By W. W. Bavenhill, Esq. 



159 



July £lst inst and there burned with fire untill she be dead — respited 

 until Monday and then let Execution be done. 1 In 1789 a reprieve 

 o\ execution arrived too late — Judge Ashman, on request of Lord 

 Westmoreland. One great solemn spectacle of death there was on 

 the 15th of March, 1813, when George Carpenter and George 

 Ruddock, two agricultural labourers, aged twenty and twenty-one 

 years, were hung on the mound at the back of Frying-pan Clump, 

 Warminster Down, for the murder of Mr. Webb, a farmer of 

 Roddenbury, near Longleat. They had at the same time murdered his 

 maid-servant in a very brutal manner. The ceremony began with 

 a great procession of Wilts Yeomanry Cavalry; two hundred peace 

 officers, with white wands, commanded by Captain Charles L. Phipps; 

 the sheriff's officers ; the bailiff of Warminster ; the under-sheriff 

 and magistrates of the division, and one hundred gentlemen on 

 horseback ; the Vicar of Warminster (whose sermon in Warminster 

 Church first induced the criminals to confess) following the coffin 

 and the cart containing the criminals ; the county gaoler, sheriffs 

 officers, and javelin-men ; the Yeomanry closing the long procession, 

 whilst detachments of the same corps kept the line of march. The 

 stumps of the gallows will be remembered by many here present. 



Warminster was the last place in the county where a public 

 whipping took place. This was in 1838, George Ruddock, for de- 

 serting his wife and family. The sentence was " that he be made 

 fast to the breech of a cart and stripped naked from the waist up- 

 wards and whipped through the market place from the one end to 

 the other and so down again until his body be bloody and soe to be 

 discharged." 



We cannot be too thankful that an end has been put to these 

 revolting and brutalizing exhibitions. 



IV. — Men and Events. 

 Passing by Lord Stourton's murder of the Hartgills (young Hart- 

 gill was a feofee of the Chapel of St. Lawrence, Warminster,) and 

 the case of Thomas Thynne, Esq., of the Ten Thousand, already- 

 brought before you by Canon Jackson, I may mention a few men 

 and events of Warminster and its neighbourhood. 



1 This punishment was abolished by 30 Geo. III., c. 43. 



