BRUTAL SCENES 179 



XXVII 



Coacli passengers entering Salisbury even so late 

 as 1835 were sometimes witnesses of shockino- scenes 

 that, however picturesque they might have rendered 

 mediaeval times, were brutalising and degrading in a 

 civilised era. Almost every year of the nineteenth 

 century up to that date was fruitful in executions. 

 In 1801 there were ten : seven for the crime of sheep- 

 stealing, one for horse-stealing, one for stealing a calf, 

 and one for highway robbery. The practice of hang- 

 ing criminals on the scenes of their crimes afforded 

 spectacles of the most extraordinary character, as 

 instanced in the procession that accompanied two 

 murderers, George Carpenter and George Ruddock, 

 from Fisherton Gaol, on the north-west of the city, 

 to the place of their execution on Warminster Down, 

 15th March 1813. Such parades were senseless, 

 since no one ever dreamed of a rescue beinof at- 



o 



tempted ; but, all the same, the condemned men, 

 placed in a cart and accompanied by a clergyman 

 preaching of Kingdom Come, preceded by the hang- 

 man and followed by eight men carrying two coffins, 

 were escorted all the way by a troop of Wiltshire 

 Yeomanry, followed by some two hundred constables 

 and local gentlemen, all walking and carrying white 

 staves; with bailiffs, sheriffs, under-sheriffs, magis- 

 trates, a hundred mounted squires, a posse of 'javelin 

 men,' more clergymen, the gaoler and his assistants, 

 more javelin men and sheriff's officers, more yeomanry, 

 and, at last, l^rmging up the rear, a howling mob, 



