Part 1 (1/2)
An Enquiry into the Causes of the Frequent Executions at Tyburn (1725).
by Bernard Mandeville and Malvin R. Zirker.
INTRODUCTION
The _Enquiry into the Causes of the Frequent Executions at Tyburn_ was originally published as a series of letters to the _British Journal_.
The first letter appeared on February 27, 1725;[1] just twelve days before, Jonathan Wild, self-proclaimed ”Thief-Catcher General of _Great Britain_ and _Ireland_,” had been arrested and imprisoned in Newgate.
Thus the _Enquiry_ had a special timeliness and forms a part of the contemporary interest in the increasingly notorious activities of Wild.
Wild's systematic exploitation of the London underworld and his callous betrayal of his colleagues in criminality (he received 40 from the government for each capital conviction he could claim) had created public protest since at least 1718 when an act (which Mandeville cites in his Preface) directed against receivers of stolen goods was pa.s.sed, most probably with the primary intention of curtailing Wild's operations. Wild's notoriety was at its peak in 1724-5 after his successful apprehension of Joseph Blake (”Blueskin”) and Jack Sheppard, the latter figure becoming a kind of national hero after his five escapes from prison (he was recaptured by Wild each time).[2]
The timeliness of Mandeville's pamphlet extends, of course, beyond its interest in Jonathan Wild, who after all receives comparatively little of Mandeville's attention. The spectacle of Tyburn itself and the civil and moral failures it represented was one which Londoners could scarcely ignore and which for some provided a morbid fascination. Mandeville's vivid description of the condemned criminal in Newgate, his journey to Tyburn, and his ”turning off,” must have been strikingly forceful to his contemporaries, who knew all too well the accuracy of his description.
”Tyburn Fair” was a holiday. Apprentices deserted their posts, pickpockets, dram-dealers and other free-lance caterers, prost.i.tutes, grub-street elegiasts armed with dying speeches or commemorative verses, went to theirs, to swell the enormous and unruly holiday mob, a mob given a certain tone by the presence of the respectable or aristocratic curious (Boswell says ”I must confess that I myself am never absent from a public execution”) who came in their coaches or even rode along with the condemned in his cart. The mob at Tyburn reached enormous proportions. Thirty thousand people witnessed an execution in 1776; eighty thousand an execution in Moorfields in 1767.[3] Richardson, in _Familiar Letters on Important Occasions_ (Letter CLX) refers to the ”pressure of the mob, which is prodigious, nay, almost incredible.”
When such popular madness was climaxed by the generally unrepentant criminal's drunken bravado (Richardson's criminals ”grew most shamefully daring and wanton.... They swore, laugh'd and talked obscenely”[4]), and by their glorification by the mob (according to Fielding the criminal at Tyburn was ”triumphant,” and enjoyed the ”compa.s.sion of the meek and tender-hearted, and ... the applause, admiration, and envy, of all the bold and hardened”[5]), serious-minded men rightly wondered what valid end the execution of the law served. And of course it was not merely that the criminal died unrepentant or that the spectators remained unedified and undeterred. The scene at Tyburn also reflected society's failure to utilize a significant portion of its ”most useful members,” a failure disturbing to the dominant mercantile att.i.tude of the time which valued ”the bodies of men” as potential sources of wealth (Mandeville's concern with the usefulness of the lower cla.s.s is obvious throughout the first part of the _Fable of the Bees_ and in the _Essay on Charity, and Charity-schools_).
Mandeville's subject, then, was one familiar to his readers and one whose importance they recognized. His att.i.tude toward his subject was for the most part a thoroughly conventional one. For instance, his primary a.s.sumption that the penal code must be harsh since its function is to deter, not to reclaim, pervades eighteenth-century thought on the subject and is clearly reflected in the number of offences carrying the death penalty (160 when Blackstone wrote; 220 in the early nineteenth century). Its logical culmination may be found in arguments such as George Ollyffe presented in 1731. Ollyffe, noting that the frequency of the death penalty was not deterring criminals, suggests that more horrible forms of punishment be devised, such as breaking on the wheel, ”by which the Criminals run through ten thousand thousand of the most exquisite Agonies ... during the unconceivable Torture of their bruised, broken, and disjointed Limbs,” or ”twisting a little Cord hard about their Arms or Legs,” which would produce the ”keenest Anguish.”[6]
Ollyffe's public-spirited ingenuity should be a warning to modern readers who a.s.sume that Mandeville's att.i.tude is unusually harsh and unfeeling.
Most of Mandeville's specific proposals too may be paralleled in the many pamphlets of the time concerned with the criminal and the lower cla.s.s. To point out some of the similarities between Mandeville's and Fielding's proposals (which he states most fully in _An Enquiry into the late Increase of Robbers_, 1751) is not to posit direct influence but to suggest the uniformity of opinion on these matters during many years.
Both Mandeville and Fielding argue for closer control over receivers of stolen goods, against advertising in the paper to recover stolen goods, against the false compa.s.sion of the tender-hearted who fail to prosecute or of juries which fail to convict the guilty, against the indiscriminate imprisonment of young with old, hardened criminals with first offenders, men with women, and against frequent pardons. They agree in demanding that the condemned should meet his death, soberly, shortly after his conviction.[7]
Mandeville's suggestion that the bodies of the executed be turned over to surgeons for dissection is not to be found in Fielding's pamphlet. It does, however, become a part of the ”Act for preventing the horrid Crime of Murder” (25 Geo. II. c. 37), an act for which Fielding is often given credit.[8] This suggestion, and that in Chapter VI to trade felons into slavery (which as far as I know is Mandeville's own), clearly stem from the impulse to increase the deterrent power of the law by making it more terrible.
What distinguishes Mandeville's pamphlet (in addition to the characteristically hard-headed bluntness of its author) is a quality present in one degree or another in all his work: an exuberant delight in creating scene. Throughout the _Fable of the Bees_, for example, but especially in the first part, the argument is punctuated by vivid scenes in which an idea is acted out or ill.u.s.trated. Invariably these scenes have a merit and interest beyond that owing to their function in the argument. They are lively, vivid, picturesque, humorous or touching in their own right. The reader can scarcely doubt that Mandeville enjoyed composing them--he admits as much in the Preface to the _Enquiry_ when he acknowledges, in defending the ”lowness” of his subject, the ”Pleasure there is in imitating Nature in what Shape soever.”
The gusto and vitality of the description of the events at Tyburn well ill.u.s.trate Mandeville's art. He puts us on the scene, lets us see and hear the various actors, gives us telling detail: a bully rolling in the mire; a putrified wig; a drunken old woman on a bulk; refuse flying through the air; trollops in rags; a gin seller ”squeez'd up in a corner”; carca.s.ses of dogs and cats. The scene is filled with objects and has movement as well: the mob is a torrent which ”bursts through the gate,” a ”floating mult.i.tude.” There is ”jostling,” ”kicking dirt,”
”rolling”; peddlers ”stir about,” and one who has ”ventured in the Middle of the Current” is ”fluctuating in the irregular Stream.” The air is filled with ”oaths and vile expressions,” and ”loud laughter”; a peddler ”tears his Throat with crying his commodity.” Mandeville orders his scene spatially and chronologically, and he enforces its vividness by relating the action in the present tense. Its basic unity, however, is owing to the evaluation and control provided by the various tones of the narrator's voice, which is alternately scornful and disgusted (”abandoned Rakeh.e.l.ls”) and almost playfully ironic (”he is the prettiest Fellow among them who is the least shock'd at Nastiness”; ”their darling Cordial, the grand Preservative of Sloth, Jeneva”).
For one reader at least Mandeville is eminently successful in capturing what must have been the appalling uproar and the dismaying quality of the events at Tyburn. His vivid, circ.u.mstantial realism sets the _Enquiry_ apart, as far as I know, from all other pamphlets dealing with this sorry subject. If his views for the most part are conventional, his style and technique are not, and in this respect the _Enquiry_ is best compared not with other pamphlets but with Hogarth's portrayal of the demise of the idle apprentice (Plate XI of the _Industrious and Idle Apprentice_, 1747), in which Hogarth represents visually many of the same details which Mandeville reports and in which he conveys a comparable sense of the violent and brutal activity of the Tyburn mob.
THE
PREFACE
The Design of this small Treatise, is to lessen if not prevent the common Practice of Thieving, and save many Lives of the loose and indigent Vulgar, of which now such great Numbers are yearly lavish'd away for Trifles. In order to this, I have endeavour'd to set in a true Light the destructive Consequences of _Theftbote_, and the Damage the Publick sustains from the Trade that is drove by Thiefcatchers, and the various ways now in vogue of compounding Felonies, by which the Safety as well as Maintenance of Thieves and Pilferers are industriously taken care of, and the Laws that enforce Prosecution altogether eluded.
To the same Purpose I have pointed at the Licentiousness and other Disorders of _Newgate_, arising from the wrong Method we have of treating common Felons in Prison. I have describ'd the Transactions of Execution Day, with the Procession to _Tyburn_, and demonstrated what small Advantage they are of, as well to the condemn'd themselves, whose grand Affair it is to prepare themselves for another World, as to their Companions who should be deterred, or the rest of the Spectators, who should be struck with the Awfulness of the Solemnity. I have likewise searched into the Origin of Courage, and the wrong Judgments that are differently pa.s.s'd on the dying Behaviour of Malefactors, shew'd the ill Consequences as well as Absurdity of our mistaking Drunkenness for Intrepidity, and a senseless Deportment for Undauntedness; and touch'd on the several Neglects and Mismanagements that are accessary, and one way or other contribute to the Encrease and Support of Felons, and consequently, the Frequency of Executions. Afterwards I have in a Chapter by it self offer'd some Proposals for a better Usage, and more proper Treatment of common Felons in Confinement, and made a Pathetical Representation of the good Effects we might probably expect from such wholesome Regulations. To these I have added a Discourse on Transportation, and a Method of rendering that Punishment not only more effectual on the Criminals, but likewise advantagious to the Publick in the most extraordinary manner.
I am not so vain as to place any Merit in the Performance, or promise my self the Applause of many: on the contrary, I expect to be censur'd, and perhaps deservedly, for the uncouth Decorations I have intermix'd with my Subject. Men of Taste and Politeness will think themselves very little oblig'd to me for entertaining them with the meanest and most abject part of low Life, for almost a whole Chapter together; and tell me that the Inside of _Newgate_, either on an Execution Day, or any other, is not a Scene they ought to be troubled with; and that the Exactness of a Picture among the Judicious is of little Worth where the n.o.ble manner is wanting. To this I could answer that, if I have trespa.s.sed against the Laws either of Elegance or Formality, I was forc'd to it by what is superior to all Laws, Necessity. When a Man is to inspire his Readers with an Aversion to what they are unacquainted with, he can never compa.s.s his End without furnis.h.i.+ng them first with a general Idea of the Thing against which he wou'd raise their Indignation: I could add that, when a Piece is lively and tolerably finish'd, the good-natured Critick will pardon the Meaness of the Design, for the sake of the Colouring and the Application of the Master.
But if neither of these Excuses are thought sufficient, I must plead guilty, and confess that the Pleasure there is in imitating Nature in what Shape soever is so bewitching, that it over-rules the Dictates of Art, and often forces us to offend against our own Judgment.