Theivery, Hanging, Early Capitalism and The Old Kent Road

After an intense OKR chat with Molly, I've gone back to an older idea and picked up the threads a little.

I'd been looking at the history of the road, which even to my cursory research had yielded plenty. Historian Edward Walford's chapter on The Old Kent Road in 'London Old and New' has loads of information about the area up to the mid 1800s. Originally was originally a Roman Road, it the main thoroughfare from Kent and the Continent, and the route of Charles II's 1660 post-exile return to the Throne:

"This day his Majesty Charles II came to London after a sad and long exile, and calamitous suffering... This was also his birthday, and with a triumph of about 20,000 horse and foote, brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy; the wayes strew'd with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with tapestrie, fountaines running with wine: the Maior, Aldermen, and all the Companies in their liveries, chaines of gold, and banners; lords and nobles clad in cloth of silver, gold, and velvet; the windows and balconies well set with ladies; trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking even so far as from Rochester, so as they were seven hours in passing into the Citty, even from two in the afternoon till nine at night."

The odd royal tickertape parade notwithstanding, the road was always a deeply 'unfashionable thoroughfare', noted for having a high concentration of inns and taverns. One notable establishment with the Thomas a Watering, later the Thomas a Beckett, name-checked in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and the local place of execution. From Tudor times, till the mid 1700s, people were hung, drawn and quartered just opposite where Tesco is now. In one case, an unfortunate who had been quartered elsewhere had one of his quarters displayed outside the pub as a grisly visual warning from afar.

The Vicar of Wandsworth, his chaplain and two others were hung, drawn and quartered here in 1539 for refusing to recognise King Henry VIII as God's own representative during the break from Rome, but on the whole people were executed for crimes against property.

Five men were hung in 1650 for burglary and pickpocketing, one being a 'gentyllman'; the son of a Lord was executed for theft in 1556; and five men hung together in 1559, again for a 'grett robere done'.

Basically, we're now getting at one of the most interesting things about this. Apart from the four individuals hung for treason, all the reasons for exeuctions which Walford specifically lists are theft, robbery or pickpocketing. People were executed for breaking the relatively newly structured property laws. Rather than take someone's life, the ultimate trangression was to take someone's belongings. Capital punishment - in the form of public executions, in which the heads and parts of the bodies were displayed as they rotted - was a gruesome spectacle which inflicted more sophisticated ideas about private property firstly on the body of the individual and secondly on the imagination of the viewing public.

There's a book, The London Hanged, which goes into far more detail on the relationship between hanging and the development of early capitalism. Looking forward to digging further.

All quotes from:
'The Old Kent Road', Old and New London: Volume 6 (1878), pp. 248-255. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45279 Date accessed: 19 September 2011