The “Gallows” Literature of the Streets
“The gallows does well: but how does it do well? It does well to those that do ill.”
Division IV. — The “Gallows” Literature of the Streets. — Public Executions, Dying Speeches. Confessions, and Copy of Verses
“There’s nothing beats a stunning good murder after all.”—Experience of a Running Patterer.
Of accounts of Public Executions, Dying Speeches, and Confessions we have those before us, stretching from the Execution of Sir John Oldcastle in 1417, to the Trial and Execution of F. Hinson, who suffered the extreme penalty of the law, at the Old Bailey, Monday, December 13th, 1869, for the wilful murder of Maria Death, to which is attached the all-important and necessary “Copy of Verses,” and by way of supplement, we add a verbatim copy of the Full, True and Particular Account of the Execution of J. Rutterford, at Bury St. Edmunds, for the murder of J. Hight, with copy of “Death-verses.” But the convict was NOT hanged after all. As the gaol surgeon having reported that Rutterford had a malformation which might cause an unusual degree of suffering on death being inflicted by strangulation, whereupon the Secretary of State for the Home Department ordered a special examination to be made by some medical men of the immediate neighbourhood, and on whose report the sentence of death previously recorded was commuted to transportation for life!
All the modern examples of The “Gallows” Literature of the Streets come not only from different printers and publishers, but from distant towns,—London, Birmingham, Lincoln, and Preston, but they have all the same stamp. And the whole of the last dying speeches and confessions, trials, sentences from what ever part of the country they come, run in the same form of quaint and circumstantial detail, appeals to heaven, to young men, to young women, to christians in general, and moral reflections. The narrative, embracing trial, biography, &c., is usually prepared by the printer, being a condensation from the accounts in the newspapers. It is then necessary to add the “copy of verses.” Many of these are clearly by the same hand, probably one of the five or six well-known authors, who also chaunt their own verses in the streets. And with regard to this matter—“Time being the essence of the contract,”—it must also be noted that many of the most popular “Death-verses” being composed on the spur of the moment for the purpose of being sung while all the town is ringing with the event, all niceties of rhyme, metre, and orthography have to be utterly disregarded. “I gets,” says one of the fraternity, “I gets a shilling a copy for the verses written by the wretched culprit the night previous to his execution.” “And I,” says another, “did the helegy on Rush. I didn’t write it to horder; I knew that they would want a copy of verses from the wretched culprit. And when the publisher read it; ‘that’s the thing for the streets,’ he says. But I only got a shilling for it.” “It’s the same poet as does ’em all,” says a third authority, “and the same tip: no more nor a bob for nothing.” This was paltry pay under any circumstances, but still more so when we find that in the case of the chief modern murders these “Execution Ballads” commanded a most enormous sale, thus:
| Of Rush’s murder | 2,500,000 | copies |
| Of the Mannings | 2,500,000 | ″ |
| Of Courvoisier | 1,666,000 | ″ |
| Of Greenacre | 1,650,000 | ″ |
| Of Corder (Maria Martin) | 1,166,000 | ″ |
| Of the Five Pirates (Flowery Land) | 290,000 | ″ |
| Of Müller | 280,000 | ″ |
| Of Constance Kent (trial only) | 150,000 | ″ |
| Of Jeffery (1866) | 60,000 | ″ |
| Of Forward (Ramsgate) | 30,000 | ″ |
So that the printers and publishers of “Gallows” Literature in general, and “The Seven Dials Press” in particular, must have reaped a golden harvest for many a long day, even when sold to the street-folks at the low rate of 3d. per long dozen. Mr. W. S. Fortey, the successor of the late celebrated Jemmy Catnach, stated to us during a recent conversation with him on the sale number of modern dying speeches. “Well, I never in my time printed so many as I did of the Five Pirates of the Flowery Land, and I sold them at the rate of 3,000 copies per hour, and did altogether 90,000,—that was my share. What the others did of course I can’t say. I know I got a new machine out of the job!—which we now call the “Pirates,” or sometimes “The Flowery Land.”1 Mr. Fortey furthermore informed us that his share of the “Execution Papers” of recent popular murders was as follows:—Müller, 84,000; Constant Kent, 15,000; Jeffery, 10,000; Forward, 5,000. Mr. Fortey’s trade announcement runs thus:—“The Catnach Press.” (Established 1813.) William S. Fortey, (late A. Ryle), successor to the late J. Catnach, Printer, Publisher, and Wholesale Stationer, 2 and 3, Monmouth Court, Seven Dials, London, W.C. The cheapest and greatest variety in the trade of large coloured penny books; halfpenny coloured books; farthing books; penny and halfpenny panoramas; school books; penny and halfpenny song books; memorandum books; poetry cards; lotteries; ballads (4,000 sorts) and hymns; valentines; scripture sheets; Christmas pieces; Twelfth-night characters; carols; book and sheet almanacks; envelopes, note paper, &c., &c. W. S. Fortey begs to inform his friends and the public generally, that after 19 years’ service, he has succeeded to the business of his late employers (A. Ryle and Co.), and intends carrying on the same, trusting that his long experience will be a recommendation, and that no exertion shall be wanting on his part to merit a continuance of those favours that have been so liberally bestowed on that establishment during the last 46 years.
As far as can be ascertained, the sale of Broad-sheets in the Mannings and Rush’s case far exceed that of any now before us. Even that of Müller did not amount to more than two hundred and eighty thousand copies—though no modern murder ever surpassed it in atrocity, or in the profound interest which it excited throughout England. And this difference is no doubt to be explained by the fact that since Mannings and Rush’s day the daily penny newspapers have almost forestalled the “Dying Speeches and confessions”—with or without the “copy of verses”—by giving a full account of the different enormities in all their minute and hideous details. The force of public opinion, too, thus exerted through the Press, has been brought to bear on the question of crime, and much of the morbid sympathy which found expression in the case of such a monster as Rush, had died away in 1864, when detectives tracked Müller across the Atlantic, and brought him back to be hanged by an English hangman, in the presence of an English mob. To every one of the murderers, Constance Kent at Road hill house, Jeffery, Forward, at Ramsgate, and the Pirates of the “Flowery Land,”—one and all alike,—stern justice is meted out with inflexible severity. The wretched girl who at Salisbury confessed her crime to the judge, makes no excuse for her guilt, but tells only of the intolerable remorse that would give her no rest—
“My infant brother so haunted me,
I not one moment could happy be;
And if for the murder they do me try,
I declare I’m guilty, and deserve to die.”
“Scoundrels,” “malefactors,” “villains,” are the gentlest names for this Newgate gallery, and the gallows in every case is promised, with a sort of grim satisfaction that augurs strongly for a deep popular belief in the justice of those solemn words, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”
With the recent Act of Parliament abolishing the execution of criminals in sight of the public. Halfpenny and penny newspapers, and the capriciousness of Home Secretaries, the Dying Speech trade has in its turn received its death-blow. Still old memories and customs yet cling to the “Affectionate Copy of Verses.”—“The (cooked) Love Letters” and “Confessions”—made only by the Street-Patterer, and are found sufficiently remunerative to author, printer, publisher, and vendor—But for This Day Only!
The following is the style of “gag” and “patter” of a man formerly well-known in the “Dials” as “Tragedy Bill”—“Now, my friends, here you have, just printed and published, a full, true, and pertickler account of the life, trial, character, confession, behaviour, condemnation, and hexecution of that unfortunate malefactor, Richard Wilbyforce, who was hexecuted on Monday last, for the small charge of one ha’penny, and for the most horrible, dreadful, and wicked murder of Samuel—I means Sarah Spriggens, a lady’s maid, young, tender, and handsome. You have here every pertickler, of that which he did, and that which he didn’t. It’s the most foul and horrible murder that ever graced the annals of British history(?) Here, my customers, you may read his hexecution on the fatal scaffold. You may also read how he met his victim in a dark and lonesome wood, and what he did to her—for the small charge of a ha’penny; and, further, you read how he brought her to London,—after that comes the murder, which is worth all the money. And you read how the ghost appeared to him and then to her parents. Then comes the capture of the willain; also the trial, sentence, and hexecution, showing how the ghost was in the act of pulling his leg on one side, and the ‘old gentleman’ a pulling on the other, waiting for his victim (my good friends excuse my tears!) But as Shakspeare says, ‘Murder most foul and unnatural,’ but you’ll find this more foul and unnatural than that or the t’other—for the small charge of a ha’penny! Yes, my customers, to which is added a copy of serene and beautiful werses, pious and immoral, as wot he wrote with his own blood and skewer the night after—I mean the night before his hexecution, addressed to young men and women of all sexes—I beg pardon, but, I mean classes (my friends its nothing to laugh at), for I can tell you the werses is made three of the hard-heartedest things cry as never was—to wit, that is to say namely—a overseer, a broker, and a policeman. Yes, my friends, I sold twenty thousand copies of them this here morning, and could of sold twenty thousand more than that if I could of but kept from crying—only a ha’penny!—but I’ll read the werses.
Come all you blessed Christians dear,
That’s a-tender, kind, and free,
While I a story do relate
Of a dreadful tragedy,
Which happened in London town,
As you shall all be told;
But when you hear the horrid deed
’Twill make your blood run cold.—
For the small charge of a ha’penny!
’Twas in the merry month of May,
When my true love I did meet;
She look’d all like an angel bright,
So beautiful and sweet.
I told her I loved her much,
And she could not say nay;
’Twas then I strung her tender heart,
And led her all astray.—
Only a ha’penny!
I brought her up to London town,
To make her my dear wife;
But an evil spirit tempted me,
And so I took her life!
I left the town all in the night,
When her ghost in burning fire,
Saying, “Richard,” I am still with you,
Whenever you retire.—
Only a ha’penny!
And justice follow’d every step,
Though often I did cry;
And the cruel Judge and Jury
Condemned me for to die.
And in a cell as cold as death,
I always was afraid,
For Sarah she was with me,
Although I killed her dead.—
For the small charge of a ha’penny!
My tender-hearted Christians,
Be warned by what I say,
And never prove unkind or false
To any sweet la’-dy.
Though some there, who wickedness
Oft leads ’em to go astray;
So pray attend to what you hear.
And a warning take I pray.
Notes
1 “The Pope, God bless him! he’s been the best friend I’ve had since Rush. Then Cardinal Wiseman. They shod me, sir.” “Who’s they!” “Why the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman. I call my clothes after them I earn money by to buy them with. My shoes I call Pope Pius; my trowsers” and braces, Calcraft; my waistcoat and shirt, Jael Denny; and my coat, Love Letters. A man must show a sense of gratitude in the best way he can.—Experience of a Running Patterer.—Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor.