
London
The Executioner's City
Sutton Publishing Ltd
Will be published approx. on 19. July 2006
Book
Hardback
250 pages
978-0-7509-4023-8 (ISBN)
Description
Tyburn Fields is the best known site of execution in London, but London may be aptly named the executioner's city, so many were the places where executions could and did occur. "London - The Executioner's City" reveals the capital as a place where the bodies of criminals defined the boundaries of the city and heads on poles greeted patrons on London Bridge. The ubiquity of crime and punishment was taken for granted by countless generations of the capital's inhabitants, though it seems to have done little to stem the tide of criminality that has always threatened to engulf the city. The book is a powerful evocation of the dark side of London's history, where the great and not so good, the poor and helpless, the cruel and the idealistic crowd together to be punished in public. A King and more than one Queen, heretics, archbishops, pirates, poisoners, plotters, murderers and a cook executed for selling putrid fish met death by hanging, beheading, burning or boiling in London, and on most occasions the crowd roared its approval. David Brandon and Alan Brooke's book is a vivid picture of capital punishment in a capital that seems to have thrived on executions.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Stroud
United Kingdom
Publishing group
The History Press Ltd
Illustrations
12 black and white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-7509-4023-8 (9780750940238)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
David Brandon is a historian. He runs a variety of courses and lectures on topics such as 'Absolute Rotters and Total Cads - Villains in British History'; and 'You Are What You Eat - Food and Eating Habits 1550-2000'. He is the author of Stand and Deliver! (Sutton, 2001). Alan Brooke is a lecturer at Peterborough College and collaborated with David Brandon on their highly successful Tyburn - London's Fatal Tree (Sutton, 2004).