London, bloody city, in whose memory thousands of executions

Hanging, beheading or burning. The city of London once earned a reputation as “the bloodiest in Europe” because of its tough hand with the death penalty, which was abolished in 1868 after being the scene of tens of thousands of public executions, from which neither the aristocracy nor the crown escaped. .

Now the stories of these convicts with names and surnames make up the gloomy plot of the show.executions”, in that London Docks Museum, which explores nearly 700 years of capital punishment based on documents and artefacts, including the clothes King Charles I wore when his throat was slit during the English Civil War.

“1196 is our starting point because there we have the first documentary evidence of a public execution, in Tyburn, and we felt that it was really important not to make conjectures or assumptions, but to study documents and evidence,” the commissioner said. Beverly, Cook told EFE, who collected documentation from the same museum collection and from National Archives.

Is The first execution fell to William Fitz Osbert, the “poor man’s lawyer”, who, after leading a popular uprising, was sent to the gallows in the village of Tyburn – at that time on the outskirts of the capital – on the same soil on which so many tourists visit today. Marble Arch, where a busy shopping street Oxford Street.

Tyburn staged numerous hangings in front of an audience of 50,000 people and became a symbol of these practices, recreating the famous triangular gallows in the exhibition.Tyburn tree”, which claimed the lives of 1,100 men and almost a hundred women in the 18th century alone.

“It was completely normal. Men, women, children, everyone who lived in London should have known about it,” says Cooke, who points out that “even without ever specifically going to an execution,” processions were common. The condemned are sent to the gallows.

Londonthen known as “the city of the gallows”, fully integrated public executions into its imagery, landscape, and popular culture, lubricating the entertainment economy even for children, with puppet shows that were eventually executed with a noose around their necks.

“More people were sentenced to death in London than anywhere else in Europe in the 18th century. And that was a direct consequence of the Bloody Code,” Cook said, referring to the criminal code of more than 200 capital offenses whose punishment left and right made him call “bloody code”, Bloody code in English.

According to the historian, the context of high commercial activity in England made the protection of private property paramount, as the state severely punished anyone who jeopardized the socio-economic order, “becoming much more capitalistic than other European countries.”

In the exhibition, open until mid-April, you can also see the original iron-bound door of one of Newgate’s most infamous prisons, demolished in 1902, the same door through which many prisoners stepped through their last hours of life. with a misfortune appointed by a judge from the Old Bailey Criminal Court, a few meters away.

BUSERKA INTENDED FOR ZNATS

Press clippings, cartoons and original verdicts take us back to how the trial unfolded, surviving the last rescue attempt with letters asking for clemency from the monarch or Ministry of the Interioror.

King Carlos I had little use for this power of pardon. Far from saving his own skin, he was publicly beheaded for treason on January 30, 1649, in the midst of clashes between parliamentarians and monarchists.

Since it was a winter morning with low temperatures, Carlos I put on gloves and a thick dress in order to prevent the public from seeing the king tremble at all costs. Now this garment rests in one of the display cases, with small stains on the faded fabric, presumably caused by spilled blood.

If France went down in history by overthrowing Crown with its guillotine, England also cherished the past of beheading aristocrats with an ax or a sword – a cruelty well known Enrique VIIIwho had two of his wives beheaded.

And that this sharp and immediate blow was reserved for the nobility – yes, executed, but still with privileges – while the rest awaited the long suffering of death boiled, burned in the fire or, most often, strangled under the shadow of the “city gallows.”

EFE