Gallows Ticket

Jonathan Wild was 'thief taker General' and ironically the most infamous criminal in London in th 18th century. He was hnged at Tyburn in 1725. As sentence was passed he felt terrified and asked for a reprieve but was refused. He could not eat or go to church, and suffered from insanity and gout. On the morning of his execution, in fear of death, he attempted suicide by drinking a large dose of laudanum, but because he was weakened by fasting, he vomited violently and sank into a coma that he would not awaken from.
When Wild was taken to the gallows at Tyburn on 24 May 1725, Daniel Defoe said that the crowd was far larger than any they had seen before and that, instead of any celebration or commiseration with the condemned;

"wherever he came, there was nothing but hollowing and huzzas,
as if it had been upon a triumph."

Wild's hanging was a great event, and tickets were sold in advance for the best vantage points (see the reproduction of the gallows ticket above). Even in a year with a great many macabre spectacles, Wild drew an especially large and boisterous crowd. Eighteen-year-old Henry Fielding was in attendance. Wild was accompanied by William Sperry and the two Roberts Sanford and Harpham, three of the four prisoners who had been condemned to die with Wild a few days before.[34] Because he was heavily drugged, he was the last to die after the three of them. The hangman, Richard Arnet, had been a guest at Wild's wedding.

Last Traitor Hung, Drawn, Quartered

On this day, the 24th August 1772, the last hanged, drawn and quartered method of execution took plavce. The unfortunate guy was the Scottish spy David Tyrie.
At his trial in Winchester, Tyrie was found to have been passing secrets to the French. The American War of Independence was still being fought, British forces thus stretched and these islands (British) more vulnerable to foreign attack than was comfortable. It was said that the information relayed by Tyrie was provided by senior figures in the government, so perhaps his horrific death was a way of discouraging such activity without the embarrassment of a trial featuring great names.
Tyrie’s execution was carried out by the shore in Portsmouth. Hanged for 22 minutes so probably already dead he was then beheaded (which we can take it ensured he was). His heart was cut out and symbolically burned in front of him, he was emasculated, cut into quarters and finally buried in the pebbly shore. For Tyrie, however, the indignity was not yet complete: sailors at the event immediately exhumed the four parts of his butchered body and hacked them into tiny pieces for distribution as very grim souvenirs.