Gibbeting
Pirates were sometimes executed by hanging on a gibbet erected close to the low-water mark by the sea or a tidal section of a river.
In London, Execution Dock is located on the north bank of the River Thames in Wapping; after tidal immersion, particularly notorious criminals' bodies could be hung in cages a little farther downstream at either Cuckold's Point or Blackwall Point, as a warning to other waterborne criminals of the possible consequences of their actions (such a fate befell Captain William Kidd in May 1701).
There were objections that these displays offended foreign visitors and did not uphold the reputation of the law, though the scenes even became gruesome tourist attractions.
Breads was imprisoned in the Ypres Tower and then hanged, after which his body was left to rot for more than 20 years in an iron cage on Gibbet Marsh.
[10] Gibbeting was one of the methods said by Tacitus and Cassius Dio to have been used by Boudica's army in the massacre of Roman settlers in the destruction of Camulodunum (Colchester), Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St. Albans) in AD 60–61.
Located in Smith's Parish at the entrance to Flatt's Inlet is Gibbet Island, which was used to hang the bodies of escaped slaves as a deterrent to others.
She lived in New France, was sentenced to death by a military tribunal of twelve British officers for the murder of her second husband, was hanged for it, and her body hung in chains.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy used Hangman's Beach on McNab's Island in Halifax Harbour to display the hanged bodies of deserters, in order to deter the crews of passing warships.
Thomas Hill, a convict, was sentenced to a week on the rock in iron chains with only bread and water to consume; these conditions are said to have "literally pinched his gut", giving the island its current name.
[12] The head of Oliver Cromwell was displayed on a spike after his death, after monarchists disinterred his body during the restoration of the monarchy.
Similarly, following his execution by hanging in 1738, the corpse of Jewish financier Joseph Süß Oppenheimer was gibbeted in a human-sized bird cage that hung outside of Stuttgart on the so-called Pragsattel (the public execution place at the time) for six years, until the inauguration of Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg, who permitted the hasty burial of his corpse at an unknown location.
[22] In 1837, five years after the practice had ceased in England, the body of John McKay was gibbeted near the spot where he had murdered Joseph Wilson near Perth, in the colony of Van Diemen's Land.
The place where this occurred was just to the right (when travelling towards Launceston, not to be confused with the private road with the same name) on the Midlands Highway on the northern side of Perth.
[25] Hanging a body in chains was a post execution punishment that was used for those criminals who had committed heinous crimes such as murder.
2. c. 37) stipulated that "in no case whatsoever shall the body of any murderer be suffered to be buried";[27] the cadaver was either to be publicly dissected or left "hanging in chains".
[30] William Jobling was a miner hanged and gibbeted for the murder of Nicholas Fairles, a colliery owner and local magistrate, near Jarrow, Durham.
After being hanged, the body was taken off the rope and loaded into a cart and taken on a tour of the area before arriving at Jarrow Slake, where the crime had been committed.
During an attempted robbery, Cook beat Paas to death, and then took the body to his home, where he cut it into pieces and burned it to try to hide the evidence of the crime.
Representations were in consequence made to the authorities, and on the following Tuesday morning instructions were received from the Home Office directing the removal of the gibbet.
