to stirr.’ Then he lay downe, and soone after raised himselfe vpon his elbowe, and sayd to the executioner, ‘Prithee, let me feele the ax.’ He felt the edge, and sayd, ‘I feare it is not sharpe enough.’ Then he lay downe, the Diuines prayinge earnestly for the acceptance of his repentance, his imperfect repentance, and commended to God his soule and spirit. Soe the executioner did his work: but I heare he had fiue blowes. Soe he died.”[71]
As recorded in the Annals, John Price, the Tyburn hangman, was executed in Bunhill-Fields for murder in 1718.
In August, 1721, John Meff was executed at Tyburn. At a previous date, not mentioned, he had been condemned to death for housebreaking, but, as he was going to Tyburn, the hangman, bearing the generic name of “Jack Ketch,” was arrested. What became of him is not told, but he probably came to a bad end.
In May, 1736, “Jack Ketch,” on his return from doing his office at Tyburn, robbed a woman of 3s. 6d., for which he was committed to Newgate. History is silent as to his fate.
In 1750, the hangman, John Thrift, was condemned for killing a man in a quarrel. His sentence was commuted to one of transportation for fourteen years. He was finally pardoned, and in September “resumed the exercise of his office.” “ ‘Old England,’ September 22, hints, that having become obnoxious to the Jacobites, for his celebrated operations on Tower-Hill and Kennington-Common, he was pardoned in terrorem, and to mortify them.”[72]
In 1780, Edward Dennis, the hangman, was condemned for taking part in the No Popery riots. He was respited. Dickens has introduced Dennis as a personage in his story of “Barnaby Rudge.”
It will be seen that out of the few hangmen of Tyburn whose names have come down to us, several ended their useful lives on the gallows, having failed to profit personally by the lessons they were employed by the State to teach.
There was a strange superstition connected with the gallows: what it was will be understood from the following:—
A man having been hanged at Tyburn, on May 4, 1767, “a young woman, with a wen upon her neck, was lifted up while he was hanging, and had the wen rubbed with the dead man’s hand, from a superstitious notion that it would effect a cure.”
This case is not the only one of its kind on record.[73]
Tyburn is responsible for a few slang expressions. “A Tyburn ticket” was a certificate exempting from parish duties the successful prosecutor of a malefactor. “A Tyburn blossom” was a young pickpocket.