The guillotine is usually thought of as a product of revolutionary France. Yorkshire had its own mechanical beheading device long before, and it was in use into the seventeenth century.
The Horror
Under what is known as the Halifax Gibbet Law, a thief caught in the manor of Halifax with goods worth 13.5 pence or more could be beheaded. The machine consisted of an axe head fixed to a heavy block. The block slid between two uprights about fifteen feet high. A rope raised it and a pin held it in place. Pulling the pin or cutting the rope released the blade.
The bailiff of the lord of the manor held suspects, and a jury of sixteen decided guilt. For the theft of an animal, a cord from the pin was tied to the stolen animal, or to one of the same kind, and driving it away pulled the pin. That is documented.
The first known beheading was John of Dalton in 1286. Records are firmest from 1538, when parish registers begin, and 56 executions are recorded between 1538 and 1650. The total over the whole period, almost 100, is uncertain because the date the device was first installed is unknown. The last executions took place on April 30, 1650, when Abraham Wilkinson and Anthony Mitchell were beheaded. Some sources give John Wilkinson instead, which one historian attributes to a parish register error.
The law applied only within the Forest of Hardwick. Two men, Dinnis and Lacy, are recorded as escaping. Lacy returned seven years later and was executed in 1623. The rhyme “From Hull, from Halifax, from Hell” appears in John Taylor’s Beggar’s Litany, though Hull did not use beheading.
The Legend
A 1600 novel by Thomas Deloney credits a friar with inventing the device. It is presented as a story, not as established fact. A story from 1584 linking the Edinburgh Maiden to the Halifax Gibbet through James Douglas, Earl of Morton, is unsupported. Claims that the blade was blunt, that a piper played psalms, and that a condemned man could go free by crossing a particular brook are unconfirmed.
The Modern Relic
A non-working replica of the gibbet was erected in 1974 on the original stone base in Gibbet Street. A casting of the original blade is displayed at Bankfield Museum on Boothtown Road. A plaque lists 52 names.
