302
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. n. OCT. 13, >9s.
instance did the atrocity of the crime exceed
very common larceny, Christopher Trusty
having been sentenced for an attempt at
highway robbery. This was, then, the ante-
penultimate execution at Tyburn.
The penultimate was in the following month, when, on Tuesday, 28 October, 1783, ten unhappy beings were dragged to the fatal site, viz., William Moore, John Barton, John Pilkington, James Neale, Thomas Smith and John Starkey (for a joint offence), Mat- thew Daniel, John Anderson, John Francis, and John Booker, or Brooker.
The last execution on or near the site where for centuries the grim "triple tree" had formed a prominent object of the Oxford Road was as given by ME. ADAMS, when, on Friday, 7 November, 1783, John Austin suffered there for what would be now tech- nically denned as " robbery with violence " in Bethnal Green Fields, near Stepney.
There are one or two peculiarities about these last three executions at Tyburn worthy of note. Down to about 1750, at least, the " three-legged mare" the gallows depicted by Hogarth was a permanent fixture at Tyburn turnpike, standing (as I have for myself, at least, satisfactorily settled, notwithstanding much controversy, of which the pages of ' N. & Q.' through all its eight series afford passim abundant evidence) exactly on a site slightly to the south-west of one or the three "traffic refuges" provided with standard street lamps at the debouchure of the Edgware Road into the Oxford Road, a little to the west of Cumberland Gate (Marble Arch). The three refuges form a triangle, one, the apex, in the middle of the carriage way of the Edgware Road, a few yards north from its junction with the Bays water Road ; then we have two refuges in the middle of the carriage way of the Bayswater Road, one to the west and one to the east of the commencement of the Edgware Road. According to Roque's map (1746) the gallows stands on a site about (speculatively estimating) ten yards from the Edgware Road refuge erected in our time, and at a rather greater distance north-east of the westernmost of the present Bayswater Road refuges. Roque's map shows the gal- leries for the spectators of these terrible exhibitions projecting over the footway at the rounded-off north-western corner of the Edgware and Bayswater roads, the north- eastern rounded-off corner now a group of houses called "Marble Arch" being then occupied by a large residence shown in the map, known as Tyburn House.* By 1757 the
- See Roque's Map of London, 1742-6.
gallows had been removed from here, and
the structure no longer impeded the rapidly
increasing traffic to Whitchurch, Stanmore,
and Edgware, for I find that about that time
certainly in 1759 a portable gallows was
substituted and carried to the place of exe-
cution, and set up prior to the arrival of
each procession from Newgate. Thus, on
Wednesday, 3 October, 1759, four criminals
being executed, we read that "the gallows,
which is a movable one, was carried there
[where ?] before them and fixed up for that
purpose?'* This, apparently, continued to
be the practice down to the hanging of the
" king's engraver" (Ry land) and five others as
mentioned by MR. ADAMS. On this and the
three subsequent sad occasions the old trian-
gular machine was discarded, and a simple
"cross-beam and uprights" substituted.!
The uprights supported a cross-piece, which spanned the Edgware Road from a point on the east the north-west corner of Cumberland Mews to the south-west corner of Connaught Place on the west. The cus- tom of carrying the apparatus to the spot pro hac vice had, however, it would seem, by this time (1783) been discontinued, and the three baulks of timber were kept, when not in use, on the premises of the north-west corner house in what is now Bryanston Street, the cross-piece reposing horizontally on three brick (compo-faced) piers built on the ground against the wall, running along the front of the house in the same manner as as we are informed by Stow the great maypole of St. Andrew Undershaft was supported along the churchyard wall in St. Mary Axe. The actual location of the gallows when required for use was, then, a few yards to the north of that formerly occupied by the old "triple tree" when it remained in situ. I remember reading some two score years ago that when the house at the north- west corner of Bryanston Street was being demolished prior to a re-erection on the same site, an eye-witness testified to beholding the remains of these supports. I infer, however, that this site was selected for the first time at the execution of Ryland and his five fellow-sufferers, for the contemporary broad- sheet ('Last Dying Speech and Confession,' &c.) expressly states that " on this occasion the gallows was fixed about fifty yards nearer
- The Gentleman's Magazine for 1759, vol. xxix.
p. 493.
t The more simple form would appear to have been first adopted at Ryland's execution, from a contemporary wood engraving heading a catch- penny broadsheet, where, however, eight (not six) bodies are depicted dangling.
