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nThere is a proverb, and a prayer withal.nnn
nThat we may not to three strange places fall:nnn
nFrom Hull, from Halifax, from hell, ’tis thus,nnn
nFrom all these three, good Lord deliver us.n
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nThese lines are taken from a poem of 1622, The VerynMerry-Wherry-Ferry Voyage by John Taylor, the Water Poet, and are often claimednto be a beggar’s litany. Of course, deliverance from Hell is devoutly to benwished but why from Hull and Halifax? Hull was notorious for the strictnenforcement of law there, and beggars could expect a very cold welcome indeednin that city. Halifax, on the other hand, was notorious for the harsh gibbetnlaw that was in force there. To return to the Water Poet’s wonderful work,
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n“At Halifax the law so sharp doth deal,nnn
nThat whoso more than thirteen pence doth steal,nnn
nThey have a jyn that wondrous quick and well,nnn
nSends thieves all headless unto heav’n or hell.”n
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n‘Jyn’ (or ‘gin’) is an old term, a shortened form ofn‘engine’, meaning any sort of machine or mechanism. The jyn at Halifax was andeath-machine, a type of guillotine, on which thieves were executed.
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| The Halifax Gibbet |
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nDecapitation by axe or sword was not uncommon in Old England but the HalifaxnGibbet was unique in the country, as was the readiness to use it. Halifax, nownin West Yorkshire, was subject to the Lord of the Manor of Wakefield, a part ofnthe Duchy of Lancaster, and if a thief was caught in the Forest of Hardwick (an‘forest’ was a measure of land, usually put aside for hunting and not,nnecessarily, densely wooded), with goods worth more that thirteen and one-half pennies,neither handhabend (with the goods in his hand, or in the act of stealing), backberandn(carrying the goods on his back) or confessand (having confessed to the theft),nhe would be brought before the Lord’s bailiff in Halifax.
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nThis officer summonedna jury of sixteen frith-burghers and the accused would be tried, with witnesses givingnevidence not on oath. If found not guilty, the accused would be released onnpayment of their fees. If found guilty, they would be displayed in the stocksnfor three market days (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday), with the goods on theirnback, if they were portable, or set before their eyes if they were not. On thenthird day, after sitting in the stocks, they would be taken to the Gibbet andnbeheaded, and a coroner’s jury would be convened to investigate the cause ofndeath and if the proceedings had been carried out lawfully, (quite often, thisnjury would be composed of the original jury that had tried the case in thenfirst place).
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| The Halifax Gibbet |
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nThere were five conditions that had to be met; firstly, the felonnhad to be captured within the liberty of the Forest of Hardwick. If they werenoutside it, they were beyond the jurisdiction of the bailiff and if they couldnescape and cross the boundary, there was nothing the bailiff could do to bringnthem back. Two men did escape, one called Dinnis who, on the day allocated fornhis execution, escaped from custody and ran the five hundred yards to life,nfreedom and liberty. Another, one Lacy, escaped and lived for seven yearsnbefore, inexplicably, he returned to Halifax, was taken and beheaded in 1623.
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nThensecond condition was that the felon had to be caught either handhabend ornbackberand, or had to confess their crime in court.
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nThirdly, the value of thengoods had to be worth thirteen and onenhalf pennies or more, an odd sum but Zachary Grey, in his notes to Butler’s Hudibras,nindicates that this sum of money was the ‘Hangman’s Wages’, paid to annexecutioner for carrying out his duty.
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nFourthly, the condemned man had to benplaced in the stocks for three occasions prior to execution. This seems to benan odd one, as some prisoners were captured, tried and executed in the space ofna single day, whilst others were taken on a Monday, tried and put into thenstocks on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday before being beheaded. The point seemsnto be that they were tried as quickly as possible and executed on the principalnmeeting day, which was Saturday.
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nFifth, and lastly, was that they were beheadednby the Halifax Gibbet. This was a wooden structure set on a stone platform, withna flight of steps leading up to it. In the two slotted uprights, each standingnfive yards, and below a transverse crossbeam, was a sliding wooden block, intonwhich was set an iron axe weighing seven pounds and twelve ounces, about nineninches wide at the blade and about ten and a half inches in length.
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| The Axe – bottom and centre, and the Gibbet, bottom left |
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nThis blocknwas drawn up in the slots by means of a cord and this done, the cord wasnsecured by a wooden pin in a hole on the frame of the machine. If the condemnednman had stolen a beast, the animal was attached to the pin and driven away,npulling out the pin and causing the axe to fall. If an animal was not involved,neither a group of citizens would take hold of a rope and pull out the pin, ornthe bailiff himself or his servant would cut the rope, allowing the axe tondescend and cut off the felon’s head.
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| Cutting the Rope on the Halifax Gibbet |
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nThere is a story that a Halifaxnmarket-woman was riding her horse past the Gibbet as the axe fell and thensevered head bounced across the platform and into her lap, where it seized hernapron in its teeth and refused to let go.
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nHalifax, like many areas of the Northnof England, was well-known for its textiles and the severity of the HalifaxnGibbet may reflect the situation faced by wool weavers in the area. In thenfinishing of woven wool fabrics, the lengths of cloth are washed and stretchednout on tenterframes to dry, and it was usual for the tentermen to leave theirnframes out in the open air to dry. Unscrupulous thieves would see thenunattended frames and steal the valuable bolts of cloth, so the weavers neededna quick, easy and severe deterrent to make the light-fingered think twice aboutnpurloining their wares. The usual assizes were not nearly regular enough to donthis – there might only be two hearings per year on some circuits – but a localnsolution was the Halifax Gibbet.
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nIncidentally, the cloth was held onto thententerframes by the tenterhooks, which is where our phrase, ‘being onntenterhooks’ – meaning being extremely apprehensive or nervous, comes from – itnis not, as some people annoying say, being ‘on tenderhooks’, there is no suchnthing as a tenderhook. It’s a tenterhook.
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nCromwell’s puritans dismantled thenHalifax Gibbet in the 1650s, (the last use was in 1650) and the stone base wasnnot re-discovered until 1840. A non-working replica was erected in 1974,ntogether with a plaque listing the names of over fifty victims – in all, it isnestimated that over one hundred criminals were beheaded at Halifax over thenyears.
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