Engraving by J Newton dated 1755 published 10 Jan 1786

The gallows on the West side of the Amphitheatre

A hundred Years after these early plans of the town were drawn by Speed, the gallows was removed to another place. It is shown, still of the same design, standing on the west side of the Amphitheatre, between it and the Weymouth road, in the engraving of that place to be found in 'Grose's Antiquities'. The date, of the picture is 1755. And Stukeley, in his 'Itinerary,' written in 1723, tells us that "the amphitheatre was in greater perfection before the gallows was removed hither by an unlucky humour of the Sheriff; since when the parapet at top is on that side much beaten down by the trampling of men and horses at executions." He seems to speak of the gallows as having been recently removed, further on, when he says, "the parapet is now 3 or 4 foot high; but much ruined on that side next the gallows, since last year at an execution." However, there is some reason for supposing that the removal was a little earlier than this. The celebrated burning of Mary Channing took place in 1703⁽²⁾, and upon the floor of the amphitheatre. Female criminals were frequently burnt alive at that time, and for some years afterwards , perhaps it was the punishment of the worst, in the place of the drawing, hanging, and quartering which would have been the fate of a man. Had the gallows still been in its old position, she would probably have been burnt on 'Gallows Hill', and not at the amphitheatre. Therefore it seems most likely that the gallows was removed about the year 1700, from that place to the Weymouth-road site. I am making rather a point of this date, because it seems pretty evident that the Monmouth rebels suffered on the old site of 'Gallows Hill', and not on the new site⁽¹⁾.

The gallows by the amphitheatre seems to have been in regular use up to the time that the new prison was built, facing North-Square, about the year 1795. At that time, or soon after, the humane method of dispatching prisoners more rapidly, by giving them a longer drop, was allowed. This seems to have been provided for in executions at the prison. An Execution Bill of 1807 describes the hanging of three men on " the new drop upon the lodge of the Castle at Dorchester." I have a broadsheet giving the sentences of prisoners at the Lent Assizes at Dorchester in 1801. There were 48 cases tried, almost all for thefts. Several were sentenced to transportation for very small offences, ten were condemned to death, one being a woman, Lydia Hiskins, for stealing a banknote. Plainly up to that date harsh measures had not succeeded in curing the poor people of their belief in the right to live by hook or by crook.

But by this time the efforts of men like Fielding and Romilly to obtain more wise and humane treatment of criminals were beginning to tell, and though death sentences were passed according to law, they were not always carried out. In the large scrap book volume belonging to this Museum library there are several specimens of the broadsheets printed and sold in the streets after executions at the beginning of the last century. These are usually headed with a coarse woodcut of the typical gibbet, and the felon hanging, and generally give an account of his offences and of his last moments. These specimens date from 1819 to 1833. They record deaths for burglaries and arson. The so-called " new drop" which was in use for some fifty sears seems to have been arranged over the stout low archway which formed the entrance into the prison from North-square, the predecessor of one lately removed. Some still living remember the boy of the last criminal executed there, hanging on the skyline, a woman, Martha Brown, who had murdered her husband.

Then the scene was shifted to a spot within the walls of the prison, overlooking and within sight of the meadows by the river. Many can still tell of the thousands that used to gather below the gaol at the " Hang Fairs." By day break the best places were taken, and the waiting time was spent in drinking fiddling, and dancing. The time, it is said, of the executions in early days determined by the arrival of the coach from London, which might possibly bear a reprieve at the last moment. The " Royal Mail" coach was timed to arrive at the King's Arms at 9.30 a.m., after 13½ hours run from London, via Salisbury. In Cutler's "Original Notes of Dorchester", the story is told of a poor fellow who declined to halt at the Bell Inn for a parting glass with the constables; listening to his ernest request, they hastened their business, and turned him off just as the postmaster came shouting up the hill bearing a delayed reprieve. They cut the rope in a moment and fetched a surgeon. He could only shake his head and announce "Too late."     "Sarved him right," cried the indignant beer swillers standing around, "he should have stopped for his drink." Quite the contrary," retorted the surgeon, with ill-timed levity, " I will stake my reputation. on the fact—the poor fellow has taken a drop too much."

The last public execution was in 1863, when two men named Preedy and Fooks suffered on the same day. The case of Preedy aroused much interest. The Rev. Henry Moule, Vicar of Fordington, visited him in the prison constantly to the last, and afterwards published a book of 94 pages, entitled "Hope against Hope," giving an account of his life and repentance. Many thousand people assembled on this occasion. To enterprising brothers erected a temporary grandstand in the meadows, with seats at 2s. 6d., which was so well patronised that it collapsed beneath the weight of sightseers, and they subsided into the mud below. In Mr. Thomas Hardy's tale of "The Withered Arm" a day of this kind provides a terrible page of reading. The saddler's shop in High-East-street which from long custom supplied the new rope required for the gallows has only been closed this summer. This was of the best quality, always of hemp, provably supplied from Bridport ; and the old Hangman's Cottage it the bottom of Glyde-path hill still stands, where the busy official, the last bearing the name of Davies, once lived. And a curious memorial is preserved in the Museum, the two lead weights, engraved with the word "Mercy" provided by a humane governor of the gaol, to hasten the end of Silvester Wilkins a very light subject, executed in 1833 for arson at Bridport. The last death sentence carried out it Dorchester was in May, 1887. I was in the neighbourhood at the time, and heard that the hangman sold the rope at so much a foot in one of the public houses afterwards ; but this I can hardly believe.

Out of the gloom that gathers round the history of the Dorchester gallows in past centuries, two or three figures, or groups of figures, stand out distinctly, and whilst on the subject it seems a fitting opportunity to recall. them. One and the latest has been already named, the unfortunate Mary Channing, but 18 years old, burnt in the Amphitheatre in the year 1703⁽²⁾. It was a peculiar case of murder that brought her to this end, but the punishment was not unusual. One female at least suffered in this way 18 years before, after the Monmouth Rebellion ; and the worthy Lady Lisle was condemned to this death on the same account at Winchester, though her sentence was altered to hanging after petition to the King. But the burning of Mary Channing was made a kind of county fete; 10,000 spectators gathered to view it. No doubt the nature of the spot chosen and the good view of the stake provided in this well arranged theatre, accounted largely for the crowd that gathered, and that made the event so memorable.

The earliest recorded executions of note were those of Roman Catholics in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, on the charge of high treason. Hutchins gives the names of six that died on the gallows. Four of these suffered on the same day July 4th, 1594 one, John Cornelius, the principal rebel was hung, drawn, and quartered. His head was nailed to the gallows, but the Sheriff removed it at the prayer of the townsmen, who suffered ill-luck, it was thought, in consequence of it. Cornelius was born at Bodmin, but was captured while resident at the house of Lady Arundel, near Chideock, In Alfred Mark's "Tyburn Tree " a curious account is given in Strype's words of the finding of his skull together with three others, in Blackfriars, when clearing away rubbish after the Fire of London. It had evidently been carried away from Dorchester by some sympathising co-religionist. Stripe narrates the discovery of four pewter cases containing a head each. He says, "one of these pots I saw, with the head in it, in October, 1703, being in the custody of Mr. Presbury, then soap maker in Smithfield, which pot had inscribed in the inside of the cover, in a scrawling character (which might be used in the time of Henry VIII ), I. Cornelius. This head was without any neck, having short red hair upon it, thick, and that would not be pulled off; and yellow hair upon the temples; a little bald on the top (perhaps a tonsure), the forepart of the nose stunk, the mouth gaping, ten sound teeth, others had been plucked out , the skin like tanned leather, the features, of the face visible. The other three heads had some of the necks joined to them and had a broader and plainer razure, which showed them priests. These three heads are now dispersed. It is probable they were at last privately procured and conveyed abroad, and now become holy relics. Who these were, there is no record, as I know of; nor had any of them names inscribed but one." The identity of this I Cornelius with the Dorchester victim was not discovered till some years later. I have the engraved portrait of I. Cornelius from one of the, old Books of Martyrs, with the Latin inscription beneath : " Pio Cornelius Anglus Soc. Jesu (Jesuit.) Novitius Doreesta pro Catholica fide suspensus et sectus, an. 1594." From another Book I have the portrait of John Slade, a Dorset man, who was drawn, hanged, bowelled, and quartered" for maintaining the Roman power; but the sentence was carried out at Winchester.

Lastly, we come to the batch of prisoners, 13 in number, who were condemned by Judge Jeffreys, and suffered on the old Gallows Hilll. In the Western Martyrology " the dying speeches of three of this number are given us---Matthew Bragg, Thomas Smith, and Joseph Speed, with special details of their deaths. The 13 were hung in succession, one after the other. Smith being the first by particular order of the Judge. The bodies were treated in the manner usual for traitor, an exception being made of the body of Matthew Bragg, which was given by the Judge to his friends for burial. He was probably an innocent man, and felt, to have been so by his persecutor after the sentence was passed. but foolishly he had pleaded "not guilty " and so lost all chance of justice. The speeches were made from the ladder, up which the prisoner climbed to reach the noose let down from the crossbeam by the hangman. 'The cart no longer figures at this particular point in the proceedings. When the speech was finished the ladder was turned over, and so, in the common language of those days, the prisoner was "turned off " and launched into eternity. They were probably drawn on hurdles in most places to the gallows; "sledges " is the name given to the rude vehicles used in Dorchester and Lyme. At Lyme Regis two sets of horses refused to draw the sledge; they ended by kicking it to pieces, and the prisoners therefore went on foot through the streets. The quarters of 12 men were distributed in Dorchester and the neighbourhood, the head of one being fixed on a spike that till lately was an interesting ornament of the porch of St. Peter's Church. This spike is now preserved in the museum. There is no entry in the Borough Records of any expense connected with the executions ; it was outside their department. But a horrible set of entries is to be found in the Weymouth records ; they are published in Moule's "Catalogue of Charters, &c., of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis," The Mayor of this borough was ordered through the Sheriff to prepare a gallows for the execution of 12 persons, It was erected on or near Greenhill, in the confines of the borough. Thirty-two quarters and six heads were distributed in the villages round, while 16 quarters and six heads were reserved for Weymouth itself. Then the bill of costs is given—" Disbursements for the gallows, burning and boiling the rebels executed per order at this town—£l5 14s. 3d."

From the "Western Martyrology" we gather that the ghastly preparations for the final disposal of the bodies went on in the sight of the victims. Roger Satchel, at Weymouth. is described, when delivering his dying speech from the Ladder, as " pointing to the wood that was to burn his bowels.'' The barbarous proceedings conducted at Weymouth were no doubt repeated at Dorchester and at other towns. I notice also in the same book the statement that "some scores died every week of small pox " in the gaol. This, I think, must be an exaggeration, as there is no indication of a corresponding number of burials in our Burial Register. Eighteen only are there entered as " prisoners " at that time. Yet possibly friends who could afford it removed the dead to their own churchyards, all over the country, and a much larger number could thus be accounted for.

I am thankful to have reached the end of this short history of Dorchester gallows. The saddest of recollections are awakened, and even after so long a time, resentment kindles at the thought of so much injustice suffered often by helpless and defenceless prisoners. One can enter into the spirit of Dryden when he wrote of the gallows of Tyburn Tree:-

"Oh Tyburn I couldst thou reason and dispute,
Couldst thou but judge as well as execute;
How often woulst thou change the felon's doom
And truss some stern Chief Justice in his room".