Throughout history there have been many execution methods used, from the horrific hanged, drawn
and quartered to even being crushed to death by an elephant.
But there was one common strand between all methods of public execution, and it is the
fact they were performed in public in front of huge crowds.
The point of this was to put possible offenders off committing crimes if they saw a criminal
being killed in a horrific way.
Guy Fawkes for example was hanged, drawn and quartered in an attempt to quash any rebellion
against the King, but public executions were viewed by the people as a form of sport and
entertainment which was gruesome and sadistic.
Some would even pay to rent rooms in houses overlooking key execution spots.
But there was one method of execution used during the medieval period that saw the general
public passing under the remains of someone, or someone who was dying on a daily basis.
Gibbeting was a horrific way to go, and it was one of History’s most brutal execution
methods.
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A gibbet was usually a wooden structure in which a metal cage of body could be hanged
to, and the point of this was to display to everyone the dead criminal or the dying criminal.
It was also known as hanging in chains, and was a common punishment used in England, and
it was made more popular by the Murder Act 1751 which gave judges the power to use gibbeting
as a sentence for murder.
But then it was used also for people who committed a wide variety of crimes, from sheep stealing
and piracy to even treason.
It was used commonly also for highwaymen, and the criminals rotting remains would be
placed in a gibbet next to a public highway to deter other possible thiefs.
In the same manner, pirates were often hanged on a gibbet close to a low water mark or a
tidal part of a river.
Their bodies would be left dangling until they had been covered and submerged by the
tide at least three times.
Execution Dock can be found in London in Wapping, and it was here where criminals bodies were
hanged in cages along with other points along the River Thames.
Often ships would pass under the bodies of convicted pirates, and this would act as a
stark reminder for potential pirates not to commit acts of piracy.
There were some complaints, as some foreign visitors to England did not agree with the
brutal display of the remains of an executed person.
It was said also that the sight and smell of decaying corpses was bad for health, and
was also linked to disease.
The cage used in gibbeting as mentioned wasn’t always used, but it was used to keep the condemned
person in a human way.
It was said of the cage during a gibbeting that, ‘The body was encased in flat bars
of iron of two and a half inches in breadth, the feet were placed in stirrups, from which
a bar of iron went up each side of the head, and ended in a ring by which he was suspended;
a bar from the collar went down the breast, and another down the back, there were also
bars in the inside of the legs which communicated with the above; and crossbars at the ankles,
the knees, the thighs, the bowels the breast and the shoulders; the hands were hung by
the side and covered with pitch, the face was pitched and covered with a piece of white
cloth.’
Gibbeting mostly meant the display of human remains, so the display of someones head during
the Tudor Period or later on London Bridge would be linked to the practice.
But it was used in many different countries too.
In Germany, a Jewish financier, Joseph Suss Oppenheimer was gibbeted in a human sized
bird cage that hung outside of Stuttgart, Hitler would later used this story to attempt
to turn the German public against the Jews.
Sometimes the bodies would also be boated in tar or bound in chains, as this would prolong
the decay of the criminal, for example a murderer John Breads in East Sussex was hanged and
then gibbetted for more than 20 years inside of an iron cage.
The image of passing under the remains of a decaying corpse would be a strong one for
many people living inside towns and cities.
In Australia, five years after Gibbetting ended in England, the body of a murderer John
McKay was gibbetted near to a spot where he murdered his victim in Tasmania.
This caused great upset, and the body was not removed until a friend of the victim asked
the authorities to take it down as he was disgusted with the images of McKay’s corpse
rotting in the air.
As mentioned, some criminals in some cases were gibbetted alive.
This was where they were locked in a cage and then hoisted into the air with no way
out on display.
This was intended to then cause a criminal to slowly die from starvation and exposure.
As someone would walk past the criminal in the cage each day, they would notice them
slowly losing weight, and slowly succumbing to a painful dead with the passing public
mocking them every day.
It was mostly always men who were gibbeted also, as female corpses at the time were in
high demand from surgeons and anatomists for dissection and science, but for many people
in the crowd they would be happy to see gibbetting.
Despite opposition from some, it was a popular way of seeing that justice was administered,
but imagine living close to a gibbet.
The flies would be feasting on the rotting remains of a criminal, and it would smell
horrific, and many people were forced to keep their windows shut because of the gibbet.
Sometimes decay would take years, and bones would sometimes fall through the cages once
flesh had been picked at by the birds.
Efforts were made to ensure that people did not take people out of gibbets even once dead,
and one pole was even studded with 12,000 nails to keep people touching the gibbet.
The cages were made by blacksmiths and were expensive to create and would be used more
than once for different criminals.
The last gibbeting in England was the case of James Cook who was bookbinder who murdered
another man in Leicester.
He was executed on the 10th August 1832 in front of Leicester prison, and then following
this it was said, ‘The head was shaved and tarred, to preserve it from the action of
the weather; and the cap in which he had suffered was drawn over his face.
On Saturday afternoon his body, attired as at the time of his execution, having been
firmly fixed in the irons necessary to keep the limbs together, was carried to the place
of its intended suspension.’
Cook’s body was then placed on a specially built 10 metre high gallows near a tollgate
in Leicester and it was said of his gibbeting, ‘Thousands of persons were attracted to
the spot, to view this novel but most barbarous exhibition; and considerable annoyance was
felt by persons resident in the neighbourhood of the dreadful scene.
Representations were in consequence made to the authorities, and on the following Tuesday
morning instructions were received from the Home Office directing the removal of the gibbet.’
The practice of gibbeting was one of the most brutal and shocking execution methods in history,
which involved the public display of the remains of a criminal.
It was meant to act as a very severe reminder that justice had been administered with the
execution of a serious offender.
It did attract criticism, but was used for centuries and it’s probably seen as an effective
way of deterring someone from committing crimes such as murder.
If you had to pass under the gibbet everyday, you would certainly remember it.
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