The Horrible Post mortem punishments.

The Horrible Post mortem punishments.

The Murder Act of 1751 that came into force on the 1st of July 1752, mandated post mortem punishments in addition to hanging for murderers, but they could also be awarded for other crimes, notably robbing mail coaches.  

The court could choose between dissection and gibbeting for murderers and would choose the latter where they wished to make a particular example of a criminal.

This desecration of the body and lack of a Christian burial were considered to be serious additional punishments at the time.  

It was also widely believed that a person could not enter Heaven without a body.

Dissection was the most frequent additional punishment and it was not unusual for the public to be admitted to watch the proceedings for a small fee.  

Leeds Royal Infirmary raised £30 from those who came to see the body of Mary Bateman, the “Yorkshire Witch” who was hanged in 1809.  

For those hanged at Newgate the dissection was typically carried out at Surgeon’s Hall in London, although in some cases the bodies were sent to hospitals.  

Medical students and members of the public were able to witness the proceedings at Surgeon’s Hall.

Medical schools were always short of bodies on which to practice anatomy pre 1752, and the regular supply of bodies of condemned murderers were very useful in furthering anatomical knowledge and surgical skills.  

This practice was ended by the Anatomy Act of 1832. 

It is unclear when gibbeting came into use although there are records of it happening in the 13th century during the reign of Edward II. 

The first recorded instance of it in Scotland was in March 1637 when a man called McGregor, who was a robber and murderer, was ordered to stay on "the gallowlee till his corpse rot".

Gibbeting or hanging in chains was normally only inflicted on men, although there is evidence that Evan Hugh Jones and his wife, Margaret, suffered this fate for the murder of a peddler named John Rea near Manafon in Montgomeryshire in August 1735.  

It appears that their bodies were hung on the branches of a large oak tree on the top of a hill near their home where the murder was committed.  

It is probable that Rea was not their only victim and that they had killed other men who had stayed with them, hence the severity of the punishment.

Murderers were typically gibbeted at or near the crime scene, highwaymen and pirates in prominent places such as crossroads or hill tops or the banks of the Thames. 

After the hanging, the prisoner would be stripped and their body dipped into molten pitch or tar and then, when it had cooled, be re-dressed and placed into an iron cage that surrounded the head, torso and upper legs. 

The cage was riveted together and then suspended from either the original gallows or a purpose built gibbet.  

Here it would stay until the body rotted away or was stolen by relatives and friends for burial.  Quite a few sets of gibbet irons have survived and can be found on display in museums.  

It could take several years for the flesh to rot away or be eaten by birds and the scene was supposed to act as a powerful deterrent.  

It has been said that criminals were more horrified by being measured for their cages than they were at the thought of their hanging. 

Edward Miles was hanged on Lancaster Moor on Saturday, 14 September 1793 having been found guilty of robbery of the Warrington to Manchester mail near Warrington two years earlier and taking three bags containing letters from Chester, Liverpool and Warrington that were bound for Rochdale and one bag containing letters from Chester that was going to Manchester.  

He was reportedly gibbeted near “The Twysters”, Manchester Road, Warrington. Again his gibbet irons survived.  

In the year 1800 three men were ordered to be gibbeted at Ashton after execution at Lancaster.  

They were John Brady (also given as Ready), and John Burns who had robbed mail man, Edward Burrell, at Ashton and Donald M’Devatt, alias James Weldon, who had taken part in the Burrell robbery and also a similar one where the victim was Michael Motter, at Warrington.  

These three were among a group of six men who were executed on Saturday 19 April 1800 in the first hangings at Lancaster Castle.

William Jobling was gibbeted after his execution at Durham on 3 August 1832, for the murder of Nicholas Fairles, a local magistrate and a policeman during a riot. 

His gibbet was erected at the place of the crime at Jarrow Slake and is described as being formed from a square piece of oak, 21 feet long and about 3 feet in diameter with strong bars of iron up each side. The post was fixed into a 1-1/2 ton stone base, sunk into the slake.  

The cage and the scene being described thus," the body was encased in flat bars of iron of two and a half inches in breadth, the feet were placed in stirrups, from which a bar of iron went up each side of the head, and ended in a ring by which he was suspended; a bar from the collar went down the breast, and another down the back, there were also bars in the inside of the legs which communicated with the above; and crossbars at the ankles, the knees, the thighs, the bowels the breast and the shoulders; the hands were hung by the side and covered with pitch, the face was pitched and covered with a piece of white cloth."

Jobling's body was hoisted up to the top of the post and left as a warning to the populace.  

Sadly, Jobling was not actually the perpetrator of this murder. Before he died, Fairles was able to identify his killer, a friend of Jobling's, one Ralph Armstrong. 

However, Armstrong was not able to be arrested and Jobling, who had been present and had done nothing to prevent the killing was therefore judged to be equally guilty.

Twenty one year old James Cook became the last man to suffer this fate, having been hanged at Leicester on 10 August 1832 for the murder of John Paas.  

The gibbet was erected at in Saffron Lane near the Aylestone Tollgate and drew large crowds. 

Its gruesome presence was unpopular with the local residents so unusually the body was taken down within the week.  

It was not at all unusual for gibbets to draw local protests, there were also protests about those on the Thames. 

One William Sykes wrote to Sir Robert Peel about this in 1824, saying that ladies travelling down the Thames would ask if they had passed the gibbets before coming on deck.  

Gibbeting was finally abolished in 1834 for both civil and nautical crimes.