York Read online

  York’s Prestigious Execution Site

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  The area known as the ‘Pavement’ in front of All Saints’ Church was the preserve of the higher-class execution by beheading; a fate that befell Thomas Percy, the 7th Earl of Northumberland, who was executed on a specially constructed scaffold here in 1572 for his part in the Northern Rebellion during the reign of Elizabeth I. Afterwards, his head was placed on Micklegate Bar, from whence it was recovered two years later by one of the Earl’s sympathisers.

  Dating to the twelfth century, Micklegate Bar is traditionally the gateway through which all reigning monarchs enter York, as well as being the prominent edifice upon which the severed heads of executed traitors were displayed. After the Yorkist defeat at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, the victorious Lancastrians made a clear political statement when the head of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, was displayed on Micklegate wearing a mocking paper crown, along with the heads of the Earl of Salisbury and Plantagenet’s son Edmund, the Earl of Rutland. However, the Duke’s head only remained skewered on a pikestaff for three months, as in 1461, his son, King Edward IV, avenged his death by mirroring the enemy’s grisly display and replaced the Yorkist heads with those of the Lancastrian leaders, who were captured at the Battle of Towton. As a preservative measure, heads were parboiled and seasoned with cumin to deter carrion birds from picking at the flesh, although the crows and magpies still made a fine feast of them.

  Other heads of note to grace Micklegate Bar include those of Sir Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy, displayed in 1403, and Sir William Plumpton, who happened to be on the wrong side at the wrong time during the Wars of the Roses and executed in 1405 on the orders of King Henry IV. The head of Lord Scrope was on view there in 1415, after his involvement in a plot to assassinate King Henry V. Many years later, in 1746, a brace of Jacobite heads, most notably those of William Conolly and James Mayne, were skewered there after the unsuccessful Jacobite Rebellion. Decapitated heads were clearly viewed as a long-term deterrent feature at the bar, as Mayne’s head presumably would have remained in place longer had it not been ‘illegally removed’ after a nine-year stint, in 1754.

  However, in deference to the severity of the crime, other lesser punishments were employed in cases of more minor offences; for example, branding, an ancient punishment using red-hot irons, was not only painful but a lasting mark of humiliation and a sentence which was undertaken publicly. Vagabonds would be marked with the letter ‘V’, brawlers with the letter ‘F’ for ‘fravmaker’, while prostitutes were branded on the face making their re-entry into respectable society impossible. It was usual at the assizes and quarter sessions to order the accused to hold up their hands before sentence was passed, as previously branded prisoners physically held their own record of prior conviction.

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  ‘prostitutes were branded on the face’

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  In 1682, a case took place in York in which a couple slandered a young woman who they thought worthy of being branded a prostitute. The ‘Cause Papers’ for the diocesan courts of the Archbishop of York cites this case as one of defamation (sexual slander). Mary Spragg accused husband and wife, Robert and Catherine Crooke of calling her, ‘A brasen faced whore and a painted whore … and bid her looke in her forhead if she was not branded for a whore’ – strong words indeed. Mary won her case.

  Stocks in the churchyard of the Priory Church of Holy Trinity, Micklegate. (These stocks are a replica – the originals are incorporated into an exhibition on permanent display inside the church.)

  This tiny street can be found between Colliergate and Fossgate, close to the Pavement.

  Other penalties for petty criminals included flogging and whipping, and between Colliergate and Fossgate is the aptly named Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate Street (known in the sixteenth century as ‘Whitnourwhatnourgate’), the shortest street in York with the longest name. The present street name evolved when the area was designated the site of the city’s whipping post where public floggings took place. We know that in the first half of the seventeenth century in York, the going rate for the official carrying out this punishment was 4d. Being placed in the pillory or stocks was also an efficacious chastisement in which the crowd would readily participate – the former, a lockable wooden frame on a pole with holes for the person’s head and hands, the latter, a version where the feet were held in place, both intended to subject the occupant to humiliation and ridicule, with spectators often throwing unpleasant objects of the rotten egg and old cabbage variety. On occasion however, the strength of public feeling could escalate to inflicting a serious pelting, with some unfortunates maimed for life or even dying in situ. Though their use went out of favour at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the pillory was not abolished in Britain until 1837, and use of the stocks was not abolished until 1872.

  Humans weren’t the only species to suffer a good whipping in York, however, as specific to the city was ‘Whip Dog Day’ which took place every St Luke’s Day, on 18 October. It was said that a dog once got into the Minster and ate some consecrated wafer, so as a punishment to the entire canine fraternity, once a year local boys whipped all the dogs they could find in the city. This was probably the pretext for a control measure that was exercised in most other cities, where a once yearly communal dog-drive would rid the streets of the packs of wild roaming dogs which used to present a genuine problem.

  A ducking stool, similar to the one found in York.

  York also boasted two ducking stools, one located in Blue Bridge Lane and another in the garden of one of the cottages on Postern Lane, where a pool of stagnant water was employed for this once very popular method of punishment. Reserved for females who, ‘… used fake measures or brewed bad beer’, as well as gossiping women who could not hold their tongue and were regarded as a public nuisance. When sentencing a woman to the ducking stool, magistrates would determine the number of ‘duckings’ she should suffer. In some instances a ‘get out’ clause would be applied, as in the case of Margery Watson in 1657, a notorious scold who was sentenced to ducking unless she apologised to the wife of James Wilkinson within one month either in church or even more publicly at the market cross. Gossiping was also a transgression punishable with the scold’s bridle, a metal frame placed over the woman’s head with a bit pressed into the mouth to prevent speech; the last recorded use of the scold’s bridle in Britain was in 1824.

  The scold’s bridle. (Courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library)

  Punishment in the form of public humiliation was certainly thought to be most efficacious, and a further example of which was the drunkard’s cloak. An individual found guilty of committing a petty crime, such as public drunkenness, would be forced to walk through the streets wearing a barrel as a demeaning chastisement. More extreme on the punishment scale were mutilations, which were a brutal but common penalty for stealing or poaching; the cutting off of hands, clipping of ears or the slitting of noses were all employed. All of these punishments, along with executions by pressing, burning, beheading and hanging, were all carried out publicly.

  Drunkard’s cloak. (Courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library)

  CHAPTER THREE

  GALLOWS GALORE!

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  Execution Sites Around the City of York

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  It naturally follows that those found guilty of criminal transgression needed to be punished under the law, and the severity of the punishment handed down was often cruelly tailored to reflect the crime that had been committed. Thieves might have their hands cut off, spies may have had their eyes put out, petty criminals might be put in the pillory, whipped or branded, but for those found guilty of a capital offence this carried the ultimate sentence of death. And to act as a deterrent to any would-be criminals, these sentences were carried out in public.

  Although records indicate that York’s Holy Trinity Priory had its own set of gallows in the city from very early on, these were eventually removed in the mid-1100s, when
King Stephen gave away the site on which they stood in order for St James’ Chapel to be built. The chapel served as a place of burial for convicted felons up until the sixteenth century, although at least one post-execution interment didn’t take place – a pardon was issued in 1280 to a man who miraculously came back to life after being hanged while on his way to be buried!

  Both St Mary’s Abbey and York Minster exercised control over all that went on within their own walled boundaries, along with boasting their own gaols and gallows. Until 1379, the gallows in the Liberty of St Mary’s Abbey was used for the execution of capital offenders. However, as a consequence of a dispute that erupted with the abbey monks, it was decided that a municipal gallows should be erected. The chosen place was originally the site of a gibbet post that had stood on the west side of Knavesmire – a large open space outside of the city walls that today faces onto the Tadcaster Road opposite Pulleyn Drive, and falls within the boundary of York Racecourse. The notorious York Tyburn, or the ‘Three Legged Mare’ as it was also known, was an expediently designed tripod arrangement which facilitated multiple executions of felons. The condemned would be taken from York Prison in an open cart, sat on their coffin and already wearing their shroud, jolted on out through Micklegate Bar towards the Knavesmire for their public execution. Executions were carried out on this spot between 1379 and 1801 and it is now marked with an informative plaque.

  Site of the York Tyburn on the Knavesmire, overlooking what is now York Racecourse.

  The gallows at the Knavesmire were not unique within York, however. As mentioned earlier, St Mary’s Abbey possessed its own gallows, which were located in the aptly named Gallows Close on Burton Stone Lane, while another gallows, under the control of the Dean and Chapter of York Minster, was sited in Horsefair, today situated at the junction of Haxby and Wiggington roads to the north of the city. The Church was clearly a heavy hitter in the capital punishment stakes as the Archbishop of York also had gallows in Fossgate. Closely associated with the Minster, St Leonard’s Hospital governed the gallows at Garrow Hill in Green Dyke Lane, the present Thief Lane being the route taken by condemned prisoners. The gallows at St Leonard’s was kept busy with recorded executions from 1374, and while there was an interruption in use, a period in the mid-sixteenth century probably attributable to the Reformation, the Garrow Hill gallows were back in business again by 1571 and used until 1676, finally being dismantled in June 1700. With the majority of executions at this point being carried out at the Knavesmire most of the other gallows had fallen into disuse too.

  Although the public nature of such spectacles was supposed to act as a deterrent to the populace, public hangings were often viewed as a form of mass entertainment, with an atmosphere of something perhaps akin to an open-air concert of today. Crowds, including families with young children, would take a picnic and make a day of it, and making the most of the York Tyburn’s proximity to the racecourse, bookmakers would happily take bets on the time it took the convicted to die on the gallows as well as wagers on the runners and riders.

  The first execution to take place at the new Knavesmire gallows was that of Edward Hewison on 31 March 1379. A native of Stockton, Hewison was a private soldier in the Earl of Northumberland’s Light Horse Brigade, and was tried and convicted at the Spring Assizes for raping twenty-two-year-old serving girl Louise Bentley. Justice was reasonably swift in this instance, as Hewison had committed the crime on 28 February, not long before the first of the twice-yearly assizes (he would otherwise have languished in York Castle until the case could be heard at the Summer Assizes). As this was the first execution at the new gallows, Hewison’s demise proved something of a celebrity hanging, drawing crowds from the neighbouring towns and villages as well as numerous spectators from the city itself. The body was hung from a gibbet three miles from the girl’s home town of Sheriff Hutton.

  In the intervening period between this first execution and the last to take place on the Knavesmire in 1801 (coincidentally the last person hanged at the York Tyburn was also a private soldier and he too was found guilty of rape – Edward Hughes was hanged on 29 August 1801), many felons, both infamous and forgotten, swung from the ‘Three Legged Mare’, the memory of which lives on in the name of a popular pub in High Petergate, and in keeping with the theme of aptly named public houses, this street is also home to the Last Drop Inn.

  Despite the obvious taste and enthusiasm for the spectacle of public execution, the ultimate decision to move the proceedings to York Castle Gaol was probably heavily influenced by the objectionable first impression of the city given by the Knavesmire gallows, as they were located next to one of the main highways into York. The gallows were also a cause of major road congestion. In an article printed on 25 July 1800, the York Herald explained, ‘Thus will be removed from one of the principal roads leading to the city that disagreeable nuisance, the gallows; and thus will the inhabitants and passengers be no longer interrupted, and their humanity hurt, by the leading of unfortunate people to the place of execution.’ As a consequence, it was decided at a civic meeting that investment in a new gallows should be made, in order that the, ‘Entrance to the town should no longer be annoyed by dragging criminals through the streets’. Though sensibility won on this day, the Knavesmire gallows stood (albeit unused) for a further eleven years before it was finally dismantled in 1812.

  The Three-Legged Mare, High Petergate.

  The Last Drop Inn, High Petergate.

  The ‘New Drop’, as it became known, was constructed by Joseph Halfpenny, a joiner from Blake Street in York, and was set up at the back of the castle in an area boarded by the Castle Mills Bridge and the River Ouse, roughly where the roundabout by St George’s car park is today. Looking toward York Castle Museum, there is a small doorway in the wall to the right, through which the condemned prisoners were led. Completed on 8 March 1801, the first executions were not to take place until Saturday, 28 August 1802, when James Roberts, William Barker and William Jackson were all hanged there. Roberts had been found guilty of stealing nineteen sheep, Barker for stealing three horses and Jackson for the robbery of a Mr Wetherhead of Malton. The new gallows at the castle continued as York’s principal place of execution until the 1820s, when it was superseded by a structure variously described as, ‘the New Drop in front of St George’s fields’. This new gallows was trundled out into the open area in front of the Debtors’ Prison, all the better to facilitate the multitude of spectators who would crowd to watch an execution.

  It was usual for prisoners condemned at the previous assizes to await the next scheduled day of execution and then be hanged in groups, irrespective of gender. Up until 1830, Monday was the designated day for murderers to be hanged, while the execution of other criminals was kept back for Saturdays as this allowed for the largest weekend crowds – until 29 May 1868 that is, as this was the date Parliament passed the Capital Punishment (Amendment) Act ending all public hangings. The last public execution in York was that of Frederick Parker on Saturday, 4 April 1868, for the murder of Daniel Driscoll on 29 February that same year. The two had met on release from the Beverley House of Correction and it seemed that Driscoll was rather better set than Parker, with £4 11s in his pocket and a silver watch and chain. It was for his effects that Parker murdered the unfortunate man, before dumping his body in a ditch. On the day of his execution, shortly after noon, Parker shook hands with the governor, under-governor and head warders on the scaffold, wishing them ‘Goodbye’ and hoping they might meet in heaven. After kneeling in prayer the last public spectacle of execution was brought to a close. From that day forth, private executions were carried out on a balcony style gallows built at the end of one of the wings of the Debtors’ Prison, although members of the press were still admitted to witness executions at this time.

  Execution day at York, c. 1820. Thomas Rowlandson. (Courtesy of York Museums Trust, York Art Gallery)

  A Big Draw

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  At the time when York’s public hangings to
ok place in the capacious open area in St George’s Fields, special trains were being laid on to better facilitate transport of the immense crowds drawn to the executions. However, the majority of spectators who came to watch the execution of James Waller at noon on Saturday, 4 January 1862 came on foot. Many had set off in the early hours of the morning from the West Riding (from whence Waller hailed), and it was noted that those who were fatigued by their long nocturnal walk took respite by sleeping in the field opposite the drop, while others perched themselves on the rails surrounding St George’s Field in an ‘easy jaunty manner’. Clearly the deterrent that such public spectacles should have occassioned was absent, as demonstrated by the ‘ribald and disgusting expressions which came from others in reference to the unfortunate man’s approaching end’, leaving one observer at a loss ‘to find the working of that great moral lesson which the public strangling of a criminal was designed to effect.’ Incidentally, the headcount for this particular execution was put at between eight to ten thousand people – Waller was thirty-one years of age at the time of his execution, and had been found guilty of the wilful murder of William Smith, a gamekeeper, the previous November.