Abstract
In the late 1740s a group of smugglers known as the Hawkhurst gang committed a number of violent crimes that included several brutal murders. At least 75 of the gang were subsequently hung or transported for smuggling, robbery and murder. Of those in receipt of the death sentence, 14 were subjected to the further punishment of hanging in chains (or gibbeting), thereby inflicting further ignominy on the offenders.1 Hanging in chains was usually reserved for murderers, and occasionally mail robbers. However, between 1747 and 1750 members of the Hawkhurst gang were also gibbeted for crimes including smuggling and robbery. Gibbeting was an infrequently used punishment, but the violent circumstances of the Hawkhurst gang’s crimes coupled with the authorities’ desire to punish smugglers on the south coast led to the large number of gibbetings, and consequently a peak in the use of the punishment in the 1740s. These gibbetings reflected the increasingly severe measures taken to eradicate the crime of smuggling. They were temporally and spatially specific, reflecting the nature of the crimes and the circumstances that led to the hanging in chains. This study provides an insight into the extreme use of a particular punishment, showing that judicial penalties were adapted to fit the circumstances of the crimes and reflect how the offences were perceived.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Notes
N. Rogers, Mayhem: Post-War Crime and Violence in Britain, 1748–1753 (New Haven, 2003), p. 120.
G. Smith, ‘Violent Crime and the Public Weal in England, 1700–1900’, in Richard McMahon (ed.), Crime, Law and Popular Culture in Europe, 1500–1900 (Cullompton, 2008), pp. 190–218; S. Devereaux, ‘Recasting the Theatre of Execution: the Abolition of the Tyburn Ritual’, Past and Present 202 (2009), 127–74.
Rogers, Mayhem; F. F. Nichols, Honest Thieves (Birkenhead, 1973); F. Mclynn, Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England, (Oxford, 1989); C. McCooey, Smuggling on the South Coast (Stroud, 2012); J. Rule, ‘Social Crime in the Rural South in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, in J. Rule and R. Wells (eds), Crime, Protest and Popular Politics in Southern England 1740–1850 (London, 1997), pp. 135–53; Cal Winslow, ‘Sussex Smugglers’, in Douglas Hay et al. (eds), Albion’s Fatal Tree (New York, 1975), pp. 119–66.
Thomas Yeakell and William Gardner, Sussex Great Survey Map (1778), WSRO, PM/48. The 1778 county map as annotated by Cavis-Brown in 1906 indicates that the coastline had changed and that the gibbet was now under sea level.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This chapter is published under an open access license. Please check the 'Copyright Information' section either on this page or in the PDF for details of this license and what re-use is permitted. If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and re-use information, please contact the Rights and Permissions team.
Copyright information
© 2015 Zoe Dyndor
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dyndor, Z. (2015). The Gibbet in the Landscape: Locating the Criminal Corpse in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England. In: Ward, R. (eds) A Global History of Execution and the Criminal Corpse. Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137444011_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137444011_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-55234-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-44401-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)