Enemies of the State (20 page)

That Saturday, the five had been visited by the ordinary or chaplain of Newgate, the Revd Cotton, who begged them to make their peace with God. He tried again on Sunday, talking to each man in his separate cell and Davidson cracked. He asked for the services of a Wesleyan minister, a journeyman tailor called Rennett. In the event, the man was unavailable but a replacement was found in the ‘person of Mr Cotton himself '. ‘The rays of Christianity burst, as it were, through his dungeon's gloom' on the Sunday and Davidson wrote a letter to Lord Harrowby, to be delivered by the Under-Sheriff.

Sunday was the last day that the condemned men would see their families. Susan Thistlewood came with her son and the other wives and children. The gaolers themselves, long hardened to such gallows-side scenes, were very moved by the whole experience. Brunt alone remained stoical, claiming that his execution day would be the happiest of his life. Because all except Davidson called themselves Deists, the usual final service at Newgate was dispensed with. Apart from the families, the only person trying to see the prisoners was the radical Alderman and MP Mr Wood, who wanted the answers to three specific questions. He would have to wait.

Of all of them, Ings spent the worst night. Terrified of the morning, he rambled on to the others through the stone walls of his cell, expressing the hope that his body be sent to the king to make turtle-soup out of it. At 5 on Monday morning, Cotton tried for one last time to offer the last rites. Davidson prayed with him, but the others still refused. He and Brunt were the only two who drank a toast to the king's health. The contents of their last breakfast is not recorded, but their request to eat together was denied.

Outside Newgate, all was bustle. The day dawned bright and since Saturday, Sheriff Rothwell had been working with Sidmouth to finalize
details. The Home Secretary was too well aware of the vast mob that would gather and dispensed with the idea of dragging the five to the scaffold on hurdles as per the death sentence. Throughout Sunday, carpenters' saws and hammers could be heard extending the platform outside the Sessions House to house all the prisoners and allow room for decapitation. A crowd had gathered and had to be dispersed by the police so that work could continue. Posts and rails were strung along the Bailey to prevent a repetition of the scenes that accompanied the hanging of Holloway and Haggerty in 1807 when the crowd panicked due to overcrowding and over thirty people were trampled to death.
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Every approach to the prison, along Newgate Street, Giltspur Street, Skinner Street and Fleet Lane was, in effect, cordoned off. None of this deterred the crowd that had assembled as darkness fell on Sunday night. They stayed there, without food or shelter, waiting for the morning.

As always in cases of execution, but especially for the ‘poor deluded wretches' of Cato Street, those with windows overlooking the yard charged a fortune for their views, but even with prices as high as two guineas
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there were plenty of takers. People crowded against the barriers and young men dangled precariously from lamp posts and the top of the Newgate pump. A shout went up between 5 and 6 as quantities of sawdust were strewn on the scaffold platform and swathes of black cloth were tied around the uprights.

At 6.20, a detachment of Foot Guards took up position opposite Newgate and a second further east, towards the City, ready for any eventuality. Six light field guns were placed by the Royal Horse Artillery outside the livery stables near Christ Church and more Life Guard units picqueted Ludgate Hill and Bridge Street. The City Light Horse, whose guns John Palin and others were to have grabbed on the 23 February, were dispersed to key positions throughout the city. When John Bellingham was hanged, the authorities had posted placards warning the crowd not to push, but no such precaution was used now.

While Sheriff Rothwell inspected the gallows and the crowd were moved ever further back by a wall of constables, Alderman Wood was inside the gaol demanding to see the prisoners. He was told this was impossible, that Newgate was now under the control of Lord Sidmouth and not the City of London. That argument would not have surprised Thistlewood.

The crowd remained quiet and well behaved. Any rescue attempt of the
five was probably impossible because the authorities had planned this day well. There were no banners, no weapons, no apparent
politics
at all, just a low murmur when something new happened. Just in case, however, and to prevent another Peterloo, a number of placards were ready outside the debtors' door with the legend ‘The Riot Act has been read. Disperse immediately'. While the Life Guards, saddled and waiting outside St Sepulchre's church, helped police drag a bystander down from a roof by his heels, the crowd roared with delight. This, to the authorities, was all to the good – a happy crowd was less likely to go on the rampage.

Shortly after 7, the hangman appeared. This was the repellent illiterate James (Jemmy) Botting, who probably hanged 175 people during his time in the job. He was constantly complaining about the pay and working conditions, signing the letters that someone else wrote for him with a cross. He had been in post for two years by this time and was the first hangman to receive a regular wage (£1 a week) in addition to perks, such as handouts from undertakers and selling off bits of rope which were believed by some to have magical properties.

Botting supervised the bringing out of the coffins, assisted (although Wilkinson's account does not mention him) by James Foxen. The only difference between the pair was that Botting called his victims ‘parties', whereas Foxen preferred ‘gentlemen'. More sawdust was then thrown into the black caskets.

While the reprieved six jabbered their gratitude in another part of the prison – only Wilson and Harrison felt a sense of guilt – the procession of the great and bad out onto the scaffold began. Thistlewood emerged from the condemned cell first and bowed to the Sheriffs. He looked up at the sky. ‘It appears fine,' he said and waited while his irons were knocked off. At last, Alderman Wood reached him to ask his questions and an unseemly quarrel broke out between Sheriff Rothwell, who claimed he did not want Thistlewood's peace of mind to be disturbed and Sheriff Parkins who insisted Wood be allowed to talk to him. Parkins and Wood won the day and the Alderman asked Thistlewood when and where he had met George Edwards. ‘At Preston's,' Thistlewood told him. ‘About June last.' Wood wrote the answers down.

Tidd emerged next, smiling, and when his anklets were smashed off darted across to Thistlewood. The pair shook hands. ‘Well, Mr Thistlewood,' Tidd said. ‘How do you do?' ‘I was
never better,' his leader replied. Ings positively danced across the yard, dressed once more in his rough pepper-and-salt butcher's jacket and a dirty cap. His hysteria grew as the moments ticked by, laughing and shouting as he sat on the bench with the others. Brunt was composed as they tied his hands and removed his shackles. ‘All will soon be well,' he told the others. Davidson, who had taken the sacrament at 6 (it was now 7.30) prayed fervently along with the chaplain. Cotton was still desperately trying to get the others to show remorse and repentance, but they still refused, each of them about to face their God in their own way.

When everything was ready, the five men shook hands and the ‘yeoman of the halter' secured the pinioning. Cotton's voice could be heard across the silent crowd. ‘I am the resurrection and the life' and St Sepulchre's bell in the morning tolled.

The chaplain climbed the scaffold steps first – the only one in that grim little procession who would come back down of his own accord. Thistlewood, an orange in his hand, looked out over the vast crowd, a sea of uplifted faces in the middle distance. Someone shouted ‘God Almighty bless you'. The conspirator did not flinch. As Wilkinson put it – ‘Thistlewood with the rope around his neck was the same Thistlewood that appeared so conspicuous at Smithfield.' He sucked the orange and assured anyone who could hear him that he died a friend to liberty.

Ings in the mean time was going to pieces. He tried to sing the old radical song, an inversion of the American revolutionary Patrick Henry's ‘Give me Death or Liberty'. ‘Aye,' Brunt shouted. ‘It is better to die free than live slaves.' Tidd was brought forward next and with difficulty shook Ings's hand. The Lincolnshire man's eyes filled with tears – ‘My wife and I . . .' but he could not go on. ‘Come, my old cock o'wax' – astonishingly it was the crumbling Ings who spoke. ‘Keep up your spirits; it will all be over soon.' When Tidd reached the scaffold, three cheers broke out from the crowd, impressed by the bold way in which he approached the drop. He bowed to the crowd on Snow Hill; he bowed to the faces towards Ludgate Hill. The people, briefly, loved him and more so when he angled his neck to make Botting's job easier, with the knot to the right so he would die quicker. Like Thistlewood, he refused a hood over his face.

When Ings was roped, he shouted, ‘Remember me to King George IV;
God bless him and may he have a long reign.' He also asked that his other clothes go to his wife, so that ‘Jack Ketch
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should have no coat of his'. In a moment of gallows philosophy, he turned to one of the gaolers – ‘Well, Mr Davis, I am going to find out this great secret.' He bounded onto the scaffold, ‘Goodbye, gentlemen. Here go the remains of an unfortunate man.' The cheers he roared out to the crowd however fell hollow on the silent watchers. To Wilkinson, they were ‘nothing but the ravings of a disordered mind'. By the time he turned to Ludgate Hill, he was jabbering a string of unrelated nonsense, still intermittently trying to sing the Death or Liberty song. Tidd quietly reproached him. ‘Don't, Ings. There is no use in all this noise. We can die without making a noise.'

Ings refused Botting's hood and asked that his own cap be pulled over his eyes, but only at the last moment. ‘Ah ha!' were his last shouted words. ‘I see a good many of my friends are on the houses.' Davidson reached the platform, muttering prayers with Cotton. For the last few minutes he had stood apart from the others, divided by race, by colour, by prejudices that were entirely his own.

Brunt was last – and he complained about this. He looked terrible. His cheeks were sunk, giving a weird prominence to his chin, forehead and eyebrow ridge. When he saw the weak sun dancing on the breastplates of the Life Guards, he shouted, ‘I see nothing but a military government will do for this country.' He nodded to people in the crowd. He took one last pinch of snuff.

‘God bless you, Thistlewood!' a voice shouted and Botting went along the line, fitting the hoods. ‘Now, old gentleman,' Ings said to the hangman. ‘Finish me tidily . . . Pull the rope tighter; it may slip.' And, with the cloth over his eyes, called out to the chaplain, ‘I hope, Mr. Cotton, you will give me a good character.' Davidson finally shook Cotton's hand and for a moment the chaplain stood alone with the condemned, intoning ‘those awful sentences which have sounded last in the ears of so many unhappy men'.

The trapdoors fell with a crash. As the horrified spectators looked along the line from left to right, they saw Thistlewood's body writhe for moment, each kick fainter than the last and then twirl slowly on the creaking rope ‘as if upon the motion of the hand of death'. Tidd thudded into eternity and scarcely moved. By sheer chance, his neck must have snapped in accordance with the scientific principles of hanging which were not yet established.
Ings, in keeping with his ravings of moments before, twisted and leapt in the air, Botting and Foxen grabbing his legs to finish him quicker. Davidson, after three or four heaves, hung silent and still. Brunt, like Ings, did not go quietly and the hangman had to wrestle with him too.

The crowd who had watched all this showed no sign of unease, which must have been a relief to the titled people watching from upstairs windows and to the cordons of police and cavalry. But worse was to come. It was one thing to hang a man – even five men – in public. That was the norm and for most it was ‘bread and circuses', the organized butchery of a ‘Roman holiday'. But hacking off a villain's head was something else and it was rare. Botting let the bodies hang for half an hour to ensure that life was extinct, then drew them up into a bizarre sitting position, taking off the hoods and ropes and one by one placing the rope-burned necks on the sloping edge of the block.

Thistlewood's face was mauve, but otherwise peaceful and the crowd expected Botting to wield the axe that was propped on the scaffold. In fact, he didn't move. What the mob did not know was that decapitation was a skill too far for Jemmy Botting and a second figure, with a small knife in his hand ‘similar to what is used by surgeons in amputation' moved towards Thistlewood's corpse. Later commentators have assumed the headsman was dressed as a sailor, but in fact he wore a dark blue jacket, grey trousers and a slouch hat. His face was completely obscured by a black mask and a coloured handkerchief and from contemporary illustrations he is clearly a civilian.

The crowd at last reacted and shouted as the blade hit the neck. For a moment, the headsman hesitated, then hacked through muscle and bone to hand Thistlewood's head to Foxen. The mob hooted as the hangman's assistant held the trophy aloft to all four points of the compass and shouted, ‘This is the head of Arthur Thistlewood, the traitor.' The howls of the mob grew louder. Botting and Foxen then ‘reassembled' the head and placed it with the body in the coffin, sliding the block along for Richard Tidd. There is little doubt that, apart from the charisma of Thistlewood, the Lincolnshire man had won the hearts of the crowd and the sight of his purple, dead face galvanized the crowd – ‘shoot that bloody murderer!' someone shouted. ‘Bring out Edwards', and the cry was taken up. The headsman worked quickly, disappearing briefly as rubbish was hurled at him by the nearest spectators. Foxen held Tidd's head in both hands and went
through the process once more. ‘This is the head of Richard Tidd, the traitor.' The same followed for James Ings. And then for William Davidson, whose mouth was slightly open, but whose features otherwise showed no change. When Foxen held the head up however, blood dripped profusely from the severed neck, to the hisses and groans of the crowd.