subs. (old).—The place of execution for Middlesex to 1783: after which the death penalty was enforced at Newgate till the demolition of the prison in 1903. The Tyburn gallows stood in the angle formed by the Edgware Road and Oxford Street. In 1778 this was two miles out of London. Hence TYBURN-BLOSSOM = a young thief: ‘who in time will ripen into fruit borne by the deadly never-green’ (GROSE); TYBURN-CHECK (PICKADILL, TIFFANY, or TIPPET) = a rope, a halter: TYBURN-TIPPET, ‘rather obsolete in 1822’ (EGAN); TYBURN-FAIR (-JIG, -SHOW, or -STRETCH) = a hanging; TYBURN-FACE = a hangdog look; TYBURN-TICKET = an exemption (under 10 & 11 Will. III., c. 23, § 2) to prosecutors who had secured a capital conviction: it released ‘from all manner of parish and ward offices within the parish wherein such felony was committed’: the Act was repealed in 1818: TYBURN-TICKETS were transferable, and often sold for a high price [see Notes and Queries (2nd ser., xi. 395, 437)]; TYBURN-TREE = the gallows; TO PREACH AT TYBURN-CROSS (FETCH A TYBURN STRETCH, DANCE A TYBURN HORNPIPE ON NOTHING, THE PADDINGTON-FRISK, etc.) = to be hanged; TYBURN-SPECTACLES = the cap pulled over the face of a criminal before execution; and so forth. See LADDER and TREE.
[1377. LANGLAND, Piers Plowman [E.E.T.S.], 115. Here occurs a reference to the hangman of TYBORNE.]
c. 1515. Cocke Lorell’s Bote (Percy Society), 11. TYBURNE COLLOPES and penny pryckers.
1549. LATIMER, Sermons before Edward VI., ii. He should have had a TYBURN TIPPET, a halfpenny halter, and all such proud prelates. Ibid., 5 f. 63 b. There lacks a fourth thing to make up the messe which, so God help me, if I were judge, should be hangum tuum, a TYBURNE TIPPET to take with him.
1557. TUSSER, Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 214.
| Where cocking Dads make sawsie lads, | |
| In youth so rage, to beg in age, | |
| Or else to fetch a TIBOURNE STRETCH, | |
| among the rest. |
1576. GASCOIGNE, The Steele Glas, 55. That soldiours sterve, or PRECH AT TIBORNE CROSSE.
1613. ROWLANDS, The Knave of Hearts.
| Never regarding hang-man’s feare, | |
| Till TYBURNE-TIFFANY he weare. |
1630. TAYLOR (‘The Water Poet’), Workes, ‘The Praise of Hemp-seed.’ Till they put on a TYBURNE-PICKADILL.
1695. CONGREVE, Love for Love, ii. 7. Has he not a rogue’s face? … He has a damned TYBURN FACE, without the benefit o’ the clergy.
1698. FARQUHAR, Love and a Bottle, ii. 2. Which is best, Mr. Nimblewrist, an easy minuet, or a TYBURN-JIG?
1727. GAY, The Beggar’s Opera, iii. 13, Air 67.
| Since Laws were made for ev’ry Degree, | |
| To curb Vice in others, as well as me, | |
| I wonder we han’t better Company, | |
| Upon TYBURN TREE! |
1827. BULWER-LYTTON, Pelham, lxxxii. The cove … is as pretty a TYBURN BLOSSOM as ever was brought up to ride a horse foaled by an acorn.
1861. Notes and Queries, 2 S. xi. 395. Last week, says the Stamford Mercury of March 27, 1818, a TYBURN-TICKET was sold in Manchester for 280l.
1892. W. C. SYDNEY, England and the English in Eighteenth Century, ii. 285. An execution-day at Tyburn was considered, to all intents and purposes, by the lower classes, as a holiday. TYBURN FAIR was one of the designations by which [it] was known. A ‘hanging-match’ was another.
1903. HYNE, The Filibusters, i. There’s no consolation prize to look for except a platoon or a cable of hempen tow and a TREE.
