#Tyburn Tree

[j-august]

Since Laws were made for ev'ry Degree, To curb Vice in others, as well as in me, I wonder we han't better Company, Upon Tyburn tree! But Gold from Law can take out the Sting; And if rich Men like us were to swing, 'Twou'd thin the Land, such Numbers to string, Upon Tyburn Tree!

John Gay, The Beggar's Opera

[justinempire]

Edgeware Road London.

This road in London UK leads to Marble Arch and Oxford Street, where at the corner of which is the site of the  Tyburn Tree.

“The gruesome history of Tyburn Tree has nothing to do with nature or greenery and everything to do with justice and death.

Tyburn – meaning ‘place of the elms’ – was a village close to the current location of Marble Arch and so-called for its position adjacent to the Tyburn Brook, a tributary of the lost Westbourne River.

Tyburn’s ‘tree’ was in fact a wooden gallows where criminals were hanged to death. The site, operational for over 650 years, became renowned as the principal location for public executions in London.

Prisoners sentenced to death would begin their last day at Newgate Prison in the City. They’d then clamber onto horse and cart to embark on a very public journey through St Giles in the Fields, down Oxford Street, before arriving at the Tyburn Tree – their final destination. A journey that would now take around 20 minutes on the number 23 bus could take up to three hours due to the number of people crowding the route, wanting to get one last look at the condemned.

It was certainly a public show. Executions were thought to be a deterrent to crime (ironically, pickpocketing at these events was rife due to the huge crowds) and so spectators were heartily welcomed in their thousands. The placement of the gallows in the centre of a busy roadway overlooking Hyde Park made it hard to miss. Those at the more fortuitous end of the social ladder could even pay to ascend viewing platforms constructed especially for the occasion.”

https://marble-arch.london/culture-blog/history-of-tyburn-tree/

[justablix]

I think Peter and Tyburn might be my favourite friendship (frenemyship?) in the whole series

[theoutcastrogue]

Rattlebag - The Tyburn Sisters

"A retelling of the supernatural murder ballad ‘Two Sisters,’ set to a traditional Swedish tune (Sörgsen Tön) and presented as part of London’s bloody history. Many miscreants danced the Tyburn Jig beside that infamous stream, buried now but still flowing. The river doesn’t forget." [x]

Two girls both young and fair of face walked by the rushing river One girl, her heart the blackest stone, had grown to hate the other And though she wore a smiling face, she’d fallen far from human grace Her sister she did murder

And by the lonely Tothill Marsh the girl did breathe her last Thrown from the twisting Tyburn's edge into the stream so fast The killer watched her sister drown, smiled as her body floated down Beneath the rushing river

The river hid its guilty face beneath the dirt of ages But hidden deep and far below the angry water rages And on this murdered daughter’s bones there grew the city’s ancient stones One death among so many

And others came to die in time upon the stones of Tyburn Hung from the twisted gallows tree to face a justice stern The blood that flowed into the ground was now the blood of London Town And of that hidden river

Death, plague and dreadful poverty are suffered by the living Still for the restless angry dead there will be no forgiving The seasons pass and bring a fool to build a house at Old King’s School Above the secret river

He dug the soil in that fell place where he had made his home And as he worked he found himself holding the whitest bone He took his blade to carve a horn and from his work a flute was born To sing the song of Tyburn

And from that time, until this day, the only song the flute would play Was of the hidden Tyburn

[indelen]

There was a highwayman that was a member of a political debate club in London for like years in Georgian England. He was listed, full name and occupation in their members list. You could get away with anything back then.

If I was a wanted criminal in the dark ages, they’d be like “are you William the Wanted?” And I’d be like “nahh I’m Laurence the Lawful” and they’d be like “ohhh okay”

[i-was-today-years-old-when]

i learned what was the strangest execution in history

Contrary to the popular belief, people don’t always die when they’re killed.

This is Tyburn Tree, London’s largest site for public hangings from at least 1177 until 1798, when Newgate Prison became the new home for this macabre form of entertainment.

Out of the thousands executed there, one famous case was that of a William Duell. Indicted on charges of rape, robbery and murder, the 17-year-old Duell was eventually convicted of rape and sentenced to death. On a bitter winter’s day in November 1740, the condemned youth faced the noose at Tyburn alongside four others.

After being hanged for twenty-two minutes, he was cut down and his body hauled into a hackney coach, to be taken to Barber-Surgeons’ Hall, where his body would be dissected for the purposes of medical research.

The surgeon and his assistants got a surprise when they placed the corpse on the slab though… it groaned. Further examination revealed some other signs of life, so they let several ounces of blood and after a while, he was able to sit up, though it was a while before he could do anything else.

He was then transported to Newgate Prison where he was held up in a cell and given broth and covers to keep him warm. In a matter of days he was reported to be back to full health, and had developed a strong appetite. During this time, the powers that were had to decide what to do with him.

After all, he was legally dead.

In the end, to avoid making a mockery of the law and to curb the spread of the knowledge that it was possible to survive hanging, they decided to sentence him to transportation. He was sent to North America and reportedly lived out the rest of his life in Boston, before dying at around the age of eighty-two.

[neil-gaiman]

Hi Mr Gaiman! My partner and I are reading American Gods together (taking turns reading aloud) and we came across a sentence we cannot make the meaning of. If you don't mind, what did you mean by "But the conditions of transportation were such that, for some, it was easier to take the leap from the leafless and dance on nothing until the dancing was done."?

I've read American Gods before but never caught the phrase! Thanks so much!

From Farmer and Henley's Slang and its Analogues:

To mount a ladder (to bed or to rest), verb. phr. (common).—To be hanged.

1560. Nice Wanton [Dodsley, Old Plays (1874), ii. 172]. Thou boy, by the mass, ye will climb the ladder.

1573. Harman, Caveat [E. E. T. S., 1869, p. 31]. Repentance is never thought upon till they clyme three trees with a ladder.

1859. Matsell, Vocabulum, s.v. He mounted the ladder, he was hung.

English synonyms. To cut a caper upon nothing, or one's last fling; to catch, or nab, or be copped with, the stifles; to climb the stalk; to climb, or leap from the leafless, or the triple tree; to be cramped, crapped, or cropped; to cry cockles; to dance upon nothing, the Paddington frisk, in a hempen cravat, or a Newgate hornpipe without music; to fetch a Tyburn stretch; to die in one's boots or shoes, or with cotton in one's ears; to die of hempen fever or squinsy; to have a hearty choke with caper sauce for breakfast; to take a vegetable breakfast; to marry the widow; to morris (Old Cant); to trine; to tuck up; to swing; to trust; to be nubbed; to kick the wind; to kick the wind with one's heels; to kick the wind before the Hotel door; to kick away the prop; to preach at Tyburn cross; to make (or have) a Tyburn show; to wag hemp in the wind; to wear hemp, an anodyne necklace, a hempen collar, a caudle, circle, cravat, croak, garter, necktie or habeas; to wear neckweed, or St. Andrew's lace; to tie Sir Tristram's Knot; to wear a horse's nightcap or a Tyburn tippet; to come to scratch in a hanging or stretching match or bee; to ride the horse foaled of an acorn, or the three-legged mare; to be stretched, topped, scragged, or down for one's scrag.

[rherlotshadow]

Beautiful Marylebone, London. An ancient parish, now a district in the West End of London, formed to serve the manors of Lileston and Tyburn. During the 1700s, the area was known for raffish entertainments in Marylebone Gardens, such as bear-baiting and prize fights, and for the duelling grounds in Marylebone Fields. Now a distinctly more salubrious area with ginkgo trees, posh shops and lots of pricey mews houses.

[stephensmithuk]

The Three Garridebs

Originally published in 1925 and part of the 1927 Case-Book collection.

Refusals of honours are fairly common in Britain - some find the whole thing silly, some these days object to being in something called the "Order of the British Empire", some have political disagreements and others may hold out for something higher.

The South African War refers to the Second Boer War. This is going to get its own post at a later date.

"Britisher" was a contemporary term for British people; most people now use "Brit".

The "wheat pit" in Chicago refers to the Chicago Board of Trade Building, where wheat futures were traded. The building on the site was demolished in 1929 due to structural issues and replaced by the 1930 Art Deco building still on the site today.

Tyburn Tree refers to the former public execution site at Tyburn, near where Marble Arch is located today, which had a three-legged triangular gallows used for mass executions. The last execution was carried out there in 1783, before executions moved to Newgate Prison, now the site of the Old Bailey. A plaque marks the location.

Sotheby's and Christie's are two famous London auction houses.

Sir Hans Sloane was an Anglo-Irish physician, naturalist and collector, whose personal collection was bequeathed to the British nation on his death in 1753, forming the basis of three of London's major museums.

An artesian well is a well that brings water to the surface without pumping as it's under pressure below.

This was a time when the political machines were very much active in Chicago.

"Queen Anne" refers to the Baroque style of architecture popular during her reign from 1702 to 1714. There was a Queen Anne Revival style going at the time, which is somewhat different. Neither should be confused with the American style of architecture of that name.

The Bank of England is the sole printer of banknotes in England and Wales. Seven banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland are able to print banknotes there, but these are technically not legal tender and will generally be refused in England.

[anastpaul]

Saint of the Day – 4 August – Blessed William Horne O.Cart. (Died 1540) Martyr, Carthusian Lay Brother of the Charterhouse in London. William was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn Tree, London, for treason for refusing to accept King Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church. Additional Memorial – 4 May as one of the Carthusian Martyrs of London.

(via Saint of the Day – 4 August – Blessed William Horne O.Cart. (Died 1540) Martyr – AnaStpaul)

[felfiramoondesigns]

BUILD YOUR OWN BOOK STACK ENAMEL PIN SERIES!

Made in collaboration with Jamie from LitPins&Co, this is a series of enamel pins inspired by locations and scenes in our favourite books <3 You can find more designs over on the LitPins&Co shop!

You can find all the pins below over at FelfiraMoonDesigns.com

Build Your Own Book Stack 1.0 Enamel Pins: 300 FOX WAY (The Raven Boys), ABHORSEN'S HOUSE (Sabriel), ALEXANDER 78V (The Illuminae Files), BRIMSTONE'S SHOP (Daughter of Smoke & Bone), CAMP HALF BLOOD (Percy Jackson), EXCELSIOR CON (Geekerella), MOON KINGDOM (Sailor Moon) & SEVEN DIALS (The Bone Season)

Build Your Own Book Stack 2.0 Enamel Pins: ASCALON (Priory of the Orange Tree), BEXLEY & GAMIN (The Hating Game), DEMENHUR (We Hunt the Flame), HABITAT (The Murderbot Diaries), KINOMOTO LIBRARY (Cardcaptor Sakura), NEW BEIJING (The Lunar Chronicles), SHIGURE'S HOUSE (Fruits Basket) & TYBURN'S WOOD (Get a Life, Chloe Brown)

And we even made a special enamel bookmark THERE'S JUST NEVER ENOUGH TIME TO READ ALL THE BOOKS YOU WANT as part of the 2.0 campaign! <3

[desos-records]

Chapter 8: Never is an Awfully Long Time

First | Prev / Next

Ghost possession doesn't happen often, but fatality rates are high. Even if an agent does survive, there are the aftereffects to worry about.

After surviving a possession, Lucy Carlyle struggles with recovery, delving ever deeper into the memories of Visitors and, in the process, stumbling into the world of blackmarket Sources.

Meanwhile, George Karim races to learn the truth behind ghost possession in order to protect Lucy and save future agents.

And Anthony Lockwood must face his own past with the London underworld if he wants to save his friends and himself.

-

Lockwood's heart pounded in his throat and pulsed in the tips of his fingers. Lucy was somewhere in the darkness of London, alone save for the restless dead, potentially in danger, and it was all his fault. Distant wisps of Visitors flickered at the edges of his Sight, the odd death glow shone from roads or windows or back alleys, his head jerked towards the tiniest hints of movement. He tried to focus on his surroundings as he sped down the street, the night wind stinging his face, but his mind latched onto the worst case scenario—finding Lucy, but finding her too late, finding blue ghost touch and unseeing eyes.

He could not bear to bury one more person, not Lucy, not anyone.

It occurred to him that he had no idea where to find her. George said she had nowhere to go, but she'd left her family behind by choice, he felt certain she could find her own way in London if she wanted. Lucy was like that, stronger than any of them.��

Where would he go, if he were like Lucy? If he were angry and headstrong and so worked up he'd rather storm out and try his luck with the ghosts than spend another minute inside.

He really did owe her a tremendous apology, didn't he?

Lockwood walked until he'd left Marylebone proper, letting himself be filtered into the main road towards the sprawling darkness of Hyde Park. He skirted the park's edge, eyeing the empty black spaces between the looming, knotted trees. Glowing figures floated between the shadowy columns in lines of three or four, necks twisted nearly parallel to the ground, feet dangling and twitching.

Why his parents chose to live so close to Tyburn Gallows, he had no idea. He used to ditch DEPRAC agents and relicmen by cutting through the park, death glows studding the dark path like stars and leaving him blinking away green afterimages. The screams behind him might've been the living or the dead, he could never tell. Even for him, escaping the park was often a near thing. He would slam shut the door to Portland Row and slide down the wood until he ended up sitting against it, eyes closed, plasm burns and bullet holes in his coat, hands buried in the carpet to ground himself, until his lungs stopped bursting in his chest. 

But even in a state, Lucy wouldn't have gone into Hyde Park at night, as poorly lit and thickly haunted as it was—with all the duels and executions and muggings gone wrong over the centuries. So he kept walking, hand tight on his sword hilt. Calling her name seemed likely to draw the wrong sort of attention at this hour. The odd clusters of grim-faced agents heading out or coming back from cases hadn't seen anyone like Lucy when he'd asked. No trail of footprints or bit of familiar fabric appeared like they would have in his detective novels. He just kept walking, pushing his senses to their limit, and hoping. Was that all he could do?

Lockwood didn't excel at hope.

And then, after Hyde Park had turned into the Kensington Gardens, he heard a shout. His heart lurched, tugging him forward into the grass. At the far end, he saw flashes of ghost light fracturing through the dark trees. He would've written the shout off as a Visitor except that he saw the shadow of something long and narrow briefly cut through the light. A rapier? 

He heard someone swearing loudly, heavy boots pounding. As he drew closer he heard them shout again, "I know you were executed, and I am sorry about that, but yelling at me does bugger all, you know! Tell me your name!"

Lucy.

A sky-rending scream and the crack of a gunshot broke through the night just as Lockwood dug his heels into the earth and jolted into a sprint. He went through the trees, following the light to the old playground. Commissioned years ago by a well-meaning royal trying to give the children of London a piece of their childhood back, it had accidentally been built on the site of a large execution by firing squad and now lay abandoned. Even during the day, you could hear gunshots or see faint flashes of musket fire.

The pirate ship rose out of the trees, overgrown with trailing ivy, saplings of oak breaking through the wood. Gunshots rang in the air and, for an instant, he imagined the rusted toy cannons had fired a volley, that the knee-high underbrush swaying in the wind rolled with twenty-foot waves instead. Behind his eyes, he saw his mother's face contorting dramatically, but never hiding her smile, as she read Peter Pan or Treasure Island to him in different voices.

to die would be an awfully big adventure

A resounding crack broke him out of his thoughts and he looked up to see the ship's mast tipping towards him, creaking and splintering as it went. Quickly, he rolled out of the way, but not before he caught a glimpse of Lucy on the deck of the ship, swinging wildly with some heavy bit of metal. Before he was even fully upright, he ran up the gangplank towards her as the light flickered and reformed up in the ship's crows nest.

Lockwood opened his mouth to call to Lucy, but as he did, she turned, bringing her metal stick with her. Crowbar, his brain supplied as it arced towards his head. Drawing his rapier, he and Lucy collided, the bar's curve crashing into his rapier's crossguard. In the next breath, he was nose to nose with Lucy, her eyes wide and glowing from the wavering light above them. It starkly reflected off the metal loops pierced in her ears. He'd never quite noticed before how many earrings she had. Did she like that kind of thing? Jewelry?

He flashed a grin. "Playing pirates, Luce?"

"Lockwood! How did you—"

His whole skull seemed to vibrate as the scream broke the night again. Lucy staggered, dropped her crowbar, and slammed her hands flat to her ears. If the noise left his psychic senses ringing, he could only imagine how much it hurt Lucy. He looped his free arm around her and started pulling her to the gangplank, but before they could step off the deck, a burst of ghostly fire erupted over the railing, blocking their path.

"I tried that already!" Lucy shouted, one of her hands gripping his shoulder tightly. "The Source must be inside the ship somewhere!"

"What were you doing here?" he shouted back. "Don't you know better than to go into the park at night?"

"I heard someone scream, I thought… it sounded like…" Then she swore loudly and pulled him out of the way as a burning wood beam slammed into the deck, cracking several aging boards as it landed. "It doesn't matter! I'll distract it, you find the Source."

She started to move away, but he caught hold of her again. "No way. If it's overloading my Hearing, you shouldn't be anywhere near it. You've been on the scene longer, you find the Source."

For a second, it looked as if she might refuse. He opened his mouth to add to his argument, but then she nodded. "Fine."

She grabbed a silver net from his belt, took up the crowbar again, and went to hacking at the deck until she had a sizable hole. Then Lucy dropped down into it and out of sight.

Lockwood spun in a slow circle, searching the ship's rigging for the main manifestation. The light flared angrily, making him wince and reach for his sunglasses. Another gunshot fired and he ducked on instinct. When he straightened, a figure materialized by the bow of the ship, mostly a head and torso. 

He could see every detail even meters away—a man, middle-aged maybe, with wild, scraggly hair. The greenish plasm making up the chest had been blown open, laying bare white ribs and black organs through jagged clusters of bullet holes. The heart twitched to an unsteady rhythm. When the Visitor opened its mouth, the jaw widened past the point of breaking, showing rows of crooked black teeth. Its eyes bulged, burning with the same whitish-green fire burning the deck.

It screamed and nearly knocked Lockwood over.

"Oi! Sulfur breath!" he roared back and rapped his rapier against the splintered remains of the mast. "It's bad form to attack an unarmed opponent."

Lockwood felt the full weight of the Spectre's attention settle on him. He flexed his fingers over his rapier's grip and dropped into a fighting stance. As he did, the ghost charged him, but Lockwood held his ground and cut the ghost in half before it could touch him. The plasm dissipated, but he still felt its freezing presence.

"Luce?" he called to her somewhere below deck. "Any progress?" He heard a muffled string of curses which he took as a No.

A sudden chill ran down his spine and Lockwood ducked, just in time to avoid the Spectre's hand reaching for his back. He brandished his rapier again, but it caught only empty air. A gunshot fired close to his ear and he flinched, almost running into the ghostly fire still ringing the ship. 

It was messing with him. He hated it when ghosts did that.

"Any time now, Lucy!"

She shouted something largely incomprehensible, but what he suspected was a Northern way of saying, Leave me alone, I'm going as fast as I can! He couldn't help but smile.

The Spectre screamed again and, before he could track where it came from, it burst out of the deck in front of him. He scrambled to get away, but his heel caught on the fallen beam and Lockwood crashed onto the deck, white stars briefly shattering over his vision. The Spectre loomed above him, maw gaping, long, cracked fingernails at the ends of its outstretched hands, organs trailing and dripping blood. And that dark heart still pulsing in its chest.

Fear finally dug its claws into him. He couldn't move. He called Lucy's name one more time.

You can take me, he thought, as he stared into the Spectre's burning white eyes, if you don't hurt Lucy.

It lunged for him and then abruptly vanished. The fire snapped out. Green afterimages floated over his sight, overlapping each other in the dark as he tried to blink them away. He knew the ghost had to be gone because the sinking cold had gone too, but his eyes weren't so sure yet.

"Lockwood!"

Lucy's voice jolted him into motion. He found her there beside him when he sat up. Spiderwebs caught in her hair, glinting faintly like silver lace under the moon. 

"Are you hurt at all?" She touched the back of his head and he had to contain a wince as her hand found a sore spot.

"Did you find the Source?" he asked.

She raised up the silver net for him to see, an old bullet secured inside. He smiled at her. Lucy's mouth stayed in a stubborn downward curve. 

"Lovely," he said, hauling himself to his feet. "Then let's get out of here before anything else tries to kill us." He offered a hand to Lucy, but she ignored him.

"Where are we anyway?" she grumbled as she walked off the ship.

He followed and said, "Kensington Gardens."

She turned suddenly toward him, still walking through the darkness with him. "That's a real place?"

"What do you mean? Of course it's a real place."

"I don't know!" she huffed. "It's where Peter Pan was from, innit? It's like saying Neverland's a real place."

"How do you know it's not?" He could tell by the expression on her face—a healthy mix of annoyance and disappointment—that his smile had turned into a teasing one, but he couldn't help it. "Look up there, Luce." He raised his hand towards the sky at two points of light that could still be seen even in the hazy London night. "Second star to the right and straight on til morning."

Lucy looked up and allowed a wry smile to cross her face. "Those aren't stars. That's Jupiter and Saturn."

He blinked, turning quickly back to her. "Wouldn't've taken you as a stargazer, Luce."

"I'm not. My sister was—still is, I suppose, I don't know."

"You have a sister?"

"Six of them."

"Oh."

They reached the sidewalk ringing the park and Lockwood led the way back towards Marylebone. The silence slowly ate away at him, tension between them like a badly tuned violin string. He remembered that they were only out here because she was stubborn and infuriating and should've known better, and really he ought to tell her off for it. Or maybe he ought to apologize for upsetting her enough that she'd preferred her chances with the ghosts. But they'd worked so well together just now. And he'd gotten her to smile, if for a little while. He didn't want to ruin it by dredging up hurt feelings.

Lockwood cleared his throat. "You were brilliant, by the way, Luce… just now, with the, uh, pirate ghost."

"Yes, I'm quite the asset, aren't I?" she said, cold as creeping fear. "Makes you think twice about firing me. But I'll save you the trouble. I'm quitting tomorrow."

"What? I didn't… What makes you think I would fire you? You're—"

"Because I'm difficult, aren't I? I listen to ghosts more than I listen to you? Shut up and do your job, isn't that right?"

"Lucy." Pain cracked his voice a bit and he hated that, but he hated the pain in Lucy's voice even more—and all because of him. "There's clearly been some sort of misunderstanding."

She laughed, sharp and without humor, and suddenly stood rooted on the sidewalk. He had to turn fast around to face her. "Funny, that," she said. "Because you don't understand anything, do you?"

"Lucy, please, let's talk about this at home. It's far too dangerous—"

"I am drowning, Lockwood!" Her eyes reflected the light of a nearby ghostlamp, tears gathering and threatening to fall. "But you're just like everyone back home, you don't care as long as it makes you a bit of money or gets you on TV."

"Of course, I care. I'm sorry about all that, but I—"

"And you know, maybe I…" She took a breath that seemed to tear through her lungs. "Maybe I shouldn't've come to London, maybe I ought to've just died with everyone else. God—" She buried her head in her hands, nails digging into her skin. "I wish I'd died with everyone else."

Lockwood could almost hear his chest cracking open in pain for her. He had the same urge to hold her close and keep her safe that he felt on cases, but he knew he couldn't fight off thoughts with a rapier. He knew. He'd been right where she was more times than he cared to remember.

He took a steady breath. "I understand that," he said gently.

Lucy lowered her hands cautiously and met his eyes again. Please, believe me, he thought.

"And it's not true, Lucy. We need you. And it's not because you're an asset."

She watched him in silent challenge. "Why then?"

"Because…" He had to get this right, but how could he possibly explain without gutting himself? "Because you're…" He knew what he wanted to say, but it was far too soon for that. "You're Lucy Carlyle," he said, trying to put every marvelous thing about her into her name so she could hear it. "And that's more than enough."

She shook her head, but not in disbelief, in sadness. "Barnes knows I'm illegal."

Now, Lockwood could smile. He let himself step nearer to her. "That's why I went on TV, silly. To show Barnes he can shove his threats. That I wasn't going to let you go without a fight."

Lucy laughed faintly. "Pretty sure there's rules about that."

"Screw the rules." He smiled. And then quite without thinking, his hand stole out to settle around hers and he didn't realize he'd done it until she'd grasped his hand. His heartbeat spiked in slight distress, but it was too late now. "I'm sorry, Lucy," he said. "Please stay."

She looked serious again, but she was nodding slightly. "Just never lie to me again."

Light flickered somewhere behind Lucy, figures slowly creeping this way, and he remembered exactly where they were.

"I'll never lie to you again. I swear." He flashed one more grin. "And in the spirit of that, you ought to know we're standing right by Tyburn Gallows." He nodded at the ghosts behind her.

"So?" she asked as she turned. And then Lucy saw them too. "Oh, shit."

"Well, it is the most haunted place in London." Without letting go of her hand, he grabbed a salt bomb off his belt. "Pull this pin for me, will you, Luce?"

She did and he hurled it as far into the trees as he could manage. Together, they turned and ran across the street away from the park, listening to the cries of outrage behind them as the bomb went off.

"I suppose I should thank you for finding me," Lucy said, running beside him.

"You didn't make it easy. You know, you're rather more of a liability than an asset, Luce."

As they turned a corner, he glanced over at her and caught her small but honest smile.

[birdylion]

on the metaphysics of current and old genii locorum of rivers (in Rivers of London)

With Yuletide reveals I can finally talk about the worldbuilding behind the story I wrote for my assignment. It's an E-rated smut fic about Peter, Beverley, and Old Beverley Brook. (Here's the link to my post about the story itself, so you can check it out and decide for yourself if it's something you'd want to read.)

In order to do smutty worldbuilding with these characters, I had to build a headcanon about how the connection between Beverley and Old Beverley works in general. So here are my thoughts about that.

There is some kind of connection between the current Rivers and their dead counterparts. Old Sir Tyburn has opinions about Lady Ty and vice versa, and Old Beverley Brook clearly knows (about) Peter in some capacity – after all, his first act after meeting him is to full on kiss him on the mouth. So what is this connection? The animosity between Ty and Old Tyburn suggests that they definitely aren’t the same entity. The kiss suggests that they can share information and possibly even experiences.

There are at least two ways to interpret the interaction between Peter and Old Beverley in Lies Sleeping: 1. (present-day) Beverley is acting through Old Beverley. His words („babes“, which is supposedly how Bev would call Peter) and the kiss itself seem to suggest that. 2. He is his own entity who acts on his own, which is what his knowledge about the other ghosts on that plane of existence seems to suggest.

The doylist explanation is probably „whatever Ben Aaronovitch needs to make the scene work“, and honestly, that was my approach too for making the sex scene work. But in-universe, I assume it works like this:

The ghosts of the old genii locorum are separate entities from the present day genii locorum. On a very basic level, the only connection they share is towards their river. The ghosts of the old rivers are images of the persons they used to be, and as such don’t have necessarily much in common with today’s Rivers. Sometimes they are lucky and have enough in common to have an amicable relationship (like I decided for Beverley), and sometimes they are unlucky and don’t really like each other (like Tyburn). That’s not to say they are enemies – they still have that connection through their river, and either Sir Tyburn was willing, or Lady Ty compelled him, to put his sword through the would-be assassin in The Hanging Tree. Luckily I didn’t need to make a decision on that, because I focused on Beverley.

I decided that there has to be a lot of fluidity in how such a connection can work. My initial idea of describing it was like looking through a window. At first the shutters are closed and you (as a modern day River spirit) perhaps don’t even realise that there’s a window. Than you realise that there is a window, and you can look through it into the other world. That’s how I imagine the connection in daily life – a window you can ignore, or look through, or even close, and depending on how much focus you put on it, it’s clear glass, or milky glass, or the window is … I don’t know, in a different place of your house depending on how much attention you pay it? The metaphor doesn’t work really well at this point, which is why I abandoned it, but my point is, I imagine there are a lot of ways the connection can work, depending on the individual character and relationship of the genii locorum involved. And, to get back to that heavy metaphor one last time, in rare cases such as Sir Tyburn’s sword and the assassin, you don’t just have a window, but can open a door and let the other one through. Or, in the case of Peter’s sacrifice to Lady Ty in her underground river, she can push him through. The same way of pushing someone else into that world is what I imagine Beverley did with Peter in my story. And how much energy it takes would depend on how well the connection usually is, so it would have a noticeable cost for Tyburn, but be easy as breathing for Beverley.

I decided that there could be some overlap in experiences and sensations, but again, not set in stone. So I decided that usually, Old Beverley doesn’t play much of a role in Beverley’s life. She has a busy life after all. Usually, the connection is more like the background radiation of everything that connects her to her river. Definitely present, but not like she talks to him or constantly feels his presence. Only when she focuses on him she would be actively in contact with him, and when she focuses on him even more and gets more into his world, she could herself immerse in it, and I stretched that so far that she can feel what it is to be in his place. But at the same time, she is in control of that, being the currently alive and powerful genius loci of her River.

For the mechanics of Peter being in that world:

There are several instances in the books when that happened. First in Whispers Underground, when he’s buried underneath the platform at Oxford station, near where the river Tyburn flows. He’s slowly running out of air, that is, he’s in the process of dying in the ‚real‘ world and Sir Tyburn draws him into his ghost world – to make it easier on him, because the sensations there are different. To distract him, give him (metaphorical) air to breathe, and perhaps out of curiosity; he says he’s been lonely there for a long time. He knows about Peter, at least his name and where he’s from. Meanwhile, Lady Ty learned about Peter’s whereabouts by, as she says, smelling him in her water. It’s unclear how much time passes in each place. (On a side note: it’s this meeting in which Sir Tyburn makes Peter aware of Punch’s wailing as he’s pinned to the bridge, and says that sooner or later Peter has to let Punch loose. Props to that bit of foreshadowing.)

I don’t quite remember any other times in between that Peter is in this world, but at the time in Lies Sleeping when Peter has his Game of Thrones episode, he’s falling from St. Paul’s bell tower towards what could well be his death, and time definitely passes differently in this other world, because in under 2 seconds, there’s a whole two chapters of stuff happening; a race through ancient London and a fight and a conversation, so there’s some time weirdness happening.

Then there’s the time when Peter makes his sacrifice to Lady Ty because he wants to ask her to send him into this world. While he’s in the world doing his things, his body is in Lady Ty’s river, I assume unconscious, and he doesn’t get out on his own but has to be saved by others. I think the implication is that being in this ghost world means that his body is unconscious or sleeping – suddenly as it comes, I imagine it’s closer to unconsciousness, but it’s not like we have any data. Peter would really have to get hooked up to an EEG to record his brain waves during sleep and during this.

Admittedly, it is a stretch to go from there to „being in this world means that Peter is slowly suffocating in our world“ which I used for dramatic purposes in my fanfic, so that’s definitely not worldbuilding I would extrapolate from what we know in canon. It’s an extension though, one that I don’t think contradicts canon.

Anyway, all of that was very interesting to think about, but I didn’t dare to openly talk about it lest someone connected the secret story to me xD Perhaps I was taking it too far, but I thought it would be suspicious if I was going from my usually near zero meta discussion posts to talking about this topic right when the Yuletide assignments went out.

This whole thing is very much not a meta analysis, but a meta interpretation, since I mainly thought it through in terms of „how can I write the story I want to write and I think my recipient is going to like“, so there are many arguments to be made that it can (or should) work differently if you’re following the canon closely, or want to just extrapolate instead of interpret.

[theoutcastrogue]

Bravado on the gallows

[abridged excerpt from V.A.C. Gatrell's The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770–1868, Chapter 1.1: “Dying Bravely”, emphasis mine]

the most iconic depiction of a procession to the Tyburn gallows, with the condemned on a cart going through excited crowds: William Hogarth's The Idle 'Prentice Executed at Tyburn, from the Industry and Idleness series (1747)

In theory, a Londoner growing up in the 1780s could by 1840 have attended some four hundred execution days outside Newgate alone. If he was unimaginably diligent he could have watched 1,200 people hang (and there were such obsessives). The sanction of the gallows and the rhetoric of the death sentence were central to all relations of authority in Georgian England. But the gallows were also embedded in the collective imagination, the subject of anxiety, defence, and denial, of jokes, ballads, images, and satire, and of primal gratifications too.

Even today we take comfort from an exuberant and cheering fantasy of what public hangings were like, and hence blur the memory of what the noose really did to people. A pleasant myth shields us from the reality of the process. It is not that the myth was without basis. It is what it concealed that is in question.

Central to the fantasy is the memory of the felon’s procession to Tyburn before 1783. To surface appearances it all seems rather jolly, and in certain dark senses it was so:

As clever Tom Clinch, while the rabble was bawling, Rode stately through Holborn, to die in his calling; He stopped at the George for a bottle of sack, And promised to pay for it when he came back. – J. Swift, ‘Clever Tom Clinch going to be hanged’ (1726/7)

From Newgate prison the condemned were conveyed in open carts along Holborn, St Giles, and Tyburn Road (later Oxford Street) to the triangular gallows at the foot of the Edgware Road. The major stations in this parodic progress to Calvary were at inns like the Bowl on the corner of St Giles’ High Street, or the George in Holborn, where the condemned would be offered wine; then Tyburn itself; and then again at Surgeon’s Hall at the Old Bailey, where murderers’ bodies were displayed and dissected.

Thief, escape artist, and folk hero Jack Sheppard taking his last drink at St Giles

Playing as best they could to the crowd’s admiration and engaging in parodic dialogue with it, some felons on their way to their doom constructed the illusion that they were the masters of the ceremonies, and not the City marshal, under-sheriff, priest, constables, and javelin-men who were meant to impart solemnity and security to the procession. Lord Ferrers’s composure on his journey to Tyburn in 1760 ‘shamed heroes’, Horace Walpole reported. Hanged for murdering his servant, he bore the procession ‘with as much tranquillity as if he was only going to his own burial, not to his own execution’. Plebeians also put on fine displays:

The vilest rogues, and most despicable villains, may own a thousand crimes, and often brag of the most abominable actions; but there is scarce one, who will confess that he has no courage... The further a man is removed from repentance, nay, the more void he seems to be of all religion, and the less concern he discovers for futurity, the more he is admired by our sprightly people. – B. Mandeville, An enquiry into the causes of the frequent executions at Tyburn (1725)

When Lewis Avershaw was hanged on Kennington Common in 1795 he appeared ‘entirely unconcerned, had a flower in his mouth, his bosom was thrown open, and he kept up an incessant conversation with the persons who rode beside the cart, laughing and nodding to acquaintances in the crowd’. He was afterwards hanged in chains on Wimbledon Common, and ‘for several months, thousands of the London populace passed their Sundays near the spot, as if consecrated by the remains of a hero’. ‘Sixteen-string’ John Rann in 1774 wore a peagreen coat, a nosegay in his buttonhole, and nankeen small-clothes tied at each knee with sixteen strings. At the gallows he sustained the demeanour of his last dinner-party in Newgate, where the company had included seven of his girls and ‘all were remarkably cheerful’. Thanks to the crowds and the convivial exchanges en route, a popular daredevil like this might take two hours to travel the couple of miles to his Tyburn death.

The Newgate Drop in action, 1809

Nor did this festive tradition die when the scaffold was removed to Newgate’s exterior in 1783. At Holloway’s and Haggerty’s hanging in 1807 both men ‘conducted themselves with the most decided indifference’. Holloway ‘with an affected cheerfulness of countenance... jumped upon the scaffold when he had ascended the ladder, his arms being pinioned with a rope behind... got his hat between his two hands, and as well as he was able, bowed to the crowd repeatedly... with a view to show that he died game, as it is expressed.’ He announced his innocence, refused to pray, and told Haggerty to ignore the clergy-man. Ascending the Newgate scaffold in 1829, Thomas Birmingham ‘was instantly greeted by a vast number of girls of dissolute character in the mob, who called out repeatedly—“Good bye, Tom! God bless you, my trump!” In the 1830s the ballad of the condemned Sam Hall conveyed the tone of these scaffold exchanges:

I saw Nellie in the crowd, And I hollered,—right out loud— ‘Say Nellie, ain’t you proud— Damn your eyes’ .

These mocking postures were mainly metropolitan but not exclusively so. Before his execution at York in 1739, Dick Turpin employed five mourners to follow his cart to the scaffold.

Self-parody and the display of courage was one way of dealing with terror. Defiance was another. An agricultural worker executed in Kent for arson during the Swing disturbances in 1830 declared his innocence to the last and ‘refused to pull the cap down over his eyes, saying he wished to see the people’ as he died. Others spurned God and his priests. When the highway robber Norton died game in 1827 he refused religious consolations. When a schoolmaster in Newgate sought to persuade a condemned man that there was a future life, the reply got to the truth of it: “Why you too gammon on as well as the parson! They take your life away, and then they think to make amends by telling you of another and a better world; for my part I am very well satisfied with this, if they will let me stay in it.’

Thomas Rowlandson, Malefactors on Their Way to Tyburn (c. 1776–1827)

Then there was the determined care about dress. Best clothing was worn by those who could afford it. Few men now dressed as Lord Ferrers had in 1760, in his wedding suit of white and silver, or paraded symbols like the white cockade the burglar Waistcott wore in his hat in 1759 ‘as an emblem of his whole innocence’. Male dress was becoming sober. Hatfield wore a black jacket with waistcoat, fustian pantaloons, and white cotton stockings; Fauntleroy ‘a new suit of black, silk stockings of the same colour, and light pumps’. But women continued to affect sartorial gaiety. Elizabeth Fry found that the ‘chief thought’ of nearly every condemned woman in Newgate ‘relates to her appearance on the scaffold, the dress in which she shall be hanged’. When Christian Bowman was hanged and burnt outside Newgate in 1789 she was ‘drest in a clean striped gown, a white ribbon, and a black ribbon round her cap’. In 1815 Eliza Fenning wore the dress she was to have worn for her wedding, a ‘white muslin gown, a handsome worked cap, and laced boots’.

Striking in all this is the victim’s effort to maintain dignity to the last and to die well, by drawing on a supportive vein of cynicism which ran deep in popular culture. Also striking is the authorities’ tolerance of these efforts. Those with money could spend their last days in Newgate in dissipation, as John Rann did, along with the highwayman Paul Lewis in 1763 when he entertained guests in the condemned cell by singing bawdy songs and vilifying the parson. On the scaffold likewise, custom had long entitled the condemned to address the crowd as they pleased, seditiously if they chose. Although every effort was made to force them to public professions of guilt and penitence, they were not checked if they betrayed that role. Jacobites had betrayed the role spectacularly, some making seditious speeches ‘plainly calculated’, as Dudley Ryder had observed, ‘for nothing else but to incense the people against the government... A rogue cannot be hanged but he must become a saint upon the gibbet.’

Dr Johnson lamented the abolition of the Tyburn procession: ‘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?’ This comment is usually taken to indicate bluff Augustan heartlessness. But its key word was ‘support’, and the generosity of Johnson’s observation is clarified in Adam Smith’s amplification of it:

A brave man is not rendered contemptible by being brought to the scaffold. The sympathy of the spectators supports him, and saves him from that shame, that consciousness that his misery is felt by himself only, which is of all sentiments the most insupportable... He has no suspicion that his situation is the object of contempt or derision to any body, and he can, with propriety, assume the air, not only of perfect serenity, but of triumph and exultation.

Johnson’s and Smith’s insights take us at last beyond the jolly surface of these rituals to the bleaker truth which social memory has censored—that most felons went to their deaths in quaking terror. In this light the abolition of the procession and the long shift towards the privatization of execution, commonly understood as a progressive and humane movement, was the reverse of that. To kill felons without ceremony and in private was to deny them the only worldly support they could hope for in their last hours. As evangelicals had their cool say on the best chances of bringing the felon to penitence, the felon was to be left alone with his death, that his spirit might break. [n.b. The author does have a point here (it’s truly horrible to die all alone, without an audience and without your loved ones, at the hands of cops, priests and bureaucrats), but this take ignores that the crowd’s support was not a given; for some they cheered, but for others they cursed, heckled, mocked, threw mud etc]

While public executions lasted, many knew that outward bravado did not speak for a felt reality, and that the powdered wig, Holland shirt, gloves, and nosegays which some flaunted on their last journey was the only resort they had to ‘meliorate the terrible thoughts of the meagre tyrant Death’. The man who did contrive to conduct himself bravely was often actually drunk out of his mind:

But valor the stronger grows, The stronger liquor we're drinking, And how can we feel our woes, When we've lost the trouble of thinking?

— V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770–1868 (Oxford University Press, 1994)

[mxcottonsocks]

‘You shall see him, mother, bound hand and foot, and brought to London at a saddle-girth; and you shall hear of him at Tyburn Tree if we have luck. So Hugh says. You’re pale again, and trembling. And why DO you look behind me so?’

- chapter 17, Barnaby Rudge; A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty

'Tyburn Tree' was the gallows at Tyburn, the usual place of execution for people sentenced to death in London at the time the story is set (1775-1780).

[wellconstructedsentences]

Through the streets our wheels slowly move;

The toll of the death bell dismays us.

With nosegays and gloves we are deck’d,

So trim and so gay they array us.

The passage all crowded we see

With maidens that move us with pity;

Our air all, admiring agree

Such lads are not left in the city.

Oh! Then to the tree I must go;

The judge he has ordered the sentence.

And then comes a gownsman you know,

And tells a dull tale of repentance.

By the gullet we’re ty’d very tight;

We beg all spectators, pray for us.

Our peepers are hid from the light,

The tumbril shoves off, and we morrice.

Tyburn ballad