LONDON THE EXECUTIONER'S CITY

Hardback. Imagine a city where the bodies of criminals defined the boundaries and heads on poles greeted its people. Crime was rife and punishment was a public event. This was London, aptly named the executioner's city. The most notorious site of execution was Tyburn but the city offered a staggeringly long list of other sites : the Tower of London saw the last moments of those found guilty of treason; Execution Dock, on the North side of the Thames, was mainly for pirates; and Smithfield gained a gruesome reputation for executions particularly those of William Wallace and protestants under Mary Tudor. A book which features many unntold stories of incompetence and riots at the gallows. Read of John Thrift, a convicted murderer who was pardoned when he agreed to put his homicidal tendencies to good use and act as an executioner. When he was instructed to behead Lords Malmerino and Kilmarnock, he fainted and had to be revived with wine. A colourful and grimly entertaining exploration of some of the most important execution sites in the capital from medieval times to the last century. Monarchs, heretics, archbishops, pirates, plotters and thousands of ordinary people have all met their fate in public by hanging, beheading, burning or boiling. Illus., Glossary of London Prison and Gallows Slang, Bibliog. and Index. 248pp. 8vo. h/back. F. in Nr. F. dw.