Halifax Gibbet - History

History

What became known as the Halifax Gibbet Law gave the Lord of the Manor of Wakefield, of which the town of Halifax was a part, the power to try and execute any felon for the theft of goods to the value of 13½d or more:

If a felon be taken within their liberty or precincts of the said forest, either handhabend, backberand, or confessand cloth or any other commodity to the value of 13½d, that they shall after three market days or meeting days within the town of Halifax after such his apprehension, and being condemned he shall be taken to the gibbet and there have his head cut off from his body.

The Gibbet Law may have been a last vestige of the Anglo-Saxon custom of infangtheof, which allowed landowners to enforce summary justice on thieves within the boundaries of their estates. Samuel Midgley in his Halifax and its Gibbet-Law Placed in a True Light, published in 1761, states that the law dates from a time "not in the memory of man to the contrary". It may have been the consequence of rights granted by King Henry III to John de Warenne (1231–1304), Lord of the Manor of Wakefield. Such baronial jurisdiction was by no means unusual in medieval England and was described in the 11th-century legal text entitled De Baronibus, qui suas habent curias et consuetudines (Concerning the barons who have their courts of law and customs). Neither was the decapitation of convicted felons unique to Halifax; the earls of Chester amongst others also exercised the right to "behead any malefactor or thief, who was apprehended in the action, or against whom it was made apparent by sufficient witness, or confession, before four inhabitants of the place", recorded as the Custom of Cheshire.

A commission appointed by King Edward I in 1278 reported that there were at that time 94 privately owned gibbets and gallows in use in Yorkshire, including one owned by the Archbishop of York. What was unusual about Halifax was that the custom lingered on there for so long after it had been abandoned elsewhere.

Suspected thieves were detained in the custody of the lord of the manor's bailiff, who would summon a jury of 16 local men "out of the most wealthy and best reputed", four each from four local townships. The jury had only two questions to decide on: were the stolen goods found in the possession of the accused, and were they worth at least 13½d. The jury, the accused, and those claiming that their property had been stolen, were brought together in a room at the bailiff's house. No oaths were administered and there was no judge or defence counsel present; each side presented their case, and the jury decided on guilt or innocence.

So strictly was the law applied that anyone who apprehended a thief with his property was not allowed to recover it unless the miscreant and the stolen goods were presented to the bailiff. The goods were otherwise forfeited to the lord of the manor, and their previous rightful owner was liable to find himself charged with theftbote, or conniving in the felony. Halifax's reputation for strict law enforcement was noted by the antiquary William Camden and by the "Water Poet" John Taylor, who penned the Beggar's Litany: "From Hell, Hull, and Halifax, Good Lord, deliver us!"

Before his execution a convicted felon was usually detained in custody for three market days, on each of which he was publicly displayed in the stocks, accompanied by the stolen goods. After the sentence had been carried out a county coroner would visit Halifax and convene a jury of 12 men, sometimes the same individuals who had found the felon guilty, and ask them to give an account under oath of the circumstances of the conviction and execution, for the official records.

The punishment could only be meted out to those within the confines of the Forest of Hardwick, of which Halifax was a part. The gibbet was about 500 yards (460 m) from the boundary of the area, and if the condemned person succeeded in escaping from the forest then he could not legally be brought back to face his punishment. At least two men succeeded in cheating the executioner in that way: a man named Dinnis and another called Lacy. Dinnis was never seen in Halifax again, but Lacy rather unwisely decided to return to the town seven years after his escape; he was apprehended and finally executed in 1623.

The earliest known record of punishment by decapitation in Halifax is the beheading of John of Dalton in 1286, but official records were not maintained until the parish registers began in 1538. Between then and 1650, when the last executions took place, 56 men and women are recorded as having been decapitated. The total number of victims identified since 1286 is just short of 100.

Local weavers specialised in the production of kersey, a hardwearing and inexpensive woollen fabric that was often used for military uniforms; by the 16th century Halifax and the surrounding Calder Valley was the largest producer of the material in England. In the final part of the manufacturing process the cloth was hung outdoors on large structures known as tenterframes and left to dry, after having been conditioned by a fulling mill. Daniel Defoe wrote a detailed account of what he had been told of the gibbet's history during his visit to Halifax in Volume 3 of his A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, published in 1727. He reports that "Modern accounts pretend to say, it was for all sorts of felons; but I am well assured, it was first erected purely, or at least principally, for such thieves as were apprehended stealing cloth from the tenters; and it seems very reasonable to think it was so".

Eighteenth-century historians argued that the area's prosperity attracted the "wicked and ungovernable"; the cloth, left outside and unattended, presented easy pickings, and hence justified severe punishment to protect the local economy. James Holt on the other hand, writing in 1997, sees the Halifax Gibbet Law as a practical application of the Anglo-Saxon law of infangtheof. Royal assizes were held only twice a year in the area; to bring a prosecution was "vastly expensive", and the stolen goods were forfeited to the Crown, as they were considered to be the property of the accused. But the Halifax Gibbet Law allowed "the party injured, to have his goods restored to him again, with as little loss and damage, as can be contrived; to the great encouragement of the honest and industrious, and as great terror to the wicked and evil doers."

The Halifax Gibbet's final victims were Abraham Wilkinson and Anthony Mitchell. Wilkinson had been found guilty of stealing 16 yards (15 m) of cloth, 9 yards of which were found in his possession, and Mitchell of stealing and selling two horses, one valued at 9 shillings and the other at 48 shillings. The pair were found guilty and executed on the same day, 30 April 1650. Writing in 1834 John William Parker, publisher of The Saturday Magazine, suggested that the gibbet might have remained in use for longer in Halifax had the bailiff not been warned that if he used it again he would be "called to public account for it". Midgley comments that the final executions "were by some persons in that age, judged to be too severe; thence came it to pass, that the gibbet, and the customary law, for the forest of Hardwick, got its suspension".

Oliver Cromwell finally ended the exercise of Halifax Gibbet Law. To the Puritans it was "part of ancient ritual to be jettisoned along with all the old feasts and celebrations of the medieval world and the Church of Rome". Moreover, it ran counter to the Puritan objection to imposing the death penalty for petty theft; felons were subsequently sent to the Assizes in York for trial.