MDDM Ch. 71 They Execute Their Own

[Dave Monroe]

   "'I don't trust this King, Mason.  I don't think
anybody else does, either.  Tha saw Lord Ferrers take
the Drop at Tyburn.  They execute their own.   What
may they be willing to do to huz?'"

Recall ...

"'You'd appreciate Wapping High Street, then,-- and,
and Tyburn, of course! put that on your list.'
   "'Alluring out there, is it?'
   "Mason explains, though without his precise reason
for it, that, for the past Year or more, it has been
his practice to attend the Friday Hangings at that
melancholy place [...].  Mason has been shov'd about
and borne along in riots of sailors attempting to
wrest from bands of medical Students the bodies of
Shipmates come to grief ashorem too far from the
safety of the Sea,-- and he's had his Purse, as his
Person, assaulted by Agents public and private,-- yet,
'There's nothing like it, it's London at its purest,'
he cries, 'You must come out there with me, soon as we
may.'" (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 15)

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (New York:
Penguin, 1979 [1791]), "Part IX: 1782-3," pp. 281-309
...

"He said to Sir William Scott, 'The age is running mad
after innovation; and all the business of the world is
to be done in a new way; men are to be hanged in a new
way; Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of
innovation.' It having been argued that this was an
improvement,--'No, Sir, (said he, eagerly,) it is not
an improvement; they object, that the old method drew 
together a number of spectators.  Sir, executions are
intended to draw spectators.  If they do not draw
spectators, they don't answer their purpose. The old
method was most satisfactory to all parties; the
publick was gratified by a procession; the criminal
was supported by it. Why is all this to be swept
away?'  I perfectly agree with Dr. Johnson upon this
head, and am persuaded that executions now, the solemn
procession being discontinued, have not nearly the
effect which they formerly had." (pp. 291-2)

Lisa Picard, Dr. Johnson's London: Coffee-House and
Climbing Boys, Medicine, Toothpaste and Gin, Poverty
and Press-Gangs, Freakshows and Female Education (New
York: St. Martin's, 2001), Ch. 14, "Amusements," pp.
123-32 ...

   "But undoubtedly the best amusements were
executions.  Eight times a year, the carts left the
gates of Newgate and bumped their way slowly along 
Holborn and Oxford Street to Tyburn, just outside the
turnpike gate, between yelling, cheering, booing,
catcalling crowds....  Sometimes the execution 
was arranged in the place where the crime had been
committed, which made a nice change of scene for the
crowd....
   "The fun was not only in watching the prisoners
dying, but in assessing their demeanor.  They varied
from the blase to the terrified....  Sometimes the mob
was cheated by a 'reprieve under the gallows.' 
Sometimes it attempted a rescue.  Sometimes it was
more terrifying than the hangman himself...." (p. 129)

And Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth
of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York:
Vintage, 1977), Part I, "Torture," Section 
1, "The Body of the Condemned," pp. 3-31 ...

"Among so many changes, I shall consider one: the
disappearance of torture as a public spectacle ..."

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0109&msg=59738&sort=date

And see as well, courtesy o' Steve Maas ...

Hay, Douglas, et al.  Albion's Fatal Tree.
   New York: Pantheon, 1975.

McAdoo, William.  The Procession to Tyburn.
   New York: Boni and Liveright, 1927.

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9710&msg=20668&sort=date

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