Beacon Hill's Dark & Gristly History - Gibbeting Uk
Channel: Robert John Kerr
Date: 2021-11-28

Beacon Hill where is that Rob?
 good question
 well we are in Halifax
 and I am actually on my way to meet my lass at shibden park home of Anne Lister
 but before I have a coffee at shibden Park I just want to have a look at Beacon Hill 
So let's take a walk up there we should be able to see all of Halifax from this vantage Point

So this route that I'm working today is actually a mediaeval route used by many including  transporting wool it was also used by the troops in the English Civil War
But the reason I wanted to visit this location and I have done for awhile 
 is to just get a feel of the location
 because it has a dark history
People were hung in Chains up here
 or as it was also known gibbeted
Now I'm not saying that this is something you are unaware of
 but let's just really think about this barbaric form of punishment that took place right here on Beacon Hill 
Gibbeting was basically locking criminals in human chipped cages and hanging them up for display in public areas as a warning to others the gibbet itself refers to the wooden structure from which the cage was hung
 now it must cases criminals were executed prior  being gibbeted
 but occasionally criminals were gibbeted alive and left to die of exposure and starvation
 it originated in mediaeval times that was really popular in the 1740s in the UK
 now the victims of gibbeting were always men since female corpses were in high demand from surgeons and anatomists
Look For A Definition Of Anatomists
So female criminals were always dissected rather than gibbeted
So it seems crazy that this would be going on in the 1740s
 but it was actually a great spectacle they would be crowds of happy people Gathering to see it sometimes thousands of people so it was obviously quite entertaining mercarb fascination
Now apparently this smell was unbearable and sometimes there was more than one body gibbeted at any one time and they were left to rot for years sometimes 8 years have red basically until the the clothes rotted off the body
People who live near them would have to put up with the stench and the ruinous as the birds and bugs eat their corpses
Hope you're enjoying the blog so far and the scenery if nothing else
 I'm sure you have all come across a gibbet Street as you've travelled around the UK
 maybe you have lived on a gibbet Street or actually I've still living on a gibbet Street
 you can be pretty sure that in  the past that street led to  gibbet
 let me know in the comment section below if you live on a gibbet Street or have done or if you have a debit story a  gibbet it near you maybe I will go and visit that
I actually read somewhere that the authorities made bodies difficult to remove by hanging them from 34 posts and on one occasion they even studded a post with 12000 nails to keep it from being torn down 
So the basics of gibbeting was to punish the criminal in life and also in death
And of course the public display of gibbeting would demonstrate to would-be criminals that breaking the law was just not worth it 
Now you might have seen a frog that added some time back on the Cragg Vale coiners the counterfeiting gang that shaved the edge of the coins and made new coins I'll leave a link to that flog in the description below you can check that out but that is one of the reasons I came up here to have a look and get a feel of the place regarding the gibbeting because they were two of the corners actually gibbeted here
 Robert Thomas and Matthew Normanton in the late 1700s
They were hung at York and their bodies transported in irons to hang on the gibbet here on Beacon Hill above Halifax their hand fixed so as to point towards the scene of the Crime I'm and a hung here for over 8 years unbelievable