Such proceedings were exceptional, however.  In the majority of executions the body was taken down when life was considered to be extinct, and carried away to Surgeon’s Hall for dissection.  Sometimes the relatives used their influence to have the corpse handed over to them (often not even in a coffin) and they then carried it away in a coach for decent burial, or to try resuscitation.  Occasionally, indeed, hanged men came to life again.  In 1740 one Duel, or Dewell, was hanged for a rape, and his body taken to Surgeons’ Hall in the ordinary routine.  As one of the attendants was washing it he perceived signs of life.  Steps were taken immediately and Duel was brought to, and eventually taken away in triumph by the mob, who had got wind of the affair and refused to allow the Law to re-hang their man.  A little earlier something of the same sort had happened to John Smith, who had been hanging for five minutes and a quarter, during which time the hangman “pulled him by the legs and used other means to put a speedy period to his life”, when a reprieve arrived and he was cut down.  He was hurried away to a neighbouring tavern where restoratives were given, blood was let, and after a time he came to himself, “to the great admiration of the spectators”.  According to his own account of the affair, he felt a terrible pain when first the cart drew away and left him dangling, but that ceased almost at once, his last sensation being that of a light glimmering fitfully before his eyes.  Yet all his previous agony was surpassed when he was being brought to, and the blood began to circulate freely again.  A last ignominy, and one strangely dreaded by some of the most hardened criminals, was hanging in irons.  When life was extinct the corpse was placed in a sort of iron cage and thus suspended from a gibbet, usually by the highway or near the place where the crime had been committed.  There it hung until it fell to pieces from the effects of Time and the weather, and only a few hideous bones and scraps of dried flesh remained as evidence of the strong hand of the Law.

With the exception of minor alterations in punctuation and spellings this book is a complete reprint of three volumes printed and sold by John Osborn, at the Golden Ball, in Paternoster Row, 1735.

A. L. H.

LIVES OF THE CRIMINALS

VOLUME ONE

THE PREFACE

The clemency of the Law of England is so great that it does not take away the life of any subject whatever, but in order to the preservation of the rest both by removing the offender from a possibility of multiplying his offences, and by the example of his punishment intending to deter others from such crimes as the welfare of society requires should be punished with the utmost severity of the Law.  My intention in communicating to the public the lives of those who, for about a dozen years past have been victims to their own crimes, is to continue to posterity the good effects of such examples, and by a recital of their vices to warn those who become my readers from ever engaging in those paths which necessarily have so fatal an end.  In the work itself I have, as well as I am able, painted in a proper light those vices which induce men to fall into those courses which are so justly punished by the Legislature.