Expert: Mark Smith - 12/7/2004

Question
Hello, Mark.

My question relates to the post-Waterloo--pre-Reform Bill period, and the plethroa of offences (202-210 on the statute books) for which a person could be hanged.  

Some time ago, I heard someone quote a contemporary source. Speaking about one particular hanging tree (an oak) somewhere in England, it went something like this:

"You couldn't see the leaves for all the corpses hanging on it."

It's a pretty dramatic quote.

I don't suppose you've heard it before? If so, can you make it more exact for me? --and tell me more about it? --or point me to some source?

regards,
Dan O'Hanlon

Answer
Hello Danny.
Although I can't tell you exactly where that quote comes from it's something I've heard before. I don't think it comes from the 19th century though. By then hangings were carried out on specially constructed scaffolds, usually outside the prisons gates or on the gatehouse roof etc. It sounds like it comes from at least a hundred years earlier when executions were often spontaneous affairs carried out at the nearest large tree. I wouldn't have thought anyone was judicially hanged from a tree in Britain after 1700 or earlier. It may be referring to some rebellion where the captured rebels were sometimes strung up from trees en masse as a warning to others, if so it probably dates from no later than the 17th century.
Mark