I made the best of my way
out of the crowd, and with some difficulty rode back among the large
number of people who had been upon the same errand as myself. The
face of every one spoke a kind of mirth, as if the spectacle they
had beheld had afforded pleasure instead of pain, which I am wholly
unable to account for....

One of the bodies was carried to the lodging of his wife, who not
being in the way to receive it, they immediately hawked it about to
every surgeon they could think of; and when none would buy it they
rubbed tar all over it, and left it in a field scarcely covered with
earth.

In a few words, too, Swift draws a vivid picture of a rogue on his last
journey through the London streets:

His waistcoat, and stockings, and breeches were white;
His cap had a new cherry ribbon to tie't.
The maids to the doors and the balconies ran,
And said, "Lack-a-day, he's a proper young man!"
But as from the windows the ladies he spied,
Like a beau in a box, he bow'd low on each side.

Execution day, or Tyburn Fair, as it was jocularly called, was not
only a holiday for the ragamuffins and idlers of London; folk of all
classes made their way thither to indulge a morbid desire of seeing
the dying agonies of a fellow being, criminal or not. There were
grand stands and scaffoldings from which the more favoured could
view the proceedings in comfort, and every inch of window space and
room on the neighbouring roofs was worth a pretty penny to the
owners. In his last scene of the career of the Idle Apprentice
Hogarth drew a picture of Tyburn Tree which no description can
amplify.

As the procession drew near the hangman clambered to the cross-piece
of the gallows and lolled there, pipe in mouth, until the first cart
drew up beneath him. Then he would reach down, or one of his
assistants would pass up, one after the other, the loose ends of the
halters which the condemned men had had placed round their necks
before leaving Newgate. When all were made fast Jack Ketch climbed
down and kicked his heels until the sheriff, or maybe the felons
themselves, gave him the sign to drive away the cart and leave its
occupants dangling in mid-air. The dead men's clothes were his
perquisite, and now was his time to claim them. There is a graphic
description of how, on one occasion, when the mu