Public Executions: From Ancient Rome to the Present Day by Nigel Cawthorne Page B

impression. Far fewer spectators could fit into the area around the Old Bailey so the crowds were easier to control and the residents soon got used to the idea when they began renting out rooms with windows overlooking the scaffold whenever there was a hanging. By 1840, it cost £25 (over £15,000 in today's money) to rent a window with a good view and the keeper of Newgate Gaol would entertain distinguished guests with a lavish breakfast of devilled kidneys and brandy on the day of the executions.

Bungled Executions
    Three years after the gallows had been moved to Newgate, Dennis died in his apartment at the Old Bailey and William Brunskill took over. At his first solo performance – hanging seven offenders before a large crowd – he took a bow but became a little accident prone. On 5 June 1797, he was executing Martin Clench and James Mackley who claimed to be innocent of murdering Sydney Fryer. As Brunskill and his assistant John Langley were about to pull down their caps, the trapdoor gave way and the two condemned men tumbled down the hatch along with their executioners and priests. The felons were stopped by the ropes while the others landed in a heap at the bottom of the hatch.
    Legendary eighteenth-century highwayman Jack Sheppard, who escaped twice from Newgate Prison, turns his hand to a spot of house-breaking
    A Newgate hanging went even more disastrously wrong when John Holloway and Benjamin Haggerty went to the scaffold on 22 February 1807 still protesting their innocence over the murder of John Cole Steele on Hounslow Heath five years earlier. They were joined by Elizabeth Godfrey who had been convicted of the wilful murder of Richard Prince the previous Christmas, by stabbing him in the eye with a pocketknife. They were hanged together. According to the
Newgate Calendar
:
    'the crowd which assembled to witness this execution was unparalleled, being, according to the best calculation, nearly forty thousand; and the fatal catastrophe which happened in consequence will for long cause the day to be remembered. By eight o'clock not an inch of ground was unoccupied in view of the platform. The pressure of the crowd was such that, before the malefactors appeared, numbers of persons were crying out in vain to escape from it; the attempt only tended to increase the confusion. Several females of low stature who had been so imprudent as to venture among the mob were in a dismal situation; their cries were dreadful. Some who could be no longer supported by the men were suffered to fall and were trampled to death. This also was the case with several men and boys. In all parts there were continued cries of “Murder! Murder!” particularly from the females and children among the spectators, some of whom were seen expiring without the possibility of obtaining the least assistance, everyone being employed in endeavours to preserve his own life.
    'The most affecting scene of distress was seen at Green Arbour Lane, nearly opposite the debtors' door. The terrible occurrence which took place near this spot was attributed to the circumstance of two piemen attending there to dispose of their pies. One of them having had his basket overthrown, which stood upon a sort of stool with four legs, some of the mob, not being aware of what had happened, and at the same time being severely pressed, fell over the basket, and the man at the moment he was picking it up, together with its contents. Those who once fell were never more suffered to rise, such was the violence of the mob.
    'At this fatal place, a man of the name of Herrington was thrown down, who had by the hand his youngest son, a fine boy about twelve years of age. The youth was soon trampled to death; the father recovered, though much bruised, and was amongst the wounded in St Bartholomew's Hospital. A woman who was so imprudent as to bring with her a child at the breast was one of the number killed. Whilst in the act of falling, she forced the child into the arms of the man