The Gibbeting of John Keal

An act of 1752 ordered that the bodies of executed criminals had either to be handed over to surgeons for dissection of “hung in irons”. The latter involved the construction of an elaborate metal cage in which the body, having first been coated in pitch to prevent early decomposition, was publicly displayed, usually at a cross- roads or roadside close to the scène of the crime. The grisly spectacle of some local miscreant hanging by the roadside, with birds pecking at sightless eyes, was meant to serve as a powerful deterrent to those tempted by a life of crime. However, this macabre practice, formally referred to as “hanging in chains”, had been an unofficial form of punishment in Britain for hundreds of years prior to the act. Evidence of gibbets have long since disappeared from our highways and byways, but in some locations it is still possible to find evidence pertaining to this grisly practice. At Normanby by Spital, a tree still standing by the roadside was said to have been used to gibbet dead criminals. When a post was erected for this grisly purpose at a farm still known today as “Gibbet Post Farm” the irons from the tree are said to have been taken down and used in the construction of the nearby Pillford Bridge.