The Public Execution Crowd

Joseph Long Innes, police superintendent and later magistrate, is someone who provides a unique window into the composition of the crowd. He gave evidence at the 1849 Select Committee that inquired ^{[382] [383] into concerns over discipline and safety at Darlinghurst Gaol in Sydney.}

A random sample of crowd estimates for the era of public executions demonstrates a large degree of variation across the colonies. The esti­mation of 10,000 Sydneysiders at John Knatchbull's execution in 1844 seems far and away the largest of the colonial era.^[388] In Hobart 600 people attended an execution in 1827 but this number had jumped to as many as 2000 for a relatively uneventful hanging in 1853.^[389] All 900 of Moreton Bay's convict population witnessed that settlement's first ever hanging in 1830.^[390] South Australia's first execution was performed in front of at least 1000 people according to one witness.

Edmund Finn's record of crowd numbers in the context of Victoria is about as definitive a sample as one can get for the public execution era. Finn had a habit of making crowd estimates at the many public execu­tions he attended in the history of early Melbourne. His estimates appear throughout The Chronicles of Early Melbourne (1888) and comprise the following when arranged together: 6000 spectators attended the execu­tion of �Bob' and �Jack' in 1842; 7000 watched Daniel Jepps, Charles Ellis and Martin Fogarty hang in 1842; 300 for John Healy in 1847; 2000 for Augustus Dauncey in 1848, and finally, 700—800 spectators came to watch the hanging of Patrick Kennedy in 1851.^[393] It goes without saying that Finn's estimates are just as anecdotal as those that appear in the newspapers. However, made by the same observer over the period of a decade, they should be given a little more weight by comparison. Taken at face value, Finn demonstrates that very large crowds would commonly appear to watch Melbourne's executions but it was not the norm. Rather than demonstrating an upward or downward trend over the longer term, crowd numbers appear to fluctuate quite dramatically depending on the profile of the person executed.

If the stereotype is to be believed, the public execution crowd was primarily comprised of those low in social standing. Labouring types were strongly represented as Joseph Long Innes suggests while large portions of the unemployed, perhaps even a small criminal element, were thought to lurk below the drop.

[I]f there could be a more disgusting sight than the gallows itself, it was presented by the bulk of the spectators — unwashed loungers, reeking from the night's debauch, or only half recovered from its effects by a hasty hour or two of sleep; women hurrying to the spot as if pressing to join in some ordinary amusement, and some even carrying with them their shivering unweaned infants... Every purlieu of the city's worst locality seemed to have belched forth its inmates and frequenters, and to have assembled them around the frightful structure.^[395]

At an earlier execution in 1850 the very same newspaper wrote that, �with scarcely any exception', the crowd was composed of the �most abandon class'.^[396] In Sydney it was reported that �mechanics, labourers, vagrants, thieves, prostitutes' all swelled with a �horrible and unnatural anxiety for the time when “the show would begin”'.^[397] In Tasmania spectators to public executions were described, somewhat more politely, as being from the �humbler classes'.^[398] For a public hanging near Queen Street Gaol in Brisbane there was �scarcely a person of respectability', to be seen, �except [for] those required' to be present.^[399] In Victoria, one letter

addressed to the Editor of TheArgus described the Melbourne crowd as �a mixed assembly of unthinking, vicious and profane men, women, [and] children'.^[400]

The mention of women at public executions was frequent in the colonial newspapers and almost always accompanied by a moralising judgement.

[A] very large proportion [of the crowd] consisted (as usual) of women and children. There is indeed something truly shocking in the avidity with which — in the case of ignorant and uncultivated females — these kind of spectacles are sought after. We observed more than one vehicle literally crammed with them, and we could not help wondering... [what] induced a whole bevy of fair dames to undertake a journey of twenty miles in order to feast their eyes upon the dying agonies of a miserable fellow-creature! Sincerely did we wish that every female present could have been sentenced to six months incarceration, as a means of rewarding her for her gratuitous display of shameful curiosity.^[401]

Another publication called for a woman so �forgetful of her sex' as to attend executions that she deserved nothing less than �a good whip­ping'.^[402] The Moreton Bay Free Press, though it was �blush to write it', mentioned that many women in the township had come to watch a hanging in 1854.^[403] Those women who could stomach such a scene did �no credit to her sex', according to the writer, since �humanity is one of woman's ennobling characteristics'.^[404] While Sydney's the Australian wondered aloud: �Is the mind of woman, which we have hitherto admired for its gentleness, purity, and innocence, so utterly lost and debased as to delight in gazing upon the dying agonies of the condemned?'^[405] This disapproval of female spectators in New South Wales was on full display for an execution at Darlinghurst Gaol in 1840. A traveller to Sydney wrote about how, on this particular occasion, women were deliberately excluded from freely entering the prison yard to watch the death.^[406] It is a passing example that usefully illustrates the very real concern over female attendance in the era of public executions.

The last group that Joseph Long Innes suggests attended public execu­tions were children. In 1841 Tom Petrie was only �nine or ten years old' when an elderly prisoner took him by the hand to view a recently hanged Indigenous man lying in his coffin:

Stooping, he [the prisoner] pulled the white cap from the face of the dead blackfellow, exposing the features. The eyes were staring, and the open mouth had the tongue protruding from it. The horror of the ghastly sight so frightened the child that it set him crying, and he could not get over it nor forget it for long afterwards.^[407]

Tom's father, Andrew Petrie, had constructed the gallows used at this particular execution in Moreton Bay so the boy's ready access to the body of the dead criminal was likely a result of this family connection and thus a rare occurrence.^[408] Still, there are many more references to chil­dren viewing executions throughout the colonies. In Perth, for example, there were a �not inconsiderable number' of children who watched the hanging of William Dodd in 1855.^[409] Prior to the execution of Eliza Benwell in Tasmania there was an �abundance' of young boys who found room on the pavement to play �leap-frog, marbles, and other juvenile games'.^[410] At an execution at Brisbane's Queen Street Gaol in 1851 it was to the �shame and disgrace of the town' that a large number of children could be counted among the spectators.^[411]

There is a strong possibility that children were actively brought to public executions as a means to teach them the consequences of wrong­doing. In his evidence to the Select Committee, Joseph Long Innes states that children were held up by mothers to better see the gallows. It is an action that implies parental approval to view proceedings as opposed to an image of disobedient youths sneaking to the foot of the gallows without consent. Pieter Spierenburg is one scholar who briefly coun­tenanced the idea of the gallows as a parental aid in the context of Amsterdam.

Innes' observation that the behaviour of the lower classes, women and children at executions was �appalling' holds true as an umbrella term for the negative construction of the crowd in the press. At one execution in Melbourne alone, Edmund Finn labelled the crowd �white barbarians', complaining that they �shouted and yelled and vented their gratification in explosions of uproarious merriment, as if they were participating in the greatest sport'.^[413] At the same hanging the Port Phillip Gazette also reported that a �most disgusting spirit' was on display, describing how spectators clambered for vantage points on nearby trees and walls, some even mounting the criminal’s coffins for a better view.^[414] If this one execu­tion can serve as a guide to others, negative slurs on crowd behaviour were widespread across the colonial era. In England the uncomfortably �sporting tone’ that executions took on was noted by John Pratt while Thomas W. Laqueur contextualised crowd behaviour within that nation’s history of carnival days.^[415] [416] The sporting analogy is not completely out of place in the Australian colonies, especially when considering the cultural expectation of the crowd that the criminal �die game’ (see Chapter 4). However, a genuine fear of the crowd was seldom expressed in the colonies. In fact, only on one extremely rare occasion was the military guard actually called upon by the Sheriff to settle violent or interfering

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spectators.

Although the crowd at public executions was not placed in a positive light across the Australian colonies, there are some references to spec­tators behaving in a way that matched the solemnity of the occasion. The colonial historian, John West, wrote how onlookers were �affected to tears’ when a group of condemned men died singing a hymn on the Hobart scaffold.^[417] The travelling Scotsman, Alexander Marjorib- anks, witnessed numerous hangings in both England and Australia. He suggested that the Sydney crowd was comparatively docile to those found abroad: �The spectators behave with a remarkable degree of propriety in that country on such occasions, very different from what I have often seen in Britain’.^[418] For Marjoribanks, this was best illustrated by the way people related to the public executioner who was �always treated with great respect'.^[419] As with any stereotype there are always counter­narratives to be discovered.

It is worth probing further into the criticism directed at the public execution crowd with reference to the earlier comments made by colonial elites like Lang, Cunningham and Kentish; viz., their belief that scenes of violence were something that demoralised and hardened the spectator. Understanding this point helps to unlock the endless criticism directed at the women, children and lower classes who attended public execu­tions. The ideal of �improvement', for instance, was a key concept in Australia's intellectual culture from the 1830s to the 1860s.^[420] The prolif­eration of the Mechanics' Institutes across the colonies during this time marked a desire to raise the labouring classes away from sensual pleasures to higher intellectual endeavours. Drunkenness and debauchery was a far cry from the disciplined workforce required to grow settlements from the ground up. If colonial society did indeed have an idealised cultural role for the lower classes to aspire towards, it certainly did not involve keeping company at the foot of the public scaffold.

As for the criticism that women and children attending execu­tions received, scholars like Anne Summers and Jan Kociumbas may have part of the answer. A number of historians have identified how colonial women were placed in narrowly defined domestic, sexual and repro­ductive roles during the colonial period.^[421] Summers' Damned Whores and God’s Police (1975), for example, puts the birth of the �bour­geoisie family' in Australia around the 1840s and 1850s, a period where females were told to assume �moral guardianship of society'.^[422] These types of roles designated for women, usually curated, enforced and exemplified by middle-class families, clashed with the idea of female attendance at the violent spectacle of public hangings. As for underage spectators to executions, Kociumbas' history of Australian childhood emphasises how the juvenile mind was usually conceived of as a malleable and pliable object. Schooling, play, family, discipline— all the elements of a proper upbringing—were thought to influence not just the child's individual prospects but the future health of the nation. These ideals were replicated in the raising of the children of the colonial elite, who were inculcated from birth with the virtues of good habit, respectability and appropriate gender roles.^[423] The existence of children at the gallows, their corruption of innocence and crude intro­duction to violent death, flew in the face of all elite conceptions of proper child rearing. Children, and the mothers who brought them to watch, were thus free targets for sanction and concern in such a cultural milieu.

To return briefly to the question of the attendance of well-to-do types at public executions there is some evidence to suggest that they were, despite their outward rhetoric, spotted below the drop as well. The depiction of John Knatchbull's execution in Sydney in 1844 (see Illus­tration 1.1), for example, shows well-dressed men, women and children in the foreground. The horses and carriages dotted outside the gaol also betray the idea that it was a penniless rabble gathered to watch. More­over, in Melbourne—the location where The Argus labelled executions a �satanic high festival'—an eyewitness account of an execution by George Willmer exists. Willmer was an English draper who identified as one of those �staid men, with large families, prosperous businesses, and settled habits' before leaving in search of �golden tidings' in Victoria.^[424] Upon arriving in Melbourne he too gathered around the drop with a travelling companion:

This was the first sight of the kind I ever witnessed, and it was not a very agreeable introduction to the capital of Victoria. After witnessing the sad spectacle, we retired to a respectable-looking place to break our fast; but neither of us could eat much, or forget the sight just left behind us.⁷3

Despite Willmer proclaiming that he was turned off his breakfast because of the scene, it still shows that men of his standing were not totally absent from public executions in Australia.