Elizabeth Kathleen Mitchell

72 pages, 9 1/2 x 10 1/2”, 38 illustrations; 1999

ISBN 1-891771-08-6 (paper) $16

Although it may seem incongruous from a 20th - century perspective, in early modern England public executions were as popular an amusement as pleasure gardens, fairs, and theater extravaganzas. Art, performance, and capital punishment blended irreverently in grisly spectacles staged northwest of London at the three-sided gallows known as Tyburn. William Hogarth (1697–1764) fleshed out numerous prints with references to criminal culture and the highly dramatic rituals that accompanied executions. Accused criminals had been executed at established and improvised sites throughout England, but the name Tyburn was synonymous with hanging during the 18th century.

Given Hogarth’s interest in manners and urban life, it is no surprise that he peppered his prints with references to crime and execution. The intricate plot lines embedded in his images played with a threefold understanding of execution as sanctioned by Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary of the English Language: as performance, as death imposed by official order, and as the process of following a plan through to its proper end. These three definitions entangle in Hogarth’s representations of deviant behavior and capital punishment.

The catalogue includes three essays, 42 catalogue entries, an index, and a bibliography, and are of particular interest to those interested in early modern England, 18th-century English art, social history, criminal culture, and gender studies.

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