Eight highlights Of The Museum Of London Docklands’ Executions Exhibition

From October 2022 until 16th April 2023, the Museum of London Docklands has a major new exhibition on executions.

Executions once played a huge role in the lives of Londoners. Not only were executions grisly displays of justice and aimed to deter others from similar crimes, but also were grand spectacles and considered by many as entertainment.

This exhibition looks at how executions have shaped the city over the centuries, the often tragic human stories of those that were killed and where evidence can still be seen in the city today.

Here are eight of my highlights- if they can be called that! This one is not for the faint-hearted…

1. Hanging, Beheading And Boiling

From 1196, when the first recorded execution at Tyburn took place, until 1868 when public executions were abolished, tens of thousands were publicly executed in London. The exhibition first takes you through some of the gruesome methods of execution from hanging to beheading to burning.

One method that stuck out for me was boiling. Yes you read that correctly. It is thought this horrific punishment, of being boiled alive, was used only twice.

It was introduced by Henry VIII in 1531 specifically for those convicted of having poisoned someone else. The most famous case is of Richard Roose, the cook of Bishop Fisher. Roose was accused of poisoning the household’s porridge, killing two innocents. He was subsequently boiled to death at Smithfield in 1531. This brutal law was repealed in 1547 by Henry’s son Edward VI.

2. City Of Gallows

London had several common execution sites in use over the centuries, such as Tyburn, Newgate Prison and Execution Dock for pirates, but often executions took place near the scene of the crime. You are never very far from an execution site as you walk around London. In fact, in the City of London, you are apparently never more than 500m from a place where a gallows once stood.

Below is a map from 1597 of the Tower of London, clearly showing the scaffold on Tower Hill where high-profile executions took place.

This was where, for example, the Duke of Monmouth was beheaded in 1685 for leading a rebellion against King James II.

Unfortunately, the executioner, Jack Ketch made a bit of a botch job of it and it took several swings of the axe. The Duke apparently rose from the block half way through, shocking the onlookers. Some say Ketch had to finish the job with a knife.

There is a plaque to mark the site today in Trinity Square Gardens.

3. Relics From The Execution Of Charles I

In the collection are items reputedly worn by King Charles I on the day of his beheading on Whitehall on 30th January 1649. They include gloves, a handkerchief and a silk vest. King Charles’s attendant, Sir Thomas Herbert, reported that the king wore an extra shirt that morning so as not to appear to shiver on the scaffold in the cold January air and it be misconstrued as fear.

All the items come with the caveat that we cannot be sure that they are genuine. The shirt for example was acquired by the Museum in 1924 alongside a note claiming that it was the genuine article and had been passed down through the hands of Charles’ physician Dr Hobbs who attended him on that day.

4. A Feline Execution

One of the stranger pictures in the exhibition was this print of a cat hanged from a gallows on Cheapside in 1554.

The gallows were in place for 100 days on Cheapside in 1554 following the execution of two Protestant rebels. On 8th May, a cat dressed as a catholic priest with a shaven monk’s head, was found hanging from said gallows. It was thought to be an act of Protestant defiance.

5. The Tyburn Tree

There is a room with a, shorter, reconstruction of the infamous Tyburn tree.

Executions had been taking place at Tyburn since at least the 12th century, but in 1571 a triangular wooden structure was built to be able to hang 24 people at once, 8 on each side. The site today is where you will find Marble Arch by Hyde Park and there is also a round stone tablet on the floor marking the site of the scaffold.

Executions would take place eight times a year and huge crowds of spectators would walk the 4.5km route through the city, with the condemned, from Newgate prison, along what is now Oxford Street, to Tyburn. It was seen by many as a great day out and crowds could reach the tens of thousands.

A huge economy grew up around executions as well with the sale of ‘gallows literature’ such as criminals last speeches, pie-sellers flogging their wares on the day and the hiring out of seating with a view. Some even built grandstand seating on their nearby land to hire out to wealthy spectators.

6. The Notorious Newgate Prison

Displayed are items from the notorious Newgate Prison. In the late 1700’s the majority of public hangings were moved from Tyburn to the area outside Newgate Prison.

This is a bolt from the condemned cellar Newgate dating from 1782.

There are waist restraints and shackles on display. Loaded with these heavy chains, the condemned could hardly walk and the clanking sounds reverberated around the prison.

The item that I found most affecting was the Debtors Door to the prison.

The condemned would pass the door before emerging into the baying crowd to meet their fate. Interestingly, the chains above are merely decorative. They were placed there as symbols of confinement, to instil terror in those that passed by.

7. Death Masks

Casts of the heads of executed murderers were often made for the purposes of research. Students would study them, the size of the skulls for example, to ascertain the characteristics of the ‘criminal mind’. They were also sometimes made as macabre souvenirs.

Below is the death mask of Elizabeth Brownrigg, or ‘Mother Brownrigg’, who was executed at Tyburn in 1767 for torturing her apprentices and murdering one of them, a young girl called Mary Clifford.

Her plaster bust was studied for signs of an evil personality.

8. Gibbet Cage

Finally, one of the most dramatic items in the exhibition is the 18th century gibbett cage. These were used to hang up and display the dead or dying bodies of criminals.

This particular gibbet cage was reusable and adjustable for different sized bodies.

The bodies of notorious pirates were left in gibbets at Execution Dock on show for those entering London by ship. You can read more about that site here in my Wapping post.

Details Of How To Visit

The exhibition is on until 16th April 2023 and a standard adult ticket costs £13.00.

Click here for more details. The best way to get there is on the tube, the nearest stop being Canary Wharf or the DLR, the nearest stop being West India Quay.

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