The Hangmen of England
Arreorrn opening this book in the hope of gratifying a morbid curiosity will be disappointed—he had better turn to A Hang man's Diary. This robustness of tone, and careful study of eighteenth and nineteenth century England are not for him.
It is pleasant indeed to think that so unsavoury a work as A Hangman's Diary, -the Journal of the Public Executioner of IsTuremburg should, and Mr. Bleackley declares it did; inspire something as different from itself, as sturdy and vigorous as The Hangmen of England. Mr. Bleackley strikes the keynote in the first page by introducing his " team of fifteen hangmen " with a bluff humour that he retains all through and that is surely the right spirit in which to approach his subject. And what a team it is I John Price of the eighteenth century, who was himself hanged for a brutal murder, the no less brutal William Marvell, who ended his life on the American plan- tations, Jemmy l3otting, the paralytic who died raving of a ghostly. procession which kept passing his bed—"Damn their eyes ! If they'd only hold up their heads and take off their nightcaps I wouldn't care a blast about any of them "— each one lives for _us again, re-enacting the incidents of his turbulent career. The author brings us under his own fas- cination of these- old hangmen who " beheaded, whipped at the cart's tail, exhibited in the pillory," were lynched by the mob, arrested fOr debt, and drank themselves into. courage before an execution. If they were dissolute villains, it is not to be wondered at. Calcraft, the rabbit fancier, and " Gentle- man " Marwood, to each of whom a chapter is devoted, were better fitted for the improved methods of our own day. But even in the " Rogues' Gallery " we are shown the portraits of neurotic John Thrift (1785-1752), who fainted on Tower Hill when beheading Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino, and .Iohn Hooper (17281785), the Laughing Hangman who " hanged all and sundry . . . as merrily as . . the Sheriff would let him."
The book, commencing with a note on the earliest known executioners, is then divided into fourteen chapters, each devoted to a hangnian, his life, character, how and whom he hanged. The author writes well and with a zest and simplicity that mitigates the horror of some necessary .details. " The golden age of the gallows." " It (the execution of Lord Fer- rers) must have:consoled hint for not haying hanged Eugene Aram." 'Ode is ternirt;!d to think Afr: Bleackley might make quite a good hangman himself. He would, at least, get some fun out of the business.
But, though half-humorously treated, the evidences of interested and careful research, and intimacy with the wide period covered, compel the book to be taken seriously by any student of history. And for the less interested does not the. Earl of Essex, become an even more glowing and living figure when it transpires that he was beheaded by a man named Der- rick ? Through the hangman's noose we get glimpses of the rebel adherents of the Pretender, of Jack Sheppard and high- waymea--fast sinking into oblivion, of old Neigate and old
England itself. Forgotten trials are brought before us, from poor little Eliza Fenning and Mary Jones to William Coider.
The writer always avoids tediousness and nausea. He manages to arouse an interest in the most shadowy figure he drags up out of the past. He concludes with some shrewd comments on modern hanging.
- Mention must be made of the illustrations which are surely copies of old prints and which with their naive brutality are admirably suited to the text :-
" Ye Hangmen of England
How sturdily you stood, A-smoking pipes by Tyburn Tree, A-swigging pots in the Old Bailee And strung up all you could."
This is the spirit of the book and the spirit in which, after all it has told us, we lay it down.
MYRTLE JOHNSTON.
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