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Public Execution

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hi liam
did you ever finish your book, if you did whats it called, i was only down by the actress on sunday and noticed the plaque there, so thought i would do a bit of digging and i saw this article of yours its fanatastic and would like to read more, would be interesting to know where Robert Twyford is buried.


Hi Pedro, thank you for your interest in my article on Philip Matsell.

I don`t know where Twyford is buried, I can certainly try and find out for you.

As for the book, it is very nearly finished. Unfortunately, I`ve suffered severe ill-health these last few years which has made work on it difficult. It is now close to 500 pages long, a lot bigger than I ever envisaged as the more I have delved into Birmingham`s darker side, the more I have discovered and felt needed adding to my work. I have had to, unfortunately now had to say `enough is enough.` and I am preparing to present it to a publisher if I can find one.

If I can be of any service regarding Birmingham`s murder history, please do not hesitate to contact me,

Best wishes,

Liam.
 
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Two plaques commemorate Matsells execution, one in Ludgate Hill and the other in Great Charles Street. Do these Plaques still exsits? [QUOTE="Mercian Liam, post: 543480, member: 69045"] A Little More on the Execution of Philip Matsell. Philip Matsell was not executed for the murder of Robert Twyford, (or Twiford,) as is generally believed because Robert Twyford was [I]not[/I] murdered. On July 26 1806, he was shot in the chest, but he survived his wound. He died eight years later on 24 November 1814, from an infection caused by a strangulated hernia. The actual person who fired the pistol is disputed. There seems to have been many at the time who believed it to be Matsells paramour, Kate Pedley, who dressed in her lovers clothes, while he lay drunk and insensible in his lodgings and went out and shot Twyford. The story goes that she planned, with some former criminal colleagues of hers, to kill Twyford for the diligent and honest way he undertook his duties, which had forestalled some of their criminal activities. This was angrily denied by Pedley, nor did the authorities believe it. Twyford himself was within a few yards of his assailant when he was shot and his description of the culprit matched that of Matsell. And it is unlikely that, from a few yards distance, he would mistake a woman for a man. Matsell himself could provide no alibi that could be corroborated.

Matsell was tried at Warwick assizes and sentenced to death. Normally he would have been hanged outside Warwick Gaol, on Gallows Hill, but Birminghams authorities wanted to set an example to others that assaulting an officer-of-the-law would be punished with death. It was therefore decided that Matsell would be brought back to Birmingham and executed at the scene of his crime. On what was then the junction of Great Charles Street, Snow Hill and Bath Street, a scaffold was constructed about ten feet high with a gallows built in the centre. Matsell was brought from Warwick and just outside the town he was placed in an open cart, and then, sitting on his own coffin, paradedon a circuitous route into Deritend, then Digbeth, along High Street, up Bull Street and finally to where the scaffold stood. Far from being his accomplices, Mr Tatnell was in fact the keeper of Warwick Gaol who had accompanied Matsell on his final journey, while Mr Langham was the religious minister appointed to see to Matsells spiritual needs. Langham began praying earnestly when Matsell alighted from his cart much to Matsells annoyance. The condemned man listened for a few moments before he told Langham exactly where he could shove his bible! Matsell then noticed, near to the scaffold, his wife weeping in the crowd. Somewhat coldly he asked her, "What are you crying for?" It was a particularly uncharitable and spiteful thing to say to a woman whom he had cheated on, but who still retained enough love for her errant husband to cry and mourn at his imminent death. According to reports, Matsell arrived at the site of the gallows at 12.30pm, but was not hanged until 1.20pm, which means that for fifty minutes Matsell was left to, (forgive the pun,) hang around. Something in the recording of the timings is clearly wrong. No one in their right mind would delay an execution for almost an hour with a crowd of 40,000 waiting in eager anticipation. For one thing, there always remained the possibility that friends of the condemned man, or even the crowd itself, might attempt a rescue. There was also the worry that the crowd might, out of boredom and restlessness, hang the unfortunate man themselves. Even worse, the crowd might riot, and Birmingham had a history of riots, leading to potential loss of life and destruction of property. There was also a compassionate reason to proceed immediately with the execution, that to leave a man dangling (ahem!) about for fifty minutes before being hung was unnecessarily cruel. Its almost certain that Matsell was dead by 12.45pm and rather than the later time being twenty past one, it should actually be twenty to one.

Whatever the truth of the time, Matsell climbed the steps to the scaffold and then mounted the ladder to the gallows where the hangman, (whose name was not recorded,) placed the noose around the condemned mans neck. As he did so, Matsell kicked off his shoes launching them into the crowd, saying that he would not die with his shoes on as he had been told he would do when he was a young lad. When the hangman climbed back down the ladder and was about to turn the ladder so as to cause Matsell to fall, Matsell jumped shouting, "Here goes." Matsells reason for jumping was almost certainly to ensure that he died immediately of a broken neck and not slowly strangle to death in agony. Whether his jump succeeded is not known.

If newspaper reports and other eyewitness accounts are to believed, then around 40,000 people crowded around the scaffold and crammed into the surrounding area to get a glimpse of this unique event in Birminghams history. Given that Birminghams population in 1801 had been almost 74,000 then at least half of the towns inhabitants witnessed Matsells execution.

Folklore has it that the executed mans corpse was secretly buried by his friends in the graveyard of St. Philips Cathedral.

Philip Matsell is the only person ever to be executed publicly in Birmingham. Previous executions had been carried out at Warwick, while about twenty had, over the years, been carried out on Washwood Heath which then was not a part of Birmingham. After Matsells hanging, there would be no more executions in Birmingham until 1885 when Henry Kimberley became the first man to be hanged in Winson Green Prison. Two plaques commemorate Matsells execution, one in Ludgate Hill and the other in Great Charles Street. Both contain errors of fact. The one in Ludgate Hill proclaims that it is hung at the site of the last public hanging to take place in Birmingham. This is a confusion with the last public execution to take place in Great Britain which took place at Ludgate Hill, London in 1868. The plaque in Great Charles Street boldly states that Robert Twyford was murdered when in fact he was not. Its perhaps time that Birmingham City Council replaced these embarrassing mistakes with two plaques that contain the correct details of an event that is and will remain unique in Birminghams history.
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The one under the Queensway's should still be there. The walk between Livery Street and Snow Hill Queensway.





And the other one at the Actress & Bishop on Ludgate Hill is still there.





These are old photos above, mostly from 2009. Apart from the Ludgate Hill plaque photo taken in 2014.
 
Thanks. I think the area around Snow Hill is more tidied up now. Although they could do with opening up those arches, restore them as station entrances, if the site near Old Snow Hill gets done?
 
Last Public hanging in Birmingham
Went to a talk at the gunmakers last week.
Although the talk had the above title, only the first part dealt with this, the remainder being a collection of gruesome facts and anecdotes on hanging, a subject that Kay Hunter has always been interested in. He first became interested in the first hanging after seeing a plaque outside a pub in Great Charles St, on the corner of Ludgate Hill, celebrating this hanging. On investigation he found that the position of the plaque was wrong and that the hanging had, in fact, taken place at the junction with Snow Hill, where the railway bridge at the bottom of Great Charles St now is . He succeeded in 2008 in ensuring that a new plaque was placed in the correct place under the railway bridge.

The person concerned was Phillip Matsell, a thief who was accused of the attempted murder by shooting of Robert Twyford, a peace officer (a combination of watchman and policeman) and was hanged at 1.25pm on August 22nd 1806. It is said that 40,000 people attended the hanging. This would have been about half the Birmingham population, and apparently many shops closed for the event. Rather surprisingly the body was buried in St. Phillips. the exact position is not known, but Kay believes it to be in a deep crypt.

The definite facts are that Twyford was patrolling around Snow Hill and stopped to question some suspicious people, one of whom shot him through his chest and right shoulder blade. The bullet was removed, and, against expectations he survived, though was unable to work. He and his family of wife and 6 children became destitute and 3 of the children died within three years. Eventually he died after an operation 9n years later, his death being attributed to the state of his lungs caused by the shooting. His death aroused great sympathy and a subscription was raised to support the family.

Kay considers that the conviction is very dubious. Matsell provided an alibi , but this was rejected by the court. but the evidence showed that, at the time, he was drinking in a pub, totally drunk and incapable of doing virtually anything.

Public hangings were common at the time and were often thought of as public entertainments. If a person had a lot of bravado then th ecrowd supported him and cheered him however evil a person he was. It was also common to hang them in the place where the event took place, as occurred here.

The rope used was not the knotted noose which, carefully arranged, instantly broke the neck of the subject, but death was usually from slow strangulation and could take some time. Friends would often go up and pull on the legs of the victim in an attempt to hasten death and reduce suffering (hence the term "pulling my leg") On occasions it has been known for them to pull so hard as to decapitate the person.

The clothes of the hanged man were often sold. It has been known for some to go to the gallows naked so that the clothes could not be sold at a profit to someone! similarly the rope used to hang men was often cut into short lengths and sold as a (gruesome) souvenir. A typical price might be 6 (old)pence for a length

Kay went on to present many other stories on hanging, prisons and the like. He does give talks at Steelhouse lane for those interested.
 
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