Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree by Alan Brooke, David Brandon Page B
Authors: Alan Brooke, David Brandon
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stirred up sedition. Others sentenced to the pillory included sexual offenders, those caught cheating at cards for money and people selling substandard goods.
Although lock-ups, houses of correction and prisons existed, little use was made of custodial sentences for punitive and deterrent, let alone for reforming purposes. These places were used for people awaiting trial, appeals or sentencing, vagrants and the idle poor or in some cases for misfits and others who simply defied cate-gorisation. However, from the early 1700s a wider assortment of petty offenders found themselves sent to perform hard labour in various houses of correction throughout the land. These might include poachers, petty thieves and those who uttered seditious slanders. The punishment for all felonies was, in theory if not actually in practice, death.
A form of torture was used on accused prisoners who refused to enter a plea. This might be an act of defiance or because the prisoner was literally dumb. If a prisoner could hold out without a plea until he died, he saved his property for his family. A prisoner refusing to plead meant that the trial could not begin. This greatly irked the authorities who would then subject him to the dreaded peine forte et dure , usually referred to as ‘the press’. This was originally sanctioned in 1275 and extensive use was made of it in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The prisoner was stripped and placed on his back. A board was put on his chest with heavy weights on it. The agony of this meant that most prisoners quickly found their tongues and co-operated by entering a plea. A highwayman by the name of Thomas Spiggot held out for thirty agonising minutes with a weight of 400 lb on his chest. Sometimes the authorities dealing with a prisoner unwilling to plead simply twisted his thumbs with whipcord. That normally did the trick.
Nowhere did the perceived threat from crime seem as serious as in London. The capital offered unique opportunities to the criminally inclined. Its population was larger and growing because of inward migration. The result was the creation of a rootless and volatile population many of whom were unskilled and very much at the mercy of economic downturns and slumps. With few loyalties or moral restraints, many naturally turned to crime, at least when times were bad. London offered propitious conditions for crime because of the concentrations of wealth, its anonymity and the feebleness of its law-enforcement agencies. For the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, no reliable quantitative evidence exists for levels of crime in London and historians have to rely instead on impressionistic contemporary material which strongly suggests social and political instability. Some particular events stand out. In 1554, fifty-nine rebels were hanged in London and Southwark after Wyatt’s revolt. In the late 1590s a force of over five hundred unpaid soldiers threatened to loot Bartholomew Fair. Martial law was declared on this occasion.
During the Interregnum (1649–60), the heavy hand of Puritanism descended on the English people and many of their favourite activities and pastimes. ‘Incontinence’ now became punishable. This word was used in its sexual sense and made a misdemeanour out of fornication and a felony of adultery. In 1647 and 1648 actors could be punished for pursuing their trade as could in the latter year those who had turned out to watch them. In 1654 cock-fighting was banned less out of concern for the welfare of the animals than because it attracted ill-behaved crowds who gambled, drank, swore and might get out of hand. Abusing the sanctity of the Lord’s Day became a misdemeanour, while various enactments tried to enforce attendance at worship on Sundays and prevent travelling and trading on that day. In the campaign against immorality, the uttering of profanities and gambling with cards became punishable, certain types of football were outlawed and for a period of six
Although lock-ups, houses of correction and prisons existed, little use was made of custodial sentences for punitive and deterrent, let alone for reforming purposes. These places were used for people awaiting trial, appeals or sentencing, vagrants and the idle poor or in some cases for misfits and others who simply defied cate-gorisation. However, from the early 1700s a wider assortment of petty offenders found themselves sent to perform hard labour in various houses of correction throughout the land. These might include poachers, petty thieves and those who uttered seditious slanders. The punishment for all felonies was, in theory if not actually in practice, death.
A form of torture was used on accused prisoners who refused to enter a plea. This might be an act of defiance or because the prisoner was literally dumb. If a prisoner could hold out without a plea until he died, he saved his property for his family. A prisoner refusing to plead meant that the trial could not begin. This greatly irked the authorities who would then subject him to the dreaded peine forte et dure , usually referred to as ‘the press’. This was originally sanctioned in 1275 and extensive use was made of it in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The prisoner was stripped and placed on his back. A board was put on his chest with heavy weights on it. The agony of this meant that most prisoners quickly found their tongues and co-operated by entering a plea. A highwayman by the name of Thomas Spiggot held out for thirty agonising minutes with a weight of 400 lb on his chest. Sometimes the authorities dealing with a prisoner unwilling to plead simply twisted his thumbs with whipcord. That normally did the trick.
Nowhere did the perceived threat from crime seem as serious as in London. The capital offered unique opportunities to the criminally inclined. Its population was larger and growing because of inward migration. The result was the creation of a rootless and volatile population many of whom were unskilled and very much at the mercy of economic downturns and slumps. With few loyalties or moral restraints, many naturally turned to crime, at least when times were bad. London offered propitious conditions for crime because of the concentrations of wealth, its anonymity and the feebleness of its law-enforcement agencies. For the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, no reliable quantitative evidence exists for levels of crime in London and historians have to rely instead on impressionistic contemporary material which strongly suggests social and political instability. Some particular events stand out. In 1554, fifty-nine rebels were hanged in London and Southwark after Wyatt’s revolt. In the late 1590s a force of over five hundred unpaid soldiers threatened to loot Bartholomew Fair. Martial law was declared on this occasion.
During the Interregnum (1649–60), the heavy hand of Puritanism descended on the English people and many of their favourite activities and pastimes. ‘Incontinence’ now became punishable. This word was used in its sexual sense and made a misdemeanour out of fornication and a felony of adultery. In 1647 and 1648 actors could be punished for pursuing their trade as could in the latter year those who had turned out to watch them. In 1654 cock-fighting was banned less out of concern for the welfare of the animals than because it attracted ill-behaved crowds who gambled, drank, swore and might get out of hand. Abusing the sanctity of the Lord’s Day became a misdemeanour, while various enactments tried to enforce attendance at worship on Sundays and prevent travelling and trading on that day. In the campaign against immorality, the uttering of profanities and gambling with cards became punishable, certain types of football were outlawed and for a period of six
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