Just Hanging Around: The Gallows in English Folklore

The gallows are perhaps more associated with the creepy opening shots of horror films. A body dangles from the scaffold while a hunched figure scurries around its base, wreathed in shadows and ground mist.

But is there more to the gallows? Does their appearance mark them as simple set dressing, or are they the site of their own folklore? Let’s delve into the mysteries of the gallows…

The gallows loom large in the history of crime and punishment, particularly in England.

One particular gallows certainly looms large, and that’s the Tyburn Tree. This gallows stood where modern-day Marble Arch is at the end of Oxford Street, named for the nearby Tyburn river.

Originally, it was a regular gallows surrounded by elm trees. In 1511, the infamous Tyburn Tree replaced the old gallows, able to hang 24 people at once. It gained the nickname, the ‘Never-Green Tree’ (Glinert 2008: 62).

There are also tales of people seemingly surviving the noose at Tyburn, only to wake up in the mortuary afterwards. Half-Hanged Smith was a man named John Smith, hanged on Christmas Eve in 1705. He hung for 15 minutes when crowds shouted for a reprieve. The hangman cut him down and he recovered at a nearby house (Glinert 2008: 64).

Meanwhile, William Duell was sixteen when he was hanged in 1740 for rape and murder. He woke up in Newgate’s Surgeons Hall, moments before being dissected. Duell was transported to Australia instead.

Hangings were moved to Newgate from Tyburn in 1783 after those living nearby complained of the rowdy crowds on execution days.

Gallows Humour?

They give us a range of common phrases, such as ‘gallows humour’. If you believe various legends, both ‘pulling one’s leg’ and ‘falling off the wagon’ come from the scaffold.

The former supposedly refers to a particularly tortuous experience before the authorities introduced the so-called ‘long drop’ method of hanging in 1872. This more ‘humane’ method killed its victims by dislocating their neck, causing death more quickly. But the old ‘short drop’ method slowly strangled its victims. Friends and family would crowd around the scaffold, ‘pulling the legs’ of their loved one to hasten their demise.

Or not. Gary Martin debunks this one, pointing out that there are no records of anyone using the phrase before the long drop method came in. Plenty of writers attended hangings and wrote about them, but they never captured this phrase. There’s also no link between someone joking with you and execution. The earliest record Martin found dated to 1883 in Ohio (n.d2)!

The latter apparently refers to the long journey from Newgate Prison (the site is now occupied by the Old Bailey) in London to the gallows at Tyburn. The wagon paused outside a pub in the vicinity of Tottenham Court Road to allow the condemned prisoner one final drink. They ‘got back on the wagon’ and went off to die, having presumably never drunk again.

It’s a nice idea, but again, Martin debunks the phrase. Instead, it dates to the turn of the 20th century as various temperance organisations gained in popularity in the US. US cities used water wagons to dampen the dust in the streets, and people who’d taken the temperance pledge said they’d rather drink from such a wagon than drink alcohol (n.d1).

A source of body parts

Even if the gallows didn’t give us these popular phrases, it still looms in their backstories. Yet it has its own association with horror stories in abundance, most notably through its links with two other nefarious practices; body-snatching and the Hand of Glory. After all, the hand of a hanged man, taken while he hung from the gallows, was the main ingredient of the burglar’s favourite infiltration device.

There is actually little evidence that anyone in England harvested body parts during the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. That said, there was nothing stopping people from harvesting the parts during the dissections that became legal following the 1832 Anatomy Act. Sometimes the skin of the hanged person became a belt, which people believed could cure labour pains (Davies 2017: 35). The skin of William Corder went on to bind a book after his execution in 1828 for murdering his partner in the famous Red Barn Murder (Davies 2017: 36).

Yet people still sought access to the body of the executed person for medicinal reasons. They believed the hand of an executed man cured a whole range of ailments. Sufferers attended public executions, paying the hangman for access to the corpse. According to the folk remedy, rubbing the dead man’s hand across a swelling would ease their medical conditions.

Owen Davies and Francesca Matteoni note that there were over two dozen cases of people wanting access to a hanged man’s hand between the mid-18th and 19th centuries (2017: 39). For some reason, this practice was more common in southern England.

V. A. C. Gatrell notes that “a dozen people stroked themselves with a hanged man’s hands to cure themselves of wens” at the Newgate gallows in 1786. A woman even bared her breasts at Meister in 1799, so convinced was she in the curative properties of a hanged man’s hands (1996: 81).

Davies and Matteoni also point out that no one really knows why the cure supposedly worked. Did it pass illness from the living to the dead? Would the illness disappear as the corpse disintegrated? This is certainly the reasoning behind the cure that recommends you rub meat on a wart, and then bury the meat so the wart will disappear (2017: 39).

It is possible that the corpses of hanged criminals simply gave faster or easier access to fresh dead bodies. The condemned knew this may happen and some of them even requested that their hands would not be used in such a fashion (Davies 2017: 39). Hangmen stopped granting access to the dead person’s hand in 1845 (Davies 2017: 38).

The Gallows Themselves Held Magical Properties

That leads us nicely to the beliefs surrounding the curative properties of the physical materials of the gallows. People prized the wood to cure both ague and toothache (Simpson 2003: 139). A piece of the wood should be worn or carried to defend against ague, while splinters in the mouth apparently cured toothache (presumably by causing more pain themselves).

Even the rope made its way into the hands of souvenir hunters. Tied around the head, the hangman’s rope could cure headaches. It also acted as a good luck charm, particularly for those who played cards (Simpson 2003: 139).

You probably won’t be surprised to learn the notorious mandrake plant was believed to grow at the foot of the gallows. In the 17th century, people believed mandrakes grew out of the urine or fat that dripped from the corpse (Simpson 2003: 139). Perhaps this assumption came from the human-shaped root of the plant. It certainly helps to solidify the otherworldly reputation of the gallows.

Gallows and Omens

Interpreting dreams was a favourite pastime in the late-18th and early 19th centuries. Given the popularity of public executions, gallows naturally made their way into the dream-books that apparently decoded the night-time flights of fancy for interested readers. While dreaming of the gallows might ostensibly appear to be an omen of death, contemporary readers saw it as “an omen of riches and honours to come” (Gatrell 1996: 81).

Elsewhere, Gatrell tells the story of a man about to be hanged on Kennington Common in 1763. A terrific storm blew in and so frightened the crowds that the sheriff called in military force to control the situation. On the surface, the events appear somewhat out of proportion, but a broadside later told a similar story of a condemned man. This chap had prayed for a fine day’s weather if he was guilty, and for darkness to overtake the town if he was innocent. According to the tale, a horrendous storm rolled in at the time of his hanging, prompting the actual murderer to confess (1996: 81).

While it’s unlikely that divine intervention really played a part in the hangings, and it’s likely the latter story was entirely fiction, it shows the peculiar reverence people showed towards the gallows.

Hauntings Near the Gallows

Jacqueline Simpson and Stephen Roud note an association between black dogs and the gallows. These solitary canine spectres may patrol the area around rural scaffolds as part of their territory. Thomas Colley was executed in 1751 for drowning a suspected witch. A black dog apparently haunted the gallows at Gubblecote Cross where he died. A local teacher claimed to see the dog a century later, lying in the road (Davies 2017: 56).

Other spirits might haunt the site of the gallows. People reported horses becoming nervous near the spot where the gallows once stood (Davies 2017: 55).

What do we make of the gallows in English folklore?

We sometimes struggle to understand the barbaric tendencies of our ancestors. While the practice of hanging ended in 1964 in the United Kingdom, the days of public executions are long gone. Yet the gallows remain, haunting the edges of popular culture, a silent yet ominous symbol for death.

Modern medicine has replaced the superstitious cures involving hanged men. Witches no longer harvest mandrakes from beneath the scaffold. But the man-made tree and its rope noose loom large at the edge of English folklore, casting a long shadow at twilight…

References

Davies, Owen, and Francesca Matteoni (2017), Executing Magic in the Modern Era: Criminal Bodies and the Gallows in Popular Medicine, Cham: Palgrave.

Gatrell, V. A. C. (1996), The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Glinert, Ed (2008), London’s Dead: A Guided Tour of the Capital’Dead, London: Collins.

Martin, Gary (n.d1), ‘On the wagon’, Phrases.org.uk, https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/on-the-wagon.html.

Martin, Gary (n.d2), ‘Pulling one’s leg’, Phrases.org.uk, https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/pulling-ones-leg.html.

Simpson, Jacqueline, Roud, Stephen (2003), A Dictionary of English Folklore, Oxford: Oxford University Press.