A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

speech on the table). In Gin Lane, a drunken mother allows her baby to fall out of her arms into the
area below, a madman impales a baby on a spit, and a man who has hanged himself can be seen
through the window of a garret. Fielding remarked that the gin ‘disqualifies them from any honest
means to acquire it, at the same time that it removes sense of fear and shame and emboldens them
to commit every wicked and dangerous enterprise.’ The result was that pickpockets who had once
relied on skill and light fingers now knocked down their victims with bludgeons in broad daylight.
The novelist Horace Walpole was shot in the face by a highwayman in Hyde Park in 1752.
Punishments, both in England and on the continent, had always been barbarous; now they became
sadistic. The sentence of being hanged, drawn and quartered was usually reserved for political
criminals, although it might be applied to some particularly violent robber. The victim was dragged
to the place of execution behind a cart; he was then half-hanged, and his bowels were torn out
while he was still alive and burned in front of him. After this the body was cut into four pieces.
Female criminals were often burned alive, because it was regarded as more ‘decent’ than allowing
them to risk exposing their private parts as they swung from a rope. (In this respect our ancestors
were remarkably prudish.) But it was common for women - as well as men - to be stripped to the
waist before being whipped through the streets to the pillory or gallows. After the 1699 act, thieves
were branded on one cheek to make their offence public knowledge - this was probably regarded as
an act of clemency, since most thieves were hanged. Prisoners accused of offences that involved
speech - perhaps preaching false religious doctrines - would have a hole bored through the tongue
as they were held in the pillory. A confidence man named Japhet Crook was sentenced to have both
ears cut off and his nose slit open then seared with a red hot iron; the hangman, known as
‘Laughing Jack’ Hooper, cut off both ears from behind with a sharp knife and held them aloft for
the crowd to see, then cut open Crook’s nostrils with scissors; however, when he applied the red
hot iron to the bleeding nose, Crook leapt out of his chair so violently that Hooper - who was a
kindly man - decided not to carry out the rest of the punishment. On the Continent, sentences were
even crueller; red hot pincers were used to tear out the tongues of blasphemers. A madman called
Damiens, who tried - rather half heartedly - to stab Louis XV of France in 1757, was executed by
being literally ‘quartered’. He was carried to the execution because his legs had been smashed with
sledgehammers. His chest was torn open with red hot pincers, and lead poured into the wounds.
Then his hands and feet were tied to four dray horses, which were whipped off in opposite
directions. They were not strong enough to tear off his arms and legs, so more horses were brought;
even so, the executioner had to partly sever the arms and legs before they could be pulled off.
Damiens remained conscious until he had only one arm left - during the early part of the
proceedings he looked on with apparent curiosity - and his hair turned white during the course of
the execution.
But then, punishment was intended as a public spectacle. The underlying notion was to deter; in
fact, it seems to have had the effect of making the spectators sadistic. This was perhaps an extreme
example of the ‘xenophobic’ reaction discussed in an earlier chapter. The English had always been
inclined to treat foreigners as an object of mirth - in 1592 the duke of Wiirtemburg noted that
London crowds ‘scoff and laugh’ at foreigners and are likely to turn nasty if the foreigner shows
any sign of being offended. At public spectacles, the criminal became the despised ‘foreigner’.
When placed in the stocks or pillory, he was likely to be pelted with stones and dead cats until he
died. A woman named Barbara Spencer was sentenced to be burnt alive for coining in 1721; at the
stake she wanted to say her prayers, but the mob wanted to get on with the entertainment and booed
and threw things at her as she tried to pray; she had still not succeeded in saying her prayers when
the hangman applied a torch to the faggots. Days when notable public executions were held at