THE MOST FAMOUS GALLOWS IN THE WORLD

If you leave Oxford Street and come to a crossroads, where you see the five-star Cumberland Hotel and the immersive FRAMELESS art experience on one side and Marble Arch on the other, cross the road and linger on the small pedestrian island. You will notice a round plaque beneath your feet. Grey and not very noticeable, it is surrounded by three young trees, reading ‘The Site of Tyburn Tree’.

Legend has it that if one stands with both feet on the plaque, even on the hottest day, they will feel a chill rising from beneath because this ‘Deadly Never Green Tree’ was the tree of the dead. The Tyburn Tree was the name of the notorious Royal Gallows.

According to official records, executions took place at this spot from 1196 to 1783. However, one can presume that the Saxons could have been hanging people on the elms growing along the banks of the River Tyburn, which flows into the Thames today, long before the Norman Conquest of 1066. In the twelfth century, the gallows were erected by the Tyburn by royal decree, and the field nearby attracted huge crowds of spectators for public executions. For centuries, the Tyburn Tree became London’s most terrifying and popular type of entertainment.

Back in those days, Oxford Street, where today you can barely swing a cat for all its shoppers, was called Tyburn Road. It was used to transport convicted prisoners from the Tower of London or Newgate Prison to the place of their last breath while crowds jeered and shouted obscenities.

In the reign of Elizabeth I, the gallows at Tyburn were replaced with the notorious Triple Gallows, a massive structure designed to hang twenty-four people at once. This contraption, and the resultant grim sights, left a powerful impression on Elizabethan society, including Shakespeare, who mentioned it in one of his plays:

The first recorded execution at Tyburn took place in 1196. William Fitz Osbert, also known as William with the Long Beard, was hanged for inciting a revolt during an uprising of the poor in the spring of that year. The detailed accounts of these events are found in historian William of Newburgh’s Historia rerum anglicarum, in a chapter titled ‘Of a conspiracy made in London by one William, and how he paid the penalty of his audacity’.

William Fitz Osbert was university educated, had been part of the Third Crusade, and had held civic office in London. His eloquence drew a following among the public, who were exhausted by the endless taxes. He gathered crowds wherever he went and had over 50,000 followers. Investigators reportedly later found weapons hidden across the city, allegedly gathered together for an attack on the homes of wealthy citizens. However, William did not dare openly challenge King Richard the Lionheart.

Ralph de Diceto, the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, wrote of William: ‘And in the same yere an heretyke called with the longe berd was drawen and hanged for heresye and cursed doctrine that he had taught.’

William’s body was dismembered and displayed in different parts of London to instill fear in other rebels. This method of execution soon became the norm for all Tyburn executions. The convicted were dragged to Tyburn, where they were hanged, drawn, and quartered, their body parts displayed in public places as a warning. Spectators were encouraged to attend executions by the government, who thought that the site of public executions strengthened the morale of Londoners.

Walking a little further along the northern border of Hyde Park on Bayswater Street toward Kensington Gardens, you’ll find the Tyburn Convent and Church, which was founded in the early twentieth century. In this convent, twenty-four nuns pray day and night for the souls of the Catholic martyrs who were executed on this bloodstained spot just a hundred meters away.

Catholics believe that the arrival of the nuns in 1903 fulfilled the prophecy that a religious house would one day arise at Tyburn, where the martyrs of the Reformation would be honored. This prophecy was made by the priest Gregory Gunne in 1585 during his own trial and ended up being recorded in court documents.

The relics of many who died on the Tyburn Gallows are now kept in the convent crypt, and a miniature model of the Tyburn Tree is displayed in the local church. For those drawn to the grim history of Tyburn’s religious martyrdom, a DVD that tells the story of how and when the poor Catholic martyrs met their death, with photos of their relics, is available for purchase, a stark reminder that even a place of deep suffering has been woven into the spirit of modern marketing.

The Carthusian monks were among the first religious martyrs at Tyburn. John Houghton, the prior of the London Charterhouse, along with other Carthusians, celebrated a mass of the Holy Spirit in response to Henry VIII’s demand to be recognized as the supreme head of the Church of England. One of the monks wrote that during this mass ‘a pleasant sound descended from heaven, a light blowing wind enveloping our ears like a sweet breath’. They interpreted it as a divine sign and announced to the king that they could not give him the recognition he sought. They were executed at Tyburn on 4 May 1534, and John Houghton’s hand was nailed to the gates of the Charterhouse.

During the English Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a total of 105 martyrs were executed at Tyburn. These included priests who refused to renounce the Catholic faith and recognize Henry VIII as the supreme head of the Church of England, as well as ordinary believers who helped them. And thus, the king passed laws that made Catholicism an act of treason in England in the sixteenth century.

It is a well-known fact that the English Reformation was mainly driven by Henry’s desire to divorce his Catholic wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyn. But the king’s desire for this marriage was not rooted only in his love for Anne—it also came from his desire for a male heir. It is astonishing how profoundly the personal problems of those in power can affect the lives of ordinary people. Had Catherine borne sons instead, the thousands of Catholic and Protestant lives lost in the process of religious persecutions in England may have been spared, and most ancient English monasteries, including Glastonbury, might not lie in ruins today.

Some of the individuals executed at Tyburn include::

Roger Mortimer, 3rd Baron Mortimer of Wigmore, 1st Earl of March, queen consort Isabella’s lover (1330)

Isabella of France, and de facto ruler of England (1330)

Perkin Warbeck a pretender to the English throne (1499)

Elizabeth Barton, ‘The Holy Maid of Kent’; the only woman whose head was put on a spike on London Bridge after her execution, demonstrating how much Henry VIII despised her prophecies (1534)

John Felton, executed for the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham (1628)

Claude Duval, a young French highwayman, adored by women (1670)

Jack Sheppard, a notorious English thief and prison escapee (1724)

Earl Ferrers, who murdered his steward in a fit of rage; he is notable for being the last British peer to be hanged in England (1760)

Elizabeth Brownrigg, a sadist and murderer (1767)

Dr. Dodd, a forger (1777)

In January 1661, John Bradshaw, Henry Ireton, and Oliver Cromwell, all whom had been dead for several years by that time, and in Cromwell’s case buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, were disinterred and hanged at Tyburn by the order of King Charles II in posthumous punishment for their role in the execution of his father, Charles I.

Their heads were displayed on the spikes of twenty-foot poles above Westminster Hall for the next twenty years. Eventually, their remains were buried, although Cromwell’s head reportedly fell from the spike and was thrown to the ground during a storm. Well, these things happen—something much worse happened to the heart of Louis XIV.

In 1909, paranormal investigator Elliott O'Donnell announced that Hyde Park was filled with an otherworldly darkness: From the phantasms of those who once swung in chains on Tyburn Gallows and the lean, hungry-looking specters of modern starvelings, to the evil and leery spirits that dart in and out of the trees, goading on poor simple frail humanity to sin and vice.

Describing his encounter with the dark forces of Hyde Park, he wrote:

… I noticed that beneath a certain tree, mid-way between the Marble Arch and Lancaster Gate, was rarely occupied, whereas all the other seats in that vicinity were invaded by couples. One evening, the weather being warm and sultry, I went and sat there. I dozed off, and eventually fell into a deep sleep. I dreamed that an old man and a young girl stood under the tree whispering, and that as I watched them, they raised their eyes, and looked in a horribly guilty manner not at me, but at the space next to me, which I perceived, for the first time, was occupied by a tiny child. Moving stealthily forward and holding an outstretched cloth, they crept up behind the child, the cloth descended, and all three vanished.

Then something made me gaze up into the branches of the tree, and I saw a large, light, colorless, heavily-lidded eye peering down at me with an expression of the utmost malevolence. It was altogether so baneful, so symbolic of cruelty, malice and hate that I could only stare back at it in mute astonishment. The whole shape of the tree then seemed to alter, and to become like an enormous dark hand, which, swaying violently to and fro, suddenly dived down and closed over me. I awoke at once, but was so afraid of seeing that eye that for some minutes I kept my own eyes tightly shut.

Elliott O'Donnell lived to be ninety-three, living from 1872 to 1965, and was around during an era when the paranormal, mediums, and seances were especially popular. It is said that Elliott O'Donnell dressed according to his status of ‘King of Ghost Hunters’: he wore a gold framed pince-nez, a cape with a red lining, and carried a walking stick with a silver handle. His services were in high demand, and he hunted ghosts in many wealthy homes across England and the United States.

The last public execution at Tyburn took place on November 3, 1783, when footpad John Austin was hanged there.

Austen was sentenced to death for ‘robbery with violence’ which involved the ‘cutting and wounding in a cruel manner’ of John Spicer, a laborer from Kent. Austin was brought from Newgate Prison in the City of London by cart, and in those days, the two-and-a-half mile journey along Tyburn Road would have taken up to three hours. Standing shackled in the cart, he would have been accompanied by two guards and a chaplain. They would traditionally stop on the way at St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate Church and two public houses, where they would be served drinks. It is believed that the expression ‘one for the road’ comes from this custom.

On its arrival at Tyburn, Austin's cart would have been positioned under a beam and a noose attached around his head. He would then be permitted to address the crowd. His last words were:

Good people, I request your prayers for the salvation of my departing soul. Let my example teach you to shun the bad ways I have followed. Keep good company, and mind the word of God. Lord have mercy on me. Jesus, look down with pity on me. Christ have mercy on my poor soul!

However, the noose shifted to the back of his neck, and as the cart was removed from under him, loose rope slowed down the process of asphyxiation. It is said to have taken him ten minutes to choke to death.

After this, the authorities began to question whether the ‘entertainment’ of public executions was perhaps too grim and if it was really suitable for the general public. Executions were then moved to the courtyard of Newgate Prison, and London’s acid-tongued public quickly named the new execution place the ‘New Drop’.