Chapter 52

of "Oliver Twist," the space before the prison was cleared, and a few strong barriers painted black thrown across the road to break the pressure of the crowd, while the more favored portion of the audience occupied every post of vantage, at windows and housetops, that commanded a view of the ghastly show. Here, as Oliver noted when he came away from his last interview with Fagin at the dawn of day: "A great multitude had already assembled; the windows were filled with people smoking and playing cards to beguile the time; the crowd was pushing, quarreling and joking. Everything told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of objects in the very centre of all--the black stage, the crossbeam, the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death."

Prisoners of old were executed on Tyburn Hill in public, or on some occasions, when it was especially desired to enforce an example, as close as possible to the scene of guilt. Those who were punished for

## participation in the Gordon Riots of 1780 were swung off in the various

parts of the city where their crimes were committed. In 1793 the common places of execution were changed to the Old Bailey, in front of Newgate. There the first culprit was executed on December 9 of that year. Hanging was brisk when George III was king. Between February and December, 1785, ninety-six persons suffered by the trap arrangement now in common use the world over, which was then known as the "new drop." Previous to that time it had been the custom to perch the candidates for the halter on a cart, which was driven from under them at the fatal signal, while someone hung on to their legs to choke them more speedily and surely--an expeditious practice quite frequently resorted to by Judge Lynch in America in after years, and still not entirely out of use for extemporaneous executions. In "Barnaby Rudge" (volume 2,