Tyburn's martyrs
Subtitle: execution in England, 1675-1775
By: Andrea McKenzie.
Publisher: Hambledon Continuum
Published: 2007
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 316
ISBN-13: 9781847251718
Subjects: Capital punishment -- England -- London -- History -- 18th century.; Capital punishment -- England -- London -- History -- 17th century.; Executions and executioners -- England -- London -- History -- 18th century.; Executions and executioners -- England -- London -- History -- 17th century.; Tyburn (London, England) -- History -- 17th century.; Tyburn (London, England) -- History -- 18th century.
Description: The public execution at Tyburn is one of the most evocative and familiar of all eighteenth-century images. Whether it elicits horror or prurient fascination  - or both -  the Tyburn hanging day has become synonymous with the brutality of a bygone age and a legal system which valued property over human life. But, as this fascinating cultural and social history of the gallows reveals, the early modern execution was far more than just a debased spectator sport. The period between the Restoration and the American Revolution witnessed the rise and fall of a vast body of execution literature - last dying speeches and confessions, criminal trials and biographies - featuring the criminal as an Everyman (or Everywoman) holding up a mirror to the sins of his readers. The popularity of such publications reflected the widespread, and persistent, belief in the gallows as a literal preview of 'God's Tribunal': a sacred space in which solemn oaths, supernatural signs and, above all, courage, could trump the rulings of the secular courts. Here the condemned traitor, "game" highwayman, or model penitent could proclaim not only his or her innocence of a specific crime, but raise larger questions of relative societal guilt and social justice by invoking the disparity between man's justice and God's.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [269]-301) and index.