The London Hanged

[pynchonoid]

"Out upon Munden's Point stand a pair of BGallows,
simplified to Penstrokes in the glare of this Ocean
sky. A Visitor may lounge in the Evening upon the
Platform behind the Lines, and as a Visitor to London
might gaze at St. Paul's, regard these more sinister
forms in the failing North Light,-- perhaps being led
to meditate upon Punishment,-- or upon Commerce...for
Commerce without Slavery is unthinkable, whilst
Slavery must ever include, as an essential Term, the
Galls,-- Slavery withotu the Galls being as hollow and
Waste a Proceeding, as a Crusade without the Cross."
-Mason & Dixon, 108


--- Dave Monroe <flavordav at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Linebaugh, Peter.  The London Hanged: Crime and
>    Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century.  2nd ed.
>    London and New York: Verso, 2003 [1992].
> 
> "Peter Linebaugh’s groundbreaking history has become
> an inescapable part of any understanding of the rise
> of capitalism. In eighteenth-century London the
> spectacle of a hanging served the purpose of forcing
> the poor population of London to accept the
> criminalization of customary rights and new forms of
> private property."
> 
>
http://www.versobooks.com/books/klm/l-titles/linebaugh_p_london_hang.shtml
> 
> "In eighteenth-century London the gallows at Tyburn
> was the dramatic focus of a struggle between the
> rich
> and the poor. Most of the London hanged were
> executed
> for property crimes, and the chief lesson that the
> gallows had to teach was: 'Respect private
> property'.
> The executions took place amid a London populace
> that
> knew the same poverty and hunger as the condemned.
> Indeed, in this stimulating account Peter Linebaugh
> shows how there was little distinction between a
> 'criminal' population and the poor population of
> London as a whole. Necessity drove the city's poor
> into inevitable conflict with the laws of a
> privileged
> ruling class. Peter Linebaugh examines how the
> meaning
> of 'property' changed substantially during a century
> of unparalleled growth in trade and commerce,
> analyses
> the increasing attempts of the propertied classes to
> criminalize 'customary rights'--perquisites of
> employment that the labouring poor depended upon for
> survival--and suggests that property-owners, by
> their
> exploitation of the emergent working class,
> substantially determined the nature of crime, and
> that
> crime, in turn, shaped the development of the
> economic
> system. Peter Linebaugh's account not only pinpoints
> critical themes in the formation of the working
> class,
> but also presents the plight of the individuals who
> made up that class. Contemporary documents of the
> period are skilfully used to recreate the
> predicament
> of men and women who, in the pursuit of a bare
> subsistence, had good reason to fear the example of
> Tyburn's 'triple tree.'"
> 
> http://www.semcoop.com/detail/1859846386
> 
> And see as well ...
> 
>
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=2755
> 
> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2575
> 
>
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9909&msg=41275&sort=date
> 
>    "'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 [...] '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)
> 
>
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0109&msg=59738&sort=date


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