Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

What a rude, unsympathetic, ribald crowd that was! Drawn together merely by morbid curiosity, many of them laughed, smiled, and joked at the dread ordeal which the convict was even then undergoing. They spoke of him as at that moment submitting to the pinions, and wondered with a fiendish glee how he liked the process. Women and girls vied with each other in depicting his agony as a subject for laughter, and the most horribly blasphemous expressions were used with respect to his penitence. It might have been a crowd of citizenesses during the French revolution. There was an utter callousness, a cold-blooded nonchalance, and a frequency of oaths which made the crowd almost terrible as well as repulsive. There seemed to be not an atom of feeling amongst the lot. Everyone had something to say. There was a continual hum of conversation, but amongst the Babel of words it was impossible to detect one which breathed kindly feeling, regret, or even seriousness. But it is now five minutes to eight, and the first sign comes from the inside of the gaol. Upon the high tower a stalwart warder appears. At length the prison clock strikes the hour. The signal is given, and in another moment the black signal of death flutters in the clear fresh breeze. A kind of shudder is observable among the people as the flag ascends, but the feeling soon passes away, and from a large number of the assembled crowd rises a fiendish and inhuman shout. The “cry for blood” was satisfied. A stampede commenced immediately, and the hundreds of people streamed back into Leeds. A few still lingered about the place, gazing fitfully at the black signal, and talking together in knots of the strange and adventurous career which had just closed so ignominiously.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

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Original

SCENES OUTSIDE THE GAOL.

It was a fearful morning. The air was raw, and a searching wind pierced through one almost to the bone, yet the fields dividing the gaol from the houses near seemed to be covered with people almost immediately.

They ran eagerly to get the best places that could be obtained. Everybody ran and everybody was anxious to get the best places. The peculiar coign of vantage, known only to the experienced, was said to be behind the prison, near the hospital.

This was where the scaffold had been erected, and it was said that outside the walls, at that point, the falling of the trap and the thud caused by the jerk to the rope could be distinctly heard.

It is no exaggeration to say that at least 500 people assembled at this spot, and that until the hoisting of the flag the most careful silence was preserved. Indeed, some of the people who were standing there declared that they heard Peace speaking, but could not make out his words.

A large knot of people, numbering several hundred, appeared at the outer gates, without any warning, and undisturbed took up positions commanding a view of the flag-pole on the high tower.

About ten minutes to eight snow began to fall slightly, but it soon discontinued, and at five minutes to eight the weather was fine again.

What a rude, unsympathetic, ribald crowd that was! Drawn together merely by morbid curiosity, many of them laughed, smiled, and joked at the dread ordeal which the convict was even then undergoing.

They spoke of him as at that moment submitting to the pinions, and wondered with a fiendish glee how he liked the process. Women and girls vied with each other in depicting his agony as a subject for laughter, and the most horribly blasphemous expressions were used with respect to his penitence.

It might have been a crowd of citizenesses during the French revolution. There was an utter callousness, a cold-blooded nonchalance, and a frequency of oaths which made the crowd almost terrible as well as repulsive. There seemed to be not an atom of feeling amongst the lot. Everyone had something to say.

There was a continual hum of conversation, but amongst the Babel of words it was impossible to detect one which breathed kindly feeling, regret, or even seriousness.

But it is now five minutes to eight, and the first sign comes from the inside of the gaol. Upon the high tower a stalwart warder appears. At length the prison clock strikes the hour. The signal is given, and in another moment the black signal of death flutters in the clear fresh breeze.

A kind of shudder is observable among the people as the flag ascends, but the feeling soon passes away, and from a large number of the assembled crowd rises a fiendish and inhuman shout. The “cry for blood” was satisfied.

A stampede commenced immediately, and the hundreds of people streamed back into Leeds. A few still lingered about the place, gazing fitfully at the black signal, and talking together in knots of the strange and adventurous career which had just closed so ignominiously.

557 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Armley (7) ·
• Burglary (4) ·
• Capital punishment (7) ·
• Crowd (1) ·
• French Revolution (7) ·
• HM Prison Leeds (5) ·
• Hanging (24) ·
• 📌Leeds (235) ·
• Murder (38) ·
• Peace, Charles (1832-1879) (1), Sheffield-born burglar and murderer ·
• Profanity (6) ·
• 📌Sheffield (72) ·
• Stalking (1) ·
• Steel (12) ·
• Violin (4) ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (147) ·
• William Marwood (1) ·

All tags.

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