The Resurrection Men: 1722

excerpt of the full short story

by James Vescovi

De mortuis nil nisi bonum.

“Of the dead, [say] nothing but good.”

I.

They appeared, the surgeons, or their lackeys, and on a monstrous cold day, too. All London had turned out to see us turned off, because history loves to praise a rebel and despise a scoundrel, or to humiliate the ingénue, such was that misguided dissenter and flimflam, the carpenter, Jesus Christ. 

But no one except the Parson, Percival Potts, was selling Jesus at this grim hour because there ain’t no theology in men’s hearts on Hanging Days, which our Lords in Parliament schedule eight times annual, for the edification of the crowds. Only today’s ten thousand souls came to seek entertainment with a dose of horror. They appeared from hovels like cripples who leave behind their pallets. They would witness no miracles this day—just doomed pickpockets, silk snatchers, and murderers, all shitting their breeches as they dangled from the rope. 

II.

I was one of six to be nubbed off at the Tyburn Tree, known as the “Three-legged Mare.” Sawn, hammered, and raised by mortals but stronger than Hercules, it can hold the shuddering bodies of eighteen souls. By slow and agonizing manner, we, the condemned, made our pilgrimage from Newgate prison, down Holborn Road, through St. Giles Parish, and up to Tyburn. This day, none of us—except perchance the condemned girl, Molly, who hadn’t spoken since losing her final appeal; nor the young whelp, Adam Busick, who’d clung to the Newgate turnkey for the tiniest kindnesses—none wanted solace from the Rev. Potts whose work is to plump his pockets on the frail consciences of those gallows-bound. Potts wanted our stories of repentance and tooth-gnashing to print in his two-penny broadsheets, sold on hanging days by beggars, paid in stale bread, to augment his meager income.

Though early morning, Londoners turned out in droves along our Via Dolorosa, for amongst us was the condemned highwayman Guy Crispin. His popularity forced the City Marshall to accompany our wagons with a small army to maintain good order during this popular pageant, in which men and women are regularly scragged off for the enlightenment of scum of the people, who, in poverty, are daily crushed by the anvil of Law.

After our bodies fall and our faces turn purple as Lenten robes; after we are declared kickerpoo, we belong to the Hangman himself. He sells our clothing to the poor for wear, and to the rich for souvenir. And, if he can fix it, our bodies he’ll fence to the surgeons to be anatomized for the Good of Mankind. But, I ask you, what man is guaranteed heaven if, after a bloody carving in a surgical theater, he arrives before the Almighty in so many pieces—leg, arm, kidney, liver—as opposed to whole, as on the day he first sucked the teat?

III.

At Tyburn, if you wish to hang mercifully, without protracted strangulation, you must generously tip the Hangman, who’ll direct his assistants to pull on your legs and hasten your death. But though you be safely buried, your travails have not ceased. The Resurrection Men, as they are called, under cover of night will snatch you from the grave like some stiff Lazarus, and, in stealth, transport you to Surgeon’s Hall, there to be diced-up by Dr. Francis Blizzard and his legion of sous chefs, who show off their nimble skill with saw, scalpel, and scoop. Your glimms, once windows to a soul, are plucked from their orbits and placed, with no reverence, in a china dish for a poke and a probe. Your organs they dig out like potatoes harvested by starving Irishmen, your limbs clipped like winter branches in Hyde Park. This surgical performance is staged to the delight and revulsion of observers, who pay handsomely for the privilege of witnessing the demolishment of a Son of Adam, because, as the chant says:

Tyburn thrives in England’s lore, 

Where Droves of Thieves were sent in corps,

We’ll gasp until our necks are tore

Then Surgeons will us Bloody Gore.

IV.

As much as the highwayman Crispin, the people have come out also to wish a former hangman, Billy Lovett, a rollicking trip to Hell. It is unknown where he learned the art of hanging. He was famous for hurrying the condemned to their Maker before pardons could be issued; in which case the hangman receives no wages! He dutifully served London for a decade, until his own crimes sentenced him to the gallows. Today, he’ll drink his own foul punch. “Duck-legs Billy,” as he was known, lived in a house provided by City and scattered his wages at the lowest rung of public houses, where a man can catch the crinkums by just ogling a draggle-tailed shag-bag. Despite a generous salary and emoluments (including annual Christmas box!), he was caught stealing a brass porridge-pot and other sundries belonging to a wigmaker. That man then summoned his brother-in-law, a constable, who caused Lovett’s rooms to be searched; and there was found a great quantity of knapped goods belonging to half the shopkeepers of St. Giles Parish. So the Magistrate betrothed the unwed Billy to the polyandrous Madame Tyburn.

V. 

Before our hanging day, we’d languished for months in our cells at Newgate prison, awaiting pardons that never arrived, while around us dozens fell ill with gaol fever. Not a reputable physician would enter this annex of Hades, lit by guttering candles and hardly the air to keep a worm alive. Our stench and clamor repelled every mammal except the rats. Our turnkeys extorted us for every necessity and sold bread housed by weevils and piss-water masquerading as beer. 

But a lower creature at Newgate Prison you’ll not find than Rev. Potts. Stooped and unprepossessing, no parish ever called him to a pulpit. He approached the poor Molly in great obsequy, desiring her life’s story for his mendacious newspaper.

“Molly, ‘tis nigh time we recorded your penitence,” Potts said in sham desperation. “Do you not want to join your dear Mother, who never exhaled contrition, not even in her final breath?”   

Molly’s pregnant mother was to hang for stealing a Guinea’s worth of rings and watches from a fancy jeweler, but plead her belly so Molly could be born at Newgate; and after weaning the infant, she was scrogged off. The unmoored Molly married at sixteen. She had red hair and lively eyes; a scar on her chin did not injure her beauty. One morning her husband, a glazier from Eastbourne, while going to work, was impressed into His Majesty’s Royal Navy and bound hand and foot on a frigate that sailed for the West Indies. Molly sold greens in the morning and fish in the afternoon in the market and earned barely enough to keep her four chips alive. After no word from her husband, the desperate girl visited Mother Paige, a buttocks broker, and became one of her cattle. She became pregnant with a fifth, which she could no more feed than the earth kiss the moon, and smothered the mite in the mud along the Thames and was caught. 

After being sentenced to hang, the girl found a protector in the unlikeliest of men amongst us—Jimmy Maw. On this frigid day the full opprobrium of the Government would fall on the counterfeiter, for ‘tis treason to sham the King’s coinage. After being cut down from the gallows with a kernel of life still in him, Maw would be quartered, and his bowels and heart thrown into a fire and his head plucked off and piked at Temple Bar for the population’s illumination. The remainder of his sorry carcass was dispatched to a surgeon, after which, what bits of him remain shall be scattered hither and way. God knows—you might find a shoulder in the market stall of Edinburgh butcher. 

Potts continued to press the girl. “Molly, let us have your tale,” he said.

To the parish prig, Maw said, “Sir, if you’ll leave Molly be, I am prepared to release the story of my life, which will sell so many broadsheets you’ll be smacking your lips on Smithfield mutton.” 

“Be gone, Maw!” said Potts. “If you are not the Son of Lies, you are his Nephew.”

 “But, Your Holiness, ‘tis the sorrowest tale ever heard!” 

The holy cod’s-head replied, “Well … very well, Maw. But I’ll have no undue coloring of facts.”

Like Molly’s husband, Maw, too, had been a victim of the Sea. An able seaman aboard a Liverpool merchantman, he was cast off like fish guts when the owner went bankrupt. His pockets at low tide, he apprenticed in button-making by a rotten cull in Eastcheap, who taught him the counterfeit trade, fabricating the King’s duty stamps on playing cards. Maw’s wife had the ovaries of a hare and to keep his brood well nourished, he was soon converting pewter and silver plate into shillings, expertly embossed with His Majesty’s bacon-faced mug. He was eventually pinched by a fellow counterfeiter who needed his sentence lightened. 

Potts declared: “Maw, let’s have this tale of yours! I haven’t all day!”

“Your Reverence, there is no crime as notorious against the Light, and to the confusion of Nature, as mine.”

“You’re a Seditionist Maw! What could be more dishonorable?” 

“My sin was thrice condemned by God in the Holy Writ.”

“Then … you have given carnal delight to a close relation?” asked Potts.

“Fiddle-faddle!”

“Maw, what say you?!” 

“Your Reverence, I can’t speak exactly, as I wasn’t entirely sober at the time, having spent every tuppence I’d possessed tiffing ale and playing dice. However, I was informed by a honest farmer of Camden Town that he saw—forgive me, I was a lad of only one and twenty—saw me behind a mare, with my arms cast about her loins, jumping at her vertically in unseemly and beastly manner!”

“Maw!”

“Your Honor?”

“Is this credible, Maw?!”

“Aye—the farmer’s wife saw it also; she called half the village to witness the abhorrent amusement. Even the schoolmistress was rung for because, being a parson’s daughter, she possessed a plenteous knowledge of abominations.” 

The bewattled Potts scribbled faster than Handel his Messiah until Maw could no longer contain sorrow on his carbuncled face, which collapsed in howling laughter, in which we joined, nearly pissing ourselves over the farce.

The ill-used Potts shouted, “You, Maw! You shall be on the surgeon’s slab before tomorrow’s cock crows three times!”

What cares the counterfeiter? He’s left his wife plump with quid, and she’s slinked off to a sister in distant Kent; and who’ll suspect a cow-eyed widow with six brats of passing sham currency?  

VI. 

It is said that misfortune has ruined more nations than the enemy’s sword. My father, educated for the Anglican clergy, lost his pulpit after he was accused of being a Dissenter. It was, nevertheless, his good fortune to become tutor to the son of a London politician, the Duke of New Bedford, who, when he left his world, left him a modest pot, which my father used to buy a wherry, and thus he ferried fashionable Londoners up and down the Thames by day and late into the night, when footpads ruled the streets. When a political man needed a late pull to Parliament, it was my father they summoned.  

But Samuel, four years my senior, while at oars, got pinched nimming the watch of a Lord Governor. Only my father’s reputation kept his son from hanging. He was given transportation to America instead for seven years but expired of scarlet rash before the perilous journey. My mother soon died of heartbreak.  

His grief doubled, my father sailed for the Colonies, leaving me sufficient funds for my upkeep and education, because, he said, the Colonies were no place a lad could obtain decent schooling in Latin, the Classics, and Anglican doctrine. I rashly quit my studies. My rendezvous with Tyburn commenced with petty thieving, drink, and whores. I took up poaching, a serious crime in our Fair Nation, where a poor man has no right to the game God Almighty put on Earth to sustain all mankind. No—only the groaning tables of nobles will have fresh venison, pheasant, and hare, whose capture is more for sport than sustenance. 

On my fateful night, our gang of four, with faces blackened, descended upon Enfield Chase, leaving me lookout, for the Keeper keeps close watch and sets man-traps that can snap your ankle easy as a twig. I stood buff while two of our trusty mongrels drove a doe into our nets. By accident a gun went off, and the bastards piked off and left me cold. Though quiet as a Quaker, I was soon twigged and found myself before a Lord Justice who, after an eternal harangue, stated: “Sir, a mouse of the pot is better than no flesh at all,” to which I requested an invitation to sample his wife’s mouse pudding.

The ancient hatchet-face cried: “You shitten-headed thief! Hanged between Heaven and Earth, you’ll be! And unworthy of both!” 

So shocked was the court that a lad of my age, meanly abandoned by his mates, was to hang for a first offense, my jailers hesitated to take me off. His Honor cried, “Well?! What are you waiting for, damned fussocks?! Let the law take its course!” 

Led away, I recalled a rhyme from my catechism, the gullyfluff of schoolboys:

’Tis a sin

To steal a pin.

VII.

The Bloody Code has filled Newgate to capacity, with dozens awaiting the noose for the most piddling of offenses—felling a landlord’s tree, or stealing a quid’s worth of swag. It is the equivalent to stomping on a starving ant that, in desperation, pilfers a crumb from the King’s beard. 

And where is His Majesty to protect the poor and the seedy who he so claims to love? So frequently absent is he, to stuff his gob in Hanover with schnitzel and beer, that some prankster nailed to the palace gates a plaque offering of eight shillings to anyone who could locate our Sovereign. 

VIII.

Tyburn’s hanging days begin early. At 5 a.m., the guards struck off our irons; most of us were already in our altitudes with gin. The bells of St. Sepulcher’s Church tolled, and a black-bearded bellman under a beaten wig proclaims, “All good people pray heartily to God for these poor sinners! You who are condemned ask mercy of the Lord for the salvation of your souls!”

Our tumbrils departed. Molly, the boy, and I sat atop our coffins, with our backs to the nag’s ass; Lovett rode in a separate cart, for the Sheriff was not so inhumane as to expose us to eggs and rocks launched at the former hangman (as well as all manner of nasty oaths): 

“Bracket-faced bastard!”

“Shabaroon!” 

“Today you, Lovett, will dance the Tyburn jig!” 

At Newgate, fearing the surgeon’s knife, he asked me to write letters on his behalf, for which I demanded a crown and put to good use with Newgate’s victualler. 

Dearest Brother,

Soon, I shall be put to bed with a mattock and tucked up with a spade at Tyburn. It is to my great disquiet that I have yet to hear a word from you. Unless you come to London and make claim, I shall be carved up by the Surgeons and then my parts discarded in Houndsditch, my grave unknown and unmarked; I beseech you to show proof of your fraternity and assist me, for not even God stands between me and the malevolent butchers. If our Circumstances were changed, I know with all humility that I would be pleased to screen you from this unlucky fortune. Please let me hear from you by first opportunity…

Poor Lovett; Job’s comfort he received. His family wanted nothing to do with him, seeing how he never sent so much as a guinea back home. Eyes on the cobblestones, the whimpering hangman sat still as a statue in the depth of winter. 

X.

There was neither crying nor gander-mouthing from Guy Crispin. As the foremost Highwayman of the era, he must die game. He was un-prodigaled son of Sir Thomas Crispin, a Somerset gentleman of good estate, who put the boy to celebrated schools, which enterprise failed when the lad sold his books for drams of French brandy. In desperation, Sir Thomas presented him for an Army career, but Guy lacked the stuff to be one of His Highness’ Officers. He found his way to London’s harlot houses and fell in with a crew of highwaymen, who are the greatest plague to travelers. After a year, Guy overthrew the leader, and turned his gang into the greatest plague of any land-sharks within memory. He had the impudence to trail the legal circuits and plunder its Magistrates. Every night on their knees, these legal beaks prayed that God would bring him before the King’s Bench. Except for what he gave to the poor, Crispin dissipated his money in riot and extravagant living.

The first time apprehended, he told his jailer at Fleet prison, “I commit no sin in robbing the gentry, because I keep to the Holy Book: ‘Feed the hungry and send the rich empty away.’” The gaoler told him to say his prayers, but the prisoner escaped by feigning the plague, painting himself in indigo dye smuggled in by a simple bribe.

One hundred guineas were offered for his head. After a joyous spree of four years, he was boned on the road to Oxfordshire and brought in chains to Newgate. With his earnings, he lived better than a respectable bloke outside the prison’s fungused walls, with good bedding, food, and drink. A daub in a turnkey’s palm earned him “gentlemen’s manacles,” which doesn’t chafe the wrists, and another daub earned a visit to the prison barber to keep his mug clean. A shilling paid for a fellow to thump his bed at night and two crowns secured a Covent Garden nun to keep it warm. 

IX.

We jolted and rocked up High Street under a bitter northeast wind. Snow stuck to gables and balustrades. Next to me, young Busick shivered more from fear than frost. Shackled as we were, I could not even lend him bodily warmth.

“C’mon, lad,” I said, “you’re sure to be reprieved.”

“Not me, Sir.”

“And why not? How old are you?”

“Sixteen and one month, but I shall not escape. We Busicks never do. My mother killed my father and hung for his murder.”

“Killed him?”

“Yes, Sir, by arson. So evil was his reputation not a single neighbor rushed to his aid when he fell into the street, burning like a heretic.”

He told me that after that horror, he was ditched at St. Catherine’s Orphanage, where the surfeit of cruelty was not to his liking. With others, he kicked off to London and became a rum pickpocket. 

“People said I could’ve nimmed the crown off the King’s head,” he recalled with a faint smile.

But, the poor creature was apprehended in Southwark. During his capture, a tavern-keeper was mortally wounded. 

“It wasn’t my fault. The doctor told the court that he’d died of apoplexy during the hurly-burly. He was a swill tub of a man.”

The boy’s trial was shorter than an old man’s pause to piss.

“The Judge said to me, ‘Ain’t you ashamed, Adam Busick? Your mother, hanged as a murderer, and you didn’t let her unfortunate death commend you to a godly life?’ 

The case dispatched, the judge, dizzened out in fancy robe and ermine collar, retired for his mutton and herb pudding.

XI.

Those with means may transport themselves to Tyburn in fashion. Crispin turned heads in his coach and four, with two liveried footmen togged in yellow coats, blue stockings, and powdered wigs. Neither were his nags neglected, each being adorned by an ostrich plume a foot high. Londoners a dozen deep lined the streets to cheer him. Men huzzahed, while young ewes shouted proposals of marriage, which he acknowledged with the wave of his lamb gloves. 

At Seymour Place, we halted for a final bub at Mason Arms. Provided you have shown neither tears nor contrition, the crowd, who’ve come to witness your death, will tog you with beer and rum at the Mason; even the Marshall’s javelin men might sport you a glass. 

This was the last stop—except for a brief pause, when ladies in dark satin presented Crispin with nosegays. Drunk as a wheelbarrow, he extruded his person out his carriage window, bowing to all.

XII.

We halted at the base of the scaffold. Our ropes had been placed around our necks back at Newgate, because noosing prisoners near the scaffold bestirs the people. Old women peddled broadsheets printed with the “last words” none of us had spoken; girls sold ginger cakes; sprites gawked atop their fathers’ shoulders. Strangers reached into our tumbril to bid us farewell. Sitting atop a beam, the hangman Ezekiel Hancock looked down on us, a smoldering pipe in his mouth.

Molly, the boy, and I were ordered to rise. Our coffins were taken away to make room for Lovett and Crispin, as well as the treasoner Maw, who’d walked the entire route, spurred by a whip. His back was a mess of jellied flesh, too frozen to bleed. Rev. Potts descended from his private carriage and urged us in psalmly songs and final confessions. The boy made a loud recitation of the Our Father; Potts then announced to the crowd, “For his wickedness, Adam Busick has resolved himself to death; and though his sins be scarlet, he trusts in his Savior Jesus Christ, to make them as white as snow.” 

“You’ll sooner get milk from a pigeon than contrition from me, you bastard cushion thumpers,” Maw yelled.

When Abraham Teague, the hangman’s assistant, who resembled death’s head on a mop, checked the noose around Molly’s neck, an orange rolled out from her garment—a gift that morning from Crispin to divert her sorrow (a common Englishman is lucky to see one in a lifetime). Hancock jumped down, examined the fruit with a smile, then with a dagger, cut a section and held it to Molly’s lips, for her hands were bound. But she turned her head like Christ the vinegar’d sponge, and he flicked it into the crowd. 

Lovett, entitled to address his well-wishers, delivered a last morsel of sophistry, his dewy eyes  aimed at the Bread-and-Butter Crowd who’d paid a quid each for a good view from second-story windows.  

 “Look into the Holy Scriptures! Are thieves not beloved of God? Did not the Children of Israel, coming up from Egypt, ransack the Pharaoh’s jewels and plate?! Did not Christ himself, upon this very earth, take an ass not his own to ride into Jerusalem …” 

As the fool babbled, I said, “Mr. Hancock, a word with you, Sir. Take what is in my pocket. I want the girl decently buried—not thrown to the surgeons.”

He removed a ring, which that cod-headed brother of mine, Samuel, gave me at the time of his arrest. He’d eased it from a Welsh nobleman while rowing for my Father.

Sam told me, “Sconce it up your feak if you must, dear Brother. Just keep it for me.” 

The Hangman studied the bauble. He leaned in: “Good, and done, lad.”

The crowd heard enough of Lovett. Mud rained down on him. 

“Enough pattering!” yelled the people. “Get on with the drop!”

XIII.

We were hooded in white caps. The crowd went silent after the command, “Hats off!” 

A terrible quiet descended, as if God himself had muted the seas and birds and the breath of every watcher. At a nod, the horses would be struck and our tumbril jolt forward, leaving us to dance upon air; followed by the fight for our flesh; then all will gambol off for a drink and wake up tomorrow as if it’s the Starting Day.

XIII.

“Stop! Do not touch the horses! Halt!” 

Our caps were yanked off. Three men with pikes were escorting a messenger to the Mare. The hangman snatched a document from his hands. 

“By the balls of St. Joseph!” cried Hancock, disgustedly. “Reprieve?!”

Missiles and filth were hurled at us.

“Mr. Hancock, is it for me?!” chirped Busick. “Please, Sir, is it?!”

“Hold your noise, boy. I shall know in a pinch,” the Hangman grunted, squinting at the paper. He pointed at me. “Him. Un-noose him!” 

Busick howled. “No! No! No! Father in Heaven!”

“Shut your muff or I’ll bloody it!” cried the Hangman. 

My hands were untied.

“No, Teague, you goddamn fool!” shouted Hancock. “He ain’t exactly a freed man. It’s back to the gaol with him!” 

Hancock glared at me like a woman spurned. “I’ll be damned if you’re free! No, His Majesty has granted you passage to the New World. There in chains, you’ll be bid upon and become the slave of a criminal who, like you, cheated death years ago. C’mon, get the bastard out of my sight!”  

XIV.

Teague handed me off to a Constable, but he was in no hurry.

“Stand fast, you. I’ll not miss seeing Lovett dancing the jig,” he growled. “And should you attempt escape, I’ll hoof you till you see Charon and his bloody oar.” 

A young woman shouted, “On with it! Let’s have no humbug this time!”

The crowd agreed.

Molly, Crispin, the boy, Maw, Lovett—all were hooded. 

“Hats off!” 

The horse was whipped; the tumbril leapt; the five dropped. Molly’s neck broke straight away, for she did not jig; the others struggled like fish in St. Peter’s net: a despised hangman; a foundling pickpocket; and a treasoner, whose head would be raised on high for all to fear, like Moses his bronze serpent. 

About the author

James Vescovi's work has appeared in The Hudson Review, Georgetown Review, Newsweek, The New York Times, Saturday Evening Post, Creative Nonfiction, The Other Journal, and other publications. He has also published two books of nonfiction. 

About the illustration

The illustration is  "Scene 1" of the Hyde Park Convict Barracks Mural Project, oil on canvas, by Wayne Haag. In Sydney, Australia.