“Sometimes it makes all the difference in the world.”
“Did he do it, Joseph?”
The Irishman gave a long sigh and scratched at the hair over his ear. “That was before my time on the shore,” he said.
Peyton stared into the fire. He shook his head slowly.
Reilly said, “John Senior’s never told you how he came to take me on, has he?”
Before London hangings were moved to Newgate, the official procession to the gallows at Tyburn ran through Smithfield into the heart of Reilly’s neighbourhood, St. Giles, an area of the city densely populated by Irish immigrants. From there it moved through St. Andrews and Holborne and on to the Tyburn road. The City marshall led the parade on horseback. Behind him the undersheriff headed a group of mounted peace officers and constables armed with staves on foot. Behind these came the carts carrying the condemned men, who sat on their own coffins and were accompanied by a prison chaplain. More constables marched on either side of the carts.
Thousands of people lined the streets and the procession stopped often to allow the condemned men to speak with friends and family, and sometimes to drink mugs of ale and spirits carried out to them from taverns on the route. Women threw flowers and fruit into the carts and ran into the street to touch the hands of the men being conveyed to their deaths. The pace was stately, almost celebratory. It was as if the procession was wending its way to a church for a royal wedding. The condemned men were presented with a pair of spotless white gloves to wear. Some of them spent every shilling they had to their names on their hanging clothes and they were ferried through the streets in linen waistcoats and breeches trimmed with black ferret, in white cloth coats and silver-laced hats, in white stockings, in silk breeches.
Tens of thousands of spectators made their way to Tyburn, arriving on foot and horseback and in coaches. They thronged the cow pastures around the gallows, climbed ladders, sat on the wall enclosing Hyde Park. People fought for places on a scaffold at the bottom of Tower Hill. Entrepreneurs brought carts and sold vantage points above the heads of the crowd.
The condemned were escorted onto the gallows where they were given permission to address the crowd. Some spoke directly, others gave a prepared statement to the prison ordinary who accompanied them. They cursed the law and the country that condemned them or expressed remorse and regret for their profligate ways or commended their souls to the care of their Lord Jesus Christ. Reilly said, “There was one in particular, a tall rawney-boned fellow, he’d a dark scar across his throat like he’d already been hung. He said ‘Men, women and children, I come hither to hang like a pendulum to a watch for endeavouring to be rich too soon.’”
A handkerchief was raised and lowered to signal the opening of the trapdoor for that sudden drop, the wrenching sickening pop of the rope snapping taut. The body turning slowly on its line, the fine clothes visibly soiled with urine and faeces. They were left hanging there half an hour to ensure the completion of the sentence and after the dead men were cut down the sick were escorted up to touch the corpses for luck and health. A withered limb could be made whole by setting it upon the neck of a hanged man. Women unable to conceive a child would stroke the hand of an executed felon against their bellies to make them fruitful.
Peyton said, “You’ve seen this?”
“More times than I care to remember.” Reilly fed more green wood to the fire.
“Why would anyone want to touch a corpse like that?”
Reilly shrugged. “A dead man is an awful thing to look upon. It’s the relic of a thing gone forever from the world. And that’s as close as most will ever get to touching something holy.”
“I don’t see how all this relates to your working for my father.”
Reilly looked up, surprised. “You’re an impatient pup then.” He smiled across at Peyton. “Where are you for now? You’ve got something pressing to get to?”
Peyton shook his head no.
“Fair enough,” Reilly said. “I’ll come to your father directly.”