Tales from the Gallows: Executions Exhibition Reveals Tragic Tales of Dying

The Museum of London Docklands is internet hosting Executions, a significant exhibition exploring the capital’s historical past of public punishment, from the primary recorded public execution in 1196 to the final in 1868. Extra frequent in London than some other British metropolis, the capital (generally known as the Metropolis of Gallows) was host to some essentially the most high-profile public executions, in addition to these of 1000’s of unknown and forgotten Londoners. Bringing collectively the not often instructed and infrequently tragic human tales behind these occasions, the exhibition reveals the social, cultural and financial influence of public executions over 700 years.

John ‘Jack’ Sheppard, age 22: Theft, 1724

Jack was one in every of London’s best felony heroes. Celebrated for escaping a number of occasions from the infamous Newgate jail, he grew to become a logo of freedom for London’s working lessons.

A gifted apprentice carpenter, Jack fell into a lifetime of thieving, reputably led astray by ‘dangerous firm and lewd girls’. Though ultimately executed at Tyburn on the age of twenty-two, his effrontery and ability in difficult authority ensured his story was recounted in in style books and performs for generations.

The exhibition features a portrait of Jack in Newgate’s condemned cell by James Thornhill. Sheppard was already a star earlier than the artist paid him one shilling and sixpence to immortalise his fame. The portrait depicts a youthful Jack with the normal shaven head of a condemned convict. His closing procession from Newgate to the Tyburn gallows in 1724 was accompanied by an enormous, sympathetic crowd. On arrival, Jack requested a printer come to the cart the place he offered him with a pamphlet entitled ‘A story of all of the robberies and escapes of John Sheppard.’ By the next day the pamphlet was being bought all through London.

Jack remained a working class hero for over 100 years after his execution. The exhibition additionally consists of etched illustrations by George Cruikshank for a dramatized novel on the lifetime of Jack printed in 1839. The writer William Ainsworth confidently predicted: ‘The success of Jack is fairly sure, they’re bringing him out at half the theatres in London.’ The authorities, nonetheless, tried to ban the performs fearing their reputation would encourage against the law wave amongst London’s youths.

They’d trigger for concern. Within the 1850s, Henry Mayhew found chapbooks recounting Jack’s exploits, just like one on show, had been vastly in style in low lodging homes the place they had been learn aloud to illiterate youths. He interviewed 13 boys who confessed to thieving with a view to pay for a theatre ticket for the play about Jack’s life.

‘Blueskin slicing down Jack Sheppard’. Illustration of Jack Sheppard’s execution. © Museum of London

Catherine Welch, age 24: Infanticide, 1828

Catherine was convicted of murdering her 6-week-old child and burying it in a ditch. At trial her denial of giving beginning was dramatically challenged by a physician who had expressed breast milk from her. The jury discovered Catherine responsible on circumstantial proof however advisable a reprieve from public execution.

Following her conviction, a member of the jury at her trial, wrote letters to the Residence Workplace in help of a reprieve, one in every of which is on show within the exhibition. Her petition for mercy was not, nonetheless, profitable. As a brand new arrival to the capital from Eire she struggled to seek out influential supporters to signal her petition. Earlier than her execution, simply 4 days after her conviction, Catherine confessed homicide to a Catholic priest. She defined she was unable to help her baby after her husband deserted her. She had married him when already pregnant by one other man. When the newborn was born, he realised he was not the Father and ordered she get rid of the kid.

Beneath the phrases of the 1752 Homicide Act, Catherine’s executed physique was taken to the Royal School of Surgeons the place, as was conventional, a drawing of her head and shoulders, at the moment on show within the exhibition, was rigorously composed. The physique of a lady who had just lately given beginning was significantly prized by the surgeons because it could possibly be used to analysis feminine anatomy at a time when male docs weren’t allowed to undertake intimate examinations of feminine sufferers. Her stays was subsequently despatched to Charles Bell’s non-public anatomy college in Windmill Avenue, the place her lactating breasts had been eliminated for preservation within the School museum.

An account of the Execution of Catherine Welch. © Museum of London

Thomas Corrigan, age 29: Homicide of his spouse, 1855

Two days earlier than his execution Corrigan’s sentence was commuted to transportation on the grounds of his madness on the time he murdered his spouse. An execution broadside on show within the exhibition, printed upfront of the reprieve, erroneously quotes Corrigan’s ‘final phrases on the scaffold’ as ‘After I slew my expensive Louisa, Wandering was my jealous thoughts.’ Broadsides ‘written within the language of the road’ and bought cheaply on the web site of execution had been vastly in style with London’s working lessons however usually included inaccurate particulars scripted by the printers.

Corrigan’s crime was notoriously known as the Boxing Day Homicide. A Foreman on the East India Firm Warehouse, he was recognized to drink closely. Though solely 29 years on the time of his conviction he and his spouse, Louisa had 4 daughters between the ages of 1 and 9. On Boxing Day 1855 Corrigan went to work having stayed up all evening consuming with associates. On his return dwelling he violently stabbed Louisa who regardless of managing to flee into the road died of her accidents.

Throughout his trial on the Outdated Bailey, associates described how Corrigan’s consuming had elevated during the last 12 months. Reputed to be ‘a mild-mannered man’ the crime was thought-about fully out of character and thought to have been an inexplicable second of madness.

Though discovered responsible and condemned to dying Corrigan’s sentence was commuted to transportation to Australia, following petitions from supporters together with Louisa’s household and members of the jury. By the point of his arrival on the penal colonies of Western Australia in 1858, Corrigan had discovered Christianity and deserted alcohol.

A mannequin convict, Corrigan obtained his ‘ticket of go away’ or parole paperwork simply three years after his arrival and a conditional pardon in 1868. He remained in Australia and have become a profitable journalist. In London he had been a member of the Historic Order of Foresters, a pleasant society, which took care of its members throughout occasions of hardship. Following his transportation, the Foresters paid for Corrigan’s 4 daughters’ repairs at an orphanage in Kennington Park. He wrote a guide of verses to boost funds for his or her upbringing and three of his daughters later joined him in Australia the place he had discovered love with a brand new spouse and two sons. Corrigan died in 1905 aged 80.

Broadside account of the crime, trial and sentencing of Thomas William John Corrigan © Museum of London

Eliza Fenning, age 22: Tried homicide, 1815

Born in Dominica to an Irish mom and English soldier father, Eliza moved to London aged three and entered home service at 14. In 1815 she was discovered responsible of trying to poison her new employers, the Turner household, by lacing dumplings with arsenic. Eliza maintained her innocence all through her trial and the proof that convicted her was doubtful.

When Eliza was publicly executed exterior Newgate jail, she wore ‘a white muslin robe, a good-looking labored cap and laced boots’. The hanging of a probably harmless younger girl captured the general public’s creativeness. Rumours circulated she was hanged within the gown she had meant to put on to her marriage ceremony.  

Following her execution, Eliza’s physique was taken to her dad and mom’ home, the place sympathisers got here to witness her mendacity ‘in her coffin seemingly as in a candy sleep, with a smile on her countenance.’ A crowd of 10,000 had been estimated to have attended her funeral, her coffin carried by six younger girls wearing white. An area newspaper reported: ‘Each window was thronged, and in lots of locations the tops of the homes had been lined with spectators.’

The obvious injustice of the case of Eliza Fenning was sympathetically reported in pamphlets and newspapers and referred to by Charles Dickens. A publication on show within the exhibition consists of proof to help her innocence, an in depth account of her execution and letters written by her throughout imprisonment. The authors warn the regulation must be scrutinised to keep away from comparable abuses.

The white muslin robe Eliza was hanged in. © Museum of London

Maria and Frederick Manning: Homicide, 1849

Maria and her husband Frederick murdered Maria’s lover Patrick O’Connor for monetary achieve and buried his physique beneath their kitchen ground in Bermondsey. Alarmed when O’Connor’s associates and the police began to make enquiries about his disappearance, the Mannings fled. Maria was arrested in Edinburgh making an attempt to promote shares she had stolen from O’Connor. Frederick was captured in Jersey. Each claimed their innocence and blamed one another. London was transfixed by the ‘Bermondsey Horror’. At their sensationalist trial a lawyer declared of Maria ‘when a lady provides method to vice, she sinks far decrease than a person.’

Maria and Frederick Manning, had been executed collectively on thirteenth November 1849 on the rooftop scaffold of Horsemonger Lane Gaol in Southwark.  A print of the scene within the exhibition depicts the ‘immense assemblage’ gathered to witness the uncommon execution of a married couple. Amongst them was Charles Dickens who later wrote a livid letter to The Occasions criticising the ‘inconceivably terrible behaviour’ of the gang. Describing public execution as a ‘ethical evil’, he doubted communities might prosper the place such scenes of ‘horror and demoralisation’ might happen.

Dickens was not alone in his condemnation of the behaviour of the gang. By the mid-Nineteenth century witnessing an execution was thought to be ‘uncivilised’ by the rising middle-class who feared it brutalised society. Public ache and dying grew to become morally unacceptable to squeamish Victorians. Such issues didn’t symbolize larger sympathy with the condemned however somewhat the will to determine trendy requirements of conduct and to regulate the city plenty.

James Radclyffe, Earl of Derwentwater, age 26:  Treason, 1716

James Radclyffe, 3 ^rd Earl of Derwentwater was the Grandson of King Charles II by his lover Moll Davies. Raised throughout the Catholic faith he supported James Stuart’s declare to the English throne. Arrested on the Battle of Preston, throughout the Jacobite rebel of 1715, James was delivered to London and imprisoned within the Tower of London awaiting execution for treason.

James was beheaded on Tower Hill on 24 February 1716, aged simply 26. He left behind a widow, Anna Maria, a younger son, John born in 1713 and a daughter Mary, born in 1714.  In his speech, delivered from the scaffold, James apologised for pleading responsible to treason, declaring his solely loyalty was to the Catholic James Stuart. Confirming he would die a Catholic, he hoped his martyrdom would additional the Jacobite marketing campaign.

The exhibition includes a bed-sheet utilized by the Earl whereas imprisoned within the Tower. Anna Maria had initially been allowed to stick with her husband within the Tower till compelled to go away throughout an outbreak of smallpox. Following his execution she collected his physique, his severed head and possessions from the Tower, together with the bed-sheet.

In 1721 Anna Maria and her kids moved to Belgium the place she discovered the time and solitude to memorialise her grief by embroidering the bed-sheet in human hair, with the emotive inscription ‘ The sheet OFF MY expensive Lord’s Mattress within the wretched Tower of London February 1716 x Ann C of Darwent=Waters+.’

It seems Anna Maria threaded her needle with two forms of human hair intriguingly suggesting she could have intertwined locks from her personal hair with these from her deceased husband.

Throughout her life-time the embroidered sheet grew to become a logo of the younger Earl’s tragic dying and Anna Maria’s private mourning. Following her personal untimely dying in 1723 from smallpox, the bed-sheet additionally grew to become a logo of Catholic martyrdom, honored as a holy relic on the Augustinian convent in Louvain the place Anna Maria had been an everyday customer.

Bedsheet belonging to James Radclyffe, Earl of Derwentwater. It’s embroidered with human hair – more likely to be that of Anna Maria’s and probably additionally her husbands. (© Museum of London)

Sarah Malcolm, aged c. 22: Homicide, 1733

Sarah Malcolm, was convicted of the homicide of three girls within the Temple Chambers the place she labored as a laundress.

Also known as the ‘Irish Laundress’ because of having lived in Dublin, Sarah’s 5 hour trial on the Outdated Bailey was sensationally reported. In her defence she claimed the blood discovered on her clothes was because of menstruation somewhat than the blood of the victims. Accomplices linked to the crime had been by no means charged and, though Sarah admitted involvement within the theft of the ladies, she denied homicide. Discovered responsible by the jury inside quarter-hour she was condemned to dying.

Sarah’s case attracted the curiosity of main artist William Hogarth who visited her in Newgate to sketch her portrait. She maintained her innocence till her execution in Fleet Avenue nearby of Temple Chambers earlier than an enormous crowd. The choice to execute her close to the location of the murders was taken ‘due to the atrociousness of her crimes and for terror to different wickedly disposed folks.’

Hogarth’s portrait was bought to the author Horace Walpole however public curiosity in Sarah’s case created a wholesome marketplace for prints of the portray together with pirated variations. One such black and white print included within the exhibition provides two salacious particulars to Hogarth’s portrait: the scene of Malcolm’s execution and the determine of a priest holding a hoop. This can be meant as Reverend W. Piddington, Lecturer at St Bartholomew the Nice, who accompanied Sarah to the scaffold and intriguingly was rumoured to be in a romantic relationship along with her.

High picture: A person prepares for his execution. Supply:  jahorimine / Adobe Inventory

By Beverley Prepare dinner, Social Historical past Curator, The Museum of London

Executions: Discover how public executions formed Londoners’ lives and the town’s panorama in The Museum of London’s main exhibition, 14 October 2022 – 16 April 2023.