Halifax Gibbet: The Infamous Forerunner to The Guillotine

 Standing inconspicuously in the middle of an empty lot behind some trees, in the small English town of Halifax, West Yorkshire, is a terrifying media instrument of torture. It's called a gibbet, and for over three hundred and fifty years it used to behead people for minor crimes like theft.

The Halifax Gibbet is a tall wooden structure with a sharp blade at the top, held together by rope. The convicted prisoner was placed under the blade of the gallows and tied securely. When the executioner cut the rope, the blade, which was weighted by a large piece of wood, fell on the prisoner's neck and his head was separated from his body. You may recognize this device as the guillotine, famously used against members of the monarchy during the French Revolution, but the Halifax Gibbet predates the French guillotine by more than five centuries.

While decapitation was a common method of execution in England, it was most often carried out with swords. Halifax is believed to be the first place where the machine was used to carry out punishment.

The first recorded execution by gibbet in Halifax took place in 1286. At that time the Lord of the Manor had the power to summarily execute any thief who was caught stealing goods worth more than thirteen and a half pence. This was known as the Halifax Gibbet Law and was a very harsh punishment even in those days.

Historians believe that the gibbet law may have been the last vestige of the Anglo-Saxon custom of infangthiof, which allowed landowners to impose summary justice, including capital punishment, on thieves caught within the boundaries of their property. This law remained a standard authority of local kings and finally fell into disuse until the time of Edward III. But in Halifax, it stuck for a much longer time. Hangings were so common in Yorkshire that a commission appointed by the king in 1278 reported that there were 94 privately owned gibbets and gallows throughout the county at that time.

Halifax's reputation for strict law enforcement was so notorious that the English poet John Taylor, who called himself "The Water Poet", wrote a poem called Beggar's Litany in 1622 that goes like this:

There is a saying, there is also a prayer.

So that we don't end up in three weird places:

From Hull, from Halifax, from hell, like this,

From these three, O Lord, save us.

Like Halifax, Hull was also very unfriendly to thieves and beggars. Whereas in Halifax criminals were beheaded, in Hull they were tied to gibbets (not the Halifax type, but cages that restrict movement) in the Humber estuary at low tide and left to drown upon returning to the sea. was given.

The Halifax Gibbet was used to ensure as many spectators as possible on market days. Before execution, a convicted criminal was held in custody for three market days, and each day he was displayed in the town square in chains along with the stolen goods. On the day of the execution, the condemned was taken to a gibbet located about half a kilometer away from the border defining the jurisdiction. The rule was that punishment could only be given to those who were within the boundaries of this area, the Forest of Hardwick, of which Halifax was a part. If a prisoner escapes and crosses the border, the bailiff cannot do anything to bring him back. On two occasions people escaped, one named Dinis who ran five hundred meters to the other side and thus escaped execution. Another man named Lacey also escaped, but made the mistake of returning to Halifax seven years later, and was caught and beheaded in 1623. Twenty-seven years later, the Halifax Gibbet was used for the last time when it beheaded Abraham Wilkinson and Anthony Mitchell. One for stealing 16 yards of cloth, and the other for stealing and selling two horses. Both were hanged on the same day.

By the time the Halifax Gibbet law practice ended, Gibbet had claimed nearly a hundred victims.

It was Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, who outlawed this barbaric practice. Ironically, Cromwell was executed by beheading three years after his death.

The gibbet that stands today in Halifax is a replica built in 1974 based on the original stone. The original wooden frame was destroyed shortly after the last execution in 1650, but the blade was preserved and is still visible in the Bankfield Museum in Boothbaytown. Outskirts of Halifax. A memorial plaque nearby lists the names of 52 people known to have been executed by the device.