Wileman—­James Cluff—­John Dyer—­William Rogers, William Simpson and
Robert Oliver—­James Drummond—­William Caustin and Geoffrey
Younger—­Henry Knowland and Thomas Westwood—­John Everett—­Robert
Drummond and Ferdinando Shrimpton—­William Newcomb—­Stephen
Dowdale—­Abraham Israel—­Ebenezer Ellison—­James Dalton—­Hugh
Houghton—­John Doyle—­John Young—­Thomas Polson—­Samuel
Armstrong—­Nicholas Gilburn—­James O’Bryan, Hugh Morris and Robert
Johnson—­Captain John Gow

Appendix

Index

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Murder on Hounslow Heath
Matthew Clark cutting the throat of Sarah Goldington
A Prisoner Under Pressure in Newgate
The Hangman arrested when attending John Meff to Tyburn
Stephen Gardiner making his dying speech at Tyburn
Jack Sheppard in the Stone Room in Newgate
Trial of a Highwayman at the Old Bailey
Jonathan Wild pelted by the mob on his way to Tyburn
A Condemned Man drawn on a Sledge to Tyburn
The Murder of John Hayes: 
  Catherine Hayes, Wood and Billings cutting off the head
  John Hayes’s Head exhibited at St. Margaret’s, Westminster
  Catherine Hayes burnt for the murder of her husband
Joseph Blake attempting the life of Jonathan Wild
An Execution in Smithfield Market
Highway Robbery of His Majesty’s Mail
A Gang of Men and Women Transports being marched from
  Newgate to Blackfriars

INTRODUCTION

To close the scene of all his actions he Was brought from Newgate to the fatal tree; And there his life resigned, his race is run, And Tyburn ends what wickedness begun.

If there be a haunted spot in London it must surely be a few square yards that lie a little west of the Marble Arch, for in the long course of some six centuries over fifty thousand felons, traitors and martyrs took there a last farewell of a world they were too bad or too good to live in.  From remote antiquity, when the seditious were taken ad furcas Tyburnam, until that November day in 1783 when John Austin closed the long list, the gallows were kept ever busy, and during the first half of the eighteenth century, with which this book deals, every Newgate sessions sent thither its thieves, highwaymen and coiners by the score.

There has been some discussion as to the exact site of Tyburn gallows, but there can be little doubt that the great permanent three-beamed erection—­the Triple Tree—­stood where now the Edgware Road joins Oxford Street and Bayswater Road.  A triangular stone let into the roadway indicates the site of one of its uprights.  In 1759 the sinister beams were pulled down, a moveable gibbet being brought in a cart when there was occasion to use it.  The moveable gallows was in use until 1783, when the place of execution was transferred to Newgate; the beams of the old structure being sawn up and converted to a more genial use as stands for beer-butts in a neighbouring public-house.