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Horsemonger Lane Gaol. |
The Surrey County Gaol or New Gaol, as it was known, was built by George Gwilt as the main prison for the
Like most
general prisons,
Executions at
Up to 1800,
The first executions took place on Friday, the 4th of
April 1800, when 5 men were hanged by William Brunskill,
one each for coining, highway robbery and being at large and two for burglary.
A total of 12 men were executed on 3 occasions during 1800.
The gallows for public executions was of the “New
Drop” pattern erected on the flat roof of the main gatehouse in between the 4 lanthorns or skylights.
(Click here for a woodcut picture). The largest number hanged at one time being
7, on two occasions, Monday, 21st of February 1803 and Monday, the 4th of April
1803.
The first of these executions was of Colonel Despard and his group for High
Treason. Despard and his co-conspirators had been arrested on the 16th of November 1802 at the
Oakley Arms pub in Lambeth by a large body of police. In all, some 40 people were arrested and they
all appeared before magistrates
at Union Hall police office the following day.
Their somewhat half baked conspiracy had been betrayed by one of the
group, Thomas Windsor, who was the chief witness at their trial.
Those convicted of high treason were Colonel Edward
Marcus Despard, 50, John Wood, 36, John Francis, 23, both privates in the army,
Thomas Broughton, 26, a
carpenter, James Sedgwick Wratton, 35, a shoemaker, Arthur
Graham, 53, a slater, John Macnamara, Thomas
Newman, Daniel Tyndale and William Lander. All were charged with 3 counts of High
Treason and tried before a Special Commission on Monday, the 7th of February 1803, for
conspiring to capture and kill the King and overthrow the government. They had
also planned to stop the mail coaches entering and leaving London and take over
the Tower. Admiral Lord Nelson appeared in Despard’s
defence and gave him an excellent character reference. However, all 10 were found guilty and were
sentenced by Lord Ellenborough as follows : “You (the prisoners were named in turn)
are to be taken from the place from whence you came, and from thence you are to
be drawn on hurdles to the place of execution, where you are to be hanged by
the neck, but not until you are dead; for while you are still living your
bodies are to be taken down, your bowels torn out and burned before your faces)
your heads then cut off, and your bodies divided each into four quarters, and
your heads and quarters to be then at the King's disposal ; and may the
Almighty God have mercy on your souls!" Newman, Tyndale and Lander were respited and the remaining 7
executed.
As happened with the Cato Street conspirators, 17 years later, the full rigours
of their sentence were reduced to hanging until dead followed by decapitation.
The death warrants were read to the men on the Sunday evening, (20th of
February 1803) and the execution took place on the Monday morning. A block and bags of sawdust had been placed
upon the gaol roof beside the gallows.
At 7.00 a.m., the men were brought out of their cells and had their iron
fetters removed and replaced with rope bindings. They were placed on hurdles and pulled round
the yard by horses in a procession led by the sheriff, Sir R. Ford, accompanied by the
chaplain, Mr. Winkworth, and Mr Griffith, a Catholic
priest. (Despard was Catholic). They were then taken back into the prison and
up to the roof where Despard addressed the huge crowd from the gallows
proclaiming his innocence, his fellow prisoners remaining silent. Brunskill prepared each of the men and at the signal from
the Sheriff, the drop fell at 8.53 a.m.
They were left hanging for half an hour before being taken down and
having their heads cut off by a masked man.
Despard was the first to be decapitated.
The severed heads were held aloft by the hangman with the cry of,
“Behold the head of a traitor.” Despard was buried near the north
door of St Paul's Cathedral and the other 6 buried in one grave at a chapel, in
London Road, St George's Fields.
On the
morning of Tuesday, the 4th of April 1809, Brunskill
had a quadruple hanging to perform. The
prisoners were James Bartlett, who had been convicted of sodomy, highway robber
Henry Edwards and John Biggs and Samuel Wood who were to hang for burglary. A
large crowd had assembled to watch the execution and it is reported that “the
unfortunate men met their fate with great fortitude and died acknowledging the
justice of their punishment.” Biggs sarcastically observed to Brunskill, when he was pinioning him in the usual way,
"I wish you had a better office."
Richard
Valentine Thomas was hanged by William Brunskill on
Monday, the 3rd of September 1810 for forging and uttering a cheque for the sum
of 400 pounds, 8 shillings on Messrs
Smith, Paine and Smyth in London, purporting to be drawn by Messrs Diffell and Son.
This was a huge sum in its day and Thomas had the cheque cashed into
large denomination notes, most of which were discovered and traced back to
him. Uttering and forgery were both
offences which regularly resulted in execution at this time and were not
de-capitalised until 1836.
At around 9.00 a.m. on Monday, the 23rd of April 1827,
Daniel Buckley and Jeremiah Andrews, both of whom had been convicted at the
Surrey Assizes of the high treason offence of coining, were hanged by Thomas
Foxen. Prior to the execution, they were
drawn across the yard on a hurdle with Foxen standing behind them with a drawn
sword, to the foot of the staircase leading to the roof and then brought up
onto it for their brief walk to the gallows.
William Banks was executed on the 11th of January 1830
for the crime of housebreaking, still a capital crime at this period. Banks had been a member of the "Moulsey
Gang" who were betrayed by a fellow criminal to save himself from a sentence
of transportation for life. Banks had been convicted at the Surrey Assizes of
breaking into the house of the Reverend William Warrington at Grove Cottage,
West Moulsey, in Surrey, on the night of Wednesday,
the 19th of November 1828.
Banks was a
career criminal and his luck held out until July 1829 when he was informed on
and he and his gang arrested. However,
his co-defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence.
One of the
best known cases at Horsemonger Lane was that of Maria and Frederick Manning
who were hanged there on the morning of Tuesday, the 13th of November
1849. This led to angry outbursts in the
Times newspaper from Charles Dickens deploring the behaviour of the crowd at
public executions and helped lead to the abolition of public hanging. Click here for the full details of this famous case.
William Godfrey Youngman was hanged by William Calcraft on Tuesday, the 4th of September
1860 for the murder of his girlfriend, Mary Streeter, in Walwoth
Road, London for her life insurance.
Youngman greeted Calcraft and asked him to “strap my legs tight and be
sure to shake hands with me before I go.”
Calcraft did as requested.
A public execution was witnessed by a Mr. Shephard Taylor on the 12th of January 1864, who recorded
the event as follows:
“Saw Samuel Wright hanged on the roof of Horsemonger
Lane Jail for the murder of a paramour. This man, a bricklayer, three years ago
found and returned to me a silver watch which I had lost at a fete. It was a remarkable case in the fact that the
murder, the coroner's inquest, the magisterial investigation, the trial, and
sentence all took place in a week.”
“The general public
and all the newspapers without exception advocated clemency on the part of the
Crown, but the Home Secretary was inexorable. The blinds were down in all the
neighbouring streets and the military were called out in case of an attempted
rescue. When the unfortunate man appeared on the scaffold, loud cries of “Take
him, take him down” were heard in every direction, to which the unhappy man
responded by repeated bows to the multitude, he still continued bowing and was
actually bowing when the drop fell.”
Margaret Waters was one of the worst criminals
to die at Horsemonger Lane. She was a baby farmer who took in the babies of
unmarried mothers for a fee and then killed them. She was convicted of the murder of John Cowan
but is thought to have murdered between 16 and 19 babies in the Brixton area. Her case filled the papers in the summer of 1870 with graphic
descriptions of how she had poisoned babies, wrapped their bodies in old rags
and newspapers and dumped them on deserted streets. When she was arrested, 9
babies in very poor health were discovered at her home and taken to the Lambeth
Workhouse, the majority of them died soon afterwards. She was tried at the Surrey Assizes on the
one count of murder and hanged by William Calcraft on the 11th of October 1870.
The last two executions both took place in
1877. The first was that of 23 year old Isaac Marks, a Jewish antiques
dealer on the 2nd of January. Marks had
been convicted of shooting Frederick Bernard on the afternoon of the 24th of
October 1876, outside a shop in Lambeth. Marks had been engaged to Caroline
Bernard, Frederick’s daughter. Mark’s
house burnt down in 1876 and his prospective father-in-law offered to help him
sort out the insurance claim. Having
done so, he presented Marks with the bill for his services which led to a major
row. Marks laid in wait for Bernard and killed him coming out of the shop. A defence of insanity was mounted but the
jury refused to accept it and so young Mr. Marks got his date with William
Marwood.
Thirty
eight year old Caleb Smith murdered his common-law wife, Emma Elizabeth Osbourne, at their home in Croydon on the 14th of April
1877. He and Emma had one of their
regular drunken quarrels during which she slapped him across the face. In a
rage, he pulled out his razor and cut her throat before turning the blade on
himself in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. He was tried for murder at the
Central Criminal Court (Old Bailey) on the 24th of July, and offered a plea of
guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation. The jury did not accept
this and found him guilty of murder, thus he was sentenced to hang. He was
executed in private by William Marwood on the 14th of August 1877 in the
execution shed at Horsemonger Lane, becoming the last person to be hanged
there. After this, Surrey executions
took place at the newly opened Wandsworth prison.
Executioners at Horsemonger Lane.
William Brunskill carried
out all of the first 68 hangings here up to April 1814. He was succeeded by John Langley for the next
6 up to April 1817 and then by Jeremy Botting with 6 until 1819. Thomas Foxen carried out the next 21 up to
January 1829, before being replaced by William Calcraft who carried out the 25
public hangings and the first private one - baby farmer, Margaret Waters, on
Tuesday, the 11th of October 1870.
William Marwood officiated at the last 4 hangings between October 1874 and August 1877.
