220 CBIME AND PUNISHMENT To realise the state of mind in which Phillip looked at the question of crime and punishment^ we have only to Scenes in picturo to ourselvos the scenes with which he had become ^'^ ' familiar during his career in England^ before he took com- mand of the Expedition. From 1755, when he entered the navy, to 1787, when he sailed with the First Fleet, the criminal system of the last century may be said to h&ve been in full bloom ; and although most of Phillip's time was passed at sea, his visits to England, to say nothing of his residence in the New Forest as a country gentlemaOj gave him opportunities enough for seeing those peculiar spectacles which justified Charles Knight in describing London at that time as '^ the City of the Gullows/' In going up the Thames, for instance, the traveller would pro- Gibbets on bably SCO the gibbet standing on its banks, with the remains
- of mutineers, or persons who had committed murder on the
high seas, hanging from them in chains.* One of the docks Execution in London was called Execution Dock, because criminals of that class were usually condemned to suffer there. After they had been hanged, their bodies were cut down and a deal box containinff a quantity of haberdaflhery goods ; Peter Verritf, accomplice with Charles Kelly, executed for burglary in the honae of Mrs. Pollard, in Qreat Queen-street ; William Odem, for robbiufftwo women in Spawfields ; Charles Woolett, for robbing Bernard John Cheale, on the highway, of a metal watch ; John Graham, for feloniously altering the principal sum of a bank note of £15, so as to make the same appear to be a bank note of £50, with intent to defraud ; Cliarlotte Goodall and John Edmonds, for stealing in the dwelling-house of Mrs. Fortesqne, at Totten- ham, where she lived as servant, a great quantity of plate, linen, kc ; Thomas Cladenboul, for assaulting £obert Chilton on the highway sod robbing him of a gold watch ; John Weatherley and John Lafee, for teloni' ously and treasonably coining and counterfeiting the silver moneys of the realm called shillings and sixpences. They all behaved very penitent"— London Evening Post, 9 October, 1782.
- Andrews, Eighteentli Century, p. 269 ; Hogarth, The Idle 'PrenUce
sent to Sea. The practice of hanging in chains was not confined to cases of piracy or mutiny ; the bodies of murderers and highwaymen were usually hung in that manner. A murderer was hanged in chams on Rock Island in 1796 ; Collins, vol. ii, p. 10. The practice of hanging in chains had fallen into disuse in England by 1832 ; out an attempt was made to revive it at that date, when the Act for dispensing with uie dimnrtifm cd criminals was passed. A clause was inserted to the effect that tl»e bodies of all prisoners convicted of murder should either be hunff in chains* or ' buried under the gallows on which they had been exeoated, aooording to the discretion of the Court Dock. Digitized by Google
