Worst Punishments in the History of Mankind - The Gibbet

 1701, England. On the fringes of London, two men look out over the River Thames where they see the body of a caged dead man hanging from a wooden post. They both grimace in unison as the wind carries the awful stench of decomposition into their nostrils. It’s a sight to behold, so savage in nature and yet the law of the land. 

The horror the men feel at this monstrous sight is intentional. The message is clear: All those that break our laws will end up like this, swinging on the gibbet until the flesh has fallen from their bones. The caged dead man was the pirate hunter, turned pirate himself, William Kidd. Kidd was once a friend to the rich and power fulin England, whom he served as a privateer. 

Kidd was also once a darling to those he served cross the pond in the New World, but he fell out of favor after his brand of violent entrepreneurship served mainly himself and his men. He was convicted of murder and five counts of piracy and hanged on May 23 at London’s Execution Dock. This was a place near the Thames where close to 400 pirates and smugglers were strung up until death, often a slow form of hanging since there was no neck-breaking drop. 

These were public events. They were supposed to act as a kind of dark entertainment for the public just as tabloid newspapers titillate people today with stories of crime and punishment. As one person wrote back in the 1700s, “immense crowds of spectators” would turn up to watch the hangings. When Kidd got his turn, things didn’t exactly go to plan. On the first attempt, the rope snapped, which gave rise to shouts and jeers from the madding crowd. 

Worst Punishments in the History of Mankind - The Gibbet

They said it was a sign from above and Kidd should be released. He wasn’t. The spectacle of violence for the public was seen as the best way of deterring criminal acts. The more barbaric, the better, was the reasoning. Sometimes tens of thousands of people saw the execution, which made the authorities happy. But as Michael Foucault pointed out in his book, “Discipline and Punish”, this could backfire. After all, a too-brutal monarch or government might anger the public and impel them to riot. 

Moreover, the person that suffered the horrendous punishment could become a kind of martyr. This is important when we talk about the gibbet. As you’ll soon discover, it was just too distasteful for some people to stomach. After Kidd was hanged, his body was taken to another place where it was fastened inside an iron cage. That cage was fixed to strong wooden beams and hung over the River Thames. 

Passersby were able to see the rotting fles hand for a while, take in the revolting odor of putrefaction. Moreover, anyone sailing down the Thames might also look at it and be put off piracy. So, the gibbet was very unpleasant, and it was supposed to be. It served as a warning for budding criminals, mirroring the caution found above Dante’s Gates of Hell: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Ok, let’s now look at some historical examples of how the gibbet was used. 

What the English did was hardly a unique invention. For centuries enemies of various states were killed and left to hang while rotting. That happened all the time throughout the ages as a means to scare encroaching armies. It wasn’t much different from leaving people to die on crucifixes. The English just took this kind of thing to another level. 

Worst Punishments in the History of Mankind - The Gibbet

As you already know, it was popular in England in the 18th century, which was a time in which England embraced what was called the “Bloody Code.” Back in those dark days, you could have been executed for what we now called a misdemeanor. For the very worst crime, one against the state, known as treason, a man was usually hanged, drawn, and quartered, while a woman was burned at the stake. 

For the male, he was hanged slowly, after which he was usually emasculated (that means he lost his sex organ), eviscerated (that means his bowels were ripped out, sometimes burned in front of him), and only then was he beheaded and cut into four pieces. This happened to William Wallace, a Scotsman you might have seen Mel Gibson play in the not-very-accurate movie, Braveheart. 

After Wallace was captured by the English he was hanged, drawn, and quartered, in the way that we’ve just described. After he was dead, his head was dipped in tar and stuck on London bridge. The tarring was to preserve the head for as long as possible so the greatest number of people could see it. His two brothers’ heads later joined his on the same bridge, but the English weren’t done with making an example of Wallace. 

His severed limbs went on tour, with one of them making its way up north to the city of Newcastle. Three other limbs ended up at separate places in Scotland, and each was exhibited where the public could see it. This is when the gibbet came in handy. Now you’ve heard of people being hanged in metal cages and you’ve heard how body parts might have been tarred and hanged on a gibbet, but this still wasn’t formally written into English law. 

Worst Punishments in the History of Mankind - The Gibbet

It was more an act of official savagery. Then came the Murder Act of 1751, which decreed that any and all murderers should never be buried. The law stated that after execution, “some further terror and peculiar mark of infamy be added”. The further terror was supposed to act as a deterrent for criminals. The law stipulated that after the person had been executed their body had to go to the gibbet for public view, hung up by chains. 

The other option was public dissection. It happened to a man named John Breads, although just before the law was passed. He’d mistakenly murdered a man he thought was the mayor of Rye, a town in southern England. As the story goes, the mayor, James Lamb, had given his brother-in-law, Allen Grabill, his mayoral cloak to wear. Breads killed him, thinking he was Lamb. Breads was executed. His body was subsequently fastened into andiron cage which was suspended on a post located at a place called Gibbet Marsh. 

It stayed there for 20 years, which was stark reminder to anyone passing of what happens if you kill someone. An example on a much bigger scale was the story of the Hawkhurst gang. This was a large outfit of Englishmen that earned their crust from robberies and smuggling. They also committed the odd murder, especially when someone got in the way of their business. This was old school organized crime, a kind of early mafia enterprise where sit-downs might have happened in the Dog and Partridgean. 

They actually murdered a man there, another reason why the authorities had to make an example of them. That they did after 75 members of the ganger arrested. Some were transported to far-off lands and others were hanged. 14 of them were hanged and later hung in chains from the gibbet. Scholars have since written that crime waves back then were the reason for more people being gibbetted, although it came at quite the cost for the authorities. 

Worst Punishments in the History of Mankind - The Gibbet

For instance, creating those metal cages where the dead were housed wasn’t a cheap undertaking. The cage which held the body had to be very solid iron because keeping a person suspended around 30 feet in the air was not always easy ,especially if the victim was on the large side. Then the gibbet post had to be made climb-proof because people would try and take the body down or kids might try to get up and mess with the dead person. 

This all took time and effort.  Historians now say there was never a one size fits all with the cages and so blacksmiths had to measure the condemned so they might create the perfect cage. Some of them certainly didn’t look easy to make, and blacksmiths weren’t exactly trained to make them. Sometimes those cages were made to be slightly adjustable, and that came at more cost, as did the fact the authorities asked the blacksmiths to make them so that they swung in the wind. 

We actually found historical records showing the costs of gibbeting in the mid-18th century. A carpenter named Richard Goodman charged17 pounds, 14 shillings for wood beams used for three gibbets. He charged some more for transportation and fixing them in the ground. Using a currency calculator, the value of17 pounds in today’s money would be close to 5,000 pounds, about $6,900. 

James Beading seemed to offer a pretty good deal, charging just 8 pounds, four shillings, for one wooden post, the iron cage, as well as the chains. Maybe he advertised his service as a one-stop shop. There are other records of skilled men refusing to do any work because they thought the practice was too barbaric. 

As we said, a lot of people in England did not want to walk down the street for months or years and have to look up at the remains of a dead person. Such was the case with a man named John Swan ,who was hanged in 1752 for murder. 

Worst Punishments in the History of Mankind - The Gibbet

He was then hung with chains from the gibbet, but the authorities said the location wasn’t ideal because it was “in full view of some Gentlemen’s houses on the Forest.” They moved Mr. Swan to a place called Buckets Hill, only for more gentlemen to complain about the ghastly sight. The authorities finally agreed on the place where the crime had taken place. 

A similar thing happened when Abraham Tul land William Hawkins were strung up in Berkshire. A wealthy local woman, know only as Mrs. Brocas of Beaure paire, said passing the gibbet on her daily drives in her carriage was very distressing. She was rich enough to get the thing moved. Not only that, families of people in the gibbet could be expected to see their loved ones for years, decades even. 

There was always a reminder for them of their loss and the shame they felt about what their loved one had done. Can you imagine having to walk past your dead brother every day? What also happened was animals would enjoy the flesh of the condemned, and after a while bits of them would drop off onto the floor. Once the flesh was gone, sometimes bones would spill out of the cage. It certainly wasn’t cool when you had to take your children past the gibbet site. 

In the end, only the larger bones and the skull were left in the cage, which also didn’t look too pleasant for the more sensitive folks. When people picked up the newspaper and read these lines, many of them thought, “Oh God, not another one.” One newspaper printed this: "Yesterday morning about eight o’clock Richard Ashcraft and John Cook, the two smugglers, were carried under a strong detachment of the guards, from New gate to Tiburon, and executed pursuant to their sentence; after which their bodies were hung on a gibbet at Shepherd’s Bush.” 

This is a very busy part of London today, but in the past was where shepherds left their sheep when heading to the market. Main roads ran out of there, and where you might come across the BBC today, back then you could have found a series of gibbets holding cages of dead men. In fact, several locations around London were chosen, usually ones that were major routes for travelers. 

We won’t go into all the cases we founding London, but will add that if you lived in that city in the mid-1700s or early 1800sand you traveled a fair bit, there was a good chance you saw a fair few dangling cadavers. It was almost unavoidable. Smugglers, highwaymen, murderers, were aplenty, and many of them did not go quietly into the night after they were executed. It didn’t just happen in London, either. 

Worst Punishments in the History of Mankind - The Gibbet

Up north in Durham, a miner named William Jobling murdered colliery owner and local magistrate, Nicholas Fairless. He was hanged and paraded around the town, after which he was gibbeted. There’s a clear description that exists of how it went down. 

It goes like this: "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, an denuded in a ring by which he was suspended; a bar from the collar went down the braes t, and another down the back…” Much has been written about this story. 

The victim was a mine owner at a time when miners were treated worse than animals, and the perpetrator started working in those mines round the age of 10. One day Jobling, drunk and out of work, held out a cap to Fairies and asked for a donation so he could go get some ale. Fairless refused and was subsequently attacked by Jobling and two other men. He died from his injuries ten days later. The authorities saw this as a vulgar man killings perfectly fine gentleman, about the worst crime of all back then besides killing a monarch.