Docklands History Group meeting Wednesday July 2017 The Hempen Jig or The Marshall’s Dance – the Story of Execution Dock, Wapping By Chris Ellmers - our President

Chris introduced his talk by looking at some famous pirates – ranging from Captain Kidd to Captain Jack Sparrow. Pirates were the ultimate ‘lords of misrule’ and their activities were challenged by the authorities. Execution Dock, Wapping, became the final destination for many pirates. Henry Avery the ‘Gentleman Pirate’ and slaver was hung at Execution Dock on 25 November 1696 along with five of his crew. John Gow, a Scottish pirate from Orkney, was execution here on 11 June 1725 with seven accomplices. As with the execution of Captain Kidd on 23 May 1701, Gow’s rope broke and he was hung again.

Chris showed a 1639 woodcut depicting the execution of the pirates Clinton (Clinton Atkinson) and Purser (Thomas Walton), which was the oldest detailed execution he had located. It showed the pirates – who were wearing wealthy clothes – hung from two partially submerged gallows in front of a stylised crowd of onlookers. The woodcut reinforced the way in which such executions and Execution Dock were seen as theatrical shows.

The gallows were temporary timber structures that were set up along the foreshore at Wapping, between the high and low water mark – reflecting the traditional area of Admiralty jurisdiction. The gallows could hold more than one person at a time. Their location may well have varied as ‘Execution Dock’ seems not to have been an exact spot on the foreshore. John Rocque’s 1746 map shows Execution Dock Stairs slightly downriver of Gun Wharf and a dung wharf, which must have added a certain something to such activities. There riverfront here was line with wharves and moorings.

Captured pirates, who may have been taken anywhere from the East Indies to the English Channel, were held at the Marshalsea Prison, in Borough High Street, or – more usually from the eighteen century – at Newgate Prison, which was handy for the Old Bailey, before trial. Admiralty Courts – which were civil courts with jurors, rather than naval ones – were held in the Justice Hall in the Old Bailey. Most of their work dealt with prizes, disputes, and mercantile disputes, with relatively few piracy cases. At times, gaol fever was rife and both judges and lawyers were known to have died of it as well as prisoners. The juries were made up of property owners who paid rates. There is a silver Admiralty mace in the Maritime Museum whose shaft is hallmarked 1798. The blade is around 130 years earlier. It would have been on the table in the court as a symbol of justice.

The Admiralty Marshall would have held the ceremonial mace when he led the execution procession, on horseback, to Execution Dock. From Newgate, the procession would have gone along Cheapside and along Whitechapel Road, taking over an hour and growing in number as it went. In the early days of Execution Dock some wealthier pirates paid to go by carriage or even by boat. The notorious pirates were taken on a hurdle, accompanied by ‘Jack Ketch’ – the public executioner – rather than by cart. The felons were probably manacled and what is possibly an example of such a manacle is on display in the Museum of London Docklands.

Eventual audiences at executions might number around 20,000. The whole event had an air of the carnival about it. People used lighters as platforms to watch the executions and quayside railings sometimes collapsed ashore with the press of people. Executions were grim affairs. Pirates had to go up steps or a ladder before being ‘turned off.’ The ropes used were not ‘Wild West’ style nooses, but animal halters which were short so that the condemned men were slowly strangled (hence their ‘jig’ or ‘dance’). On one occasion a pirate was forced to wait an extra hour at Newgate for his procession to begin as the executioner had lost the halter and another had to be procured!

Up until the mid-eighteenth century it was still usual for the bodies to be left for two or three tides, so that they would symbolically washed of their sins. After their execution some pirates were gibbeted as a further post-death punishment. Gibbets were set-up along the riverbank where the bodies of pirates were hung in chains or cages (one 18th century example is on display in MOLD) as warnings to others. In one of his scenes from his Idle ‘Prentice set, William Hogarth pictured crewmen in a ship’s boat pointing at a gibbet along Millwall. There were some 15 to 20 gibbeting places at various times. Captain Kidd was gibbeted at Tilbury point in 1701 and various reports stated that he hung there for somewhere between three and twenty years. Sometimes gibbets they had to be moved when there were too many complaints about the smell of decomposing corpses. An occasional change to gibbeting was taking the bodies away for atomising at Surgeons’ Hall. Occasionally the bodies of executed pirates might be taken away by friends and sometimes they were buried along the riverside. An even more horrific treat, however, was in store where piracy was combined with treason, such as an attack on a British Naval ship. For such a crime, the pirate would be hung, cut down before he was dead, his heart cut out and burned in a brazier, and then his body quartered – and the dismembered limbs even sent to friends of the pirates in boxes.

In the seventeenth century there were probably over 100 pirate executions. Between 1720 and 1830 there were fewer executions than in the previous century. This may well have been because Admiralty Courts had been set up in other parts of the world so that fewer felons were brought to London. Chris showed a 1718 image of the execution of Stede Bonnet at Charlestown, Carolina, at this point

The Ordinary of Newgate – the prison chaplain – accompanied pirates to Execution Dock, heard their felon’s confessions and then published them as a source of private income. A broadside of the Last Dying Speeches given by three pirates executed there in 1796 was shown. The dying words of Captain Kidd were woven into a contemporary ballad, printed versions of which grew in length to some twenty five verses over the following century!

The last pirate execution at Execution Dock took place in 1830. After that they took place on the temporary gallows/drop erected outside of Newgate Prison. Chris showed a broadside of five foreign pirates publicly executed there in February 1862.

Execution Dock still lives on in the public imagination. The Captain Kidd pub at Wapping has become well known, but Chris pointed out that its sign actually shows the wrong sort of gallows. Chris ended his talk with a photograph of gibbets erected on the foreshore – with live pirates/actors in gibbet cages!

Sally Mashiter/Chris Ellmers 19 July 2017