1782: David Tyrie, the last hanged, drawn, and quartered

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On this date in 1782, a crowd contemporaries pegged at 100,000 mobbed the gruesome public execution of David Tyrie — the last man hanged, drawn, and quartered in British history.

Tyrie was a Scotsman clerking at a Portsmouth naval office, who was caught in a treacherous correspondence with the French. He lacked political pull of his own and either the means or inclination to shop confederates, and therefore faced the full weight of the treason statute.

Said venerable statute, a theatrically bloody relic of the Middle Ages popularized by Edward I for terrorizing malcontent subjects, had persisted for half a millennium or so and in its grisly Tudor efflorescence crowned the careers of saints, terrorists, lovers, fighters, and Shakespeare characters.

Tyrie might have been small time by those standards, but he wore it well this date — “played the man,” in the old parlance — before the throng on Southsea Common.

From the time he was put on the sledge, till be came to the gibbet, he continued in an unconcerned conversation with the gaoler, in which he expressed that he thought there were not three better, sounder, or honester hearts in the kingdom, than his own, which was just going to be burnt. That there was only one thing which gave him concern, which was, that his father was living, and he feared this misfortune would bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. He declined saying a word to the populace, observing, that he knew not why he was to feed or gratify the idle curiosity of the multitude. He never hung his head the whole time. — When arrived at the place of execution, no halter was provided, upon which he smiled, and expressed astonishment as the inattention and neglect of his executioners; and indeed the business would have been retarded for some time, had not a rope and pulley been procured out of a lugger that lay under shore, during which time he read several passages in a bible he carried in his hand. – Before he was drawn up, he delivered a paper, setting forth, that he had authorised no person to publish any account of his life, nor was there any one who knew sufficiently of him to give any genuine particulars of his transactions in the world.

After hanging exactly twenty-two minutes, he was lowered upon the sledge, and the sentence literally put in execution. His head was severed from his body, his heart taken out and burnt, his privities cut off, and his body quartered. He was then put into a coffin, and buried among the pebbles by the sea-side; but no sooner had the officers retired, but the sailors dug up the coffin, took out the body, and cut it in a thousand pieces, every one carrying away a piece of his body to shew their messmates on board. — A more dreadful, affecting execution was perhaps never seen.


Before disemboweling, he was probably stretched out somewhat like David Tyree.

In fact, it was so dreadful (including many injuries in the distasteful rush for souvenirs) that they stopped doing it. Only gradually: Edward Marcus Despard, for instance, was sentenced to drawing and quartering, but they only hanged him to death and cut off his head posthumously. In 1814, that sentence — hanging plus posthumous beheading — formally replaced the old disemboweling-and-quartering bit as the penalty for treason.

(The invaluable CapitalPunishmentUK.org says that one James O’Coigley suffered hanging, drawing, and quartering in 1798 for that year’s Irish Rebellion; however, the Newgate Calendar’s record says that O’Coigley was “merely” hanged and beheaded, like Despard.)

On this day..

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20 thoughts on “1782: David Tyrie, the last hanged, drawn, and quartered”

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  2. THE LAST MAN TO BE HUNG FOR ATTEMPTED MURDER WAS JOSHIA MISTER IN 1841.

    IT WAS A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY. HE INTENDED TO CUT THE THROAT OF A MR LUDLOW, AT “THE ANGEL INN” ,LUDLOW,SHROPSHIRE. BUT A MR WILLIAM MILLER MACKRETH HAD BEEN GIVEN THE ROOM INSTEAD.

    WILLIAM SURVIVED THE ATTACK, BUT MISTER WAS HUNG FOR HIS TROUBLES OUTSIDE SHROPSHIRE JAIL.

    I AM WILLIAM,S GT GT GT GRANDSON. LUCKILY.

  4. only humans would think of such a form of execution – perhaps that’s why there needs to be fewer of us – we’re too arrogant and cruel!

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  6. The medieval executioners were skilled in prelonging the agony..,so as in Braveheart the disemboweling was done whilst the victim was still alive…then the head was off. By the Regency period you were hanged and beheaded and then the executioner effectively mutilated a dead body…that’s progress for you.

  7. The last man to be hung drawn and quartered was Robert Emmet in 1803 on Thomas Street in Dublin.

    • Patrick, I am really glad to have learned about Robert Emmet. he deserves a place of honor alongside Patrick O’Reilly, John Brown, and Che Gueverra.

  8. the correct term for execution by the rope is to be hanged – not hung… the old expression goes, poultry is hung, men are hanged…. this still applies to human beings.

  9. I came here as I saw in an episode of Victoria, the series starring Jenna Coleman as the young Queen, that some chartists were sentenced to this in about 1840. But she commuted it to life transportation. I thought “this can’t be right! surely this was abolished at least a century before.” But, no, the movie may not have been in error. I was shocked to see that it was not abolished until 1870. That it was on the books for so long is an outrage even if it was not fully executed as such

  10. Pingback: David Tyrie last person tortured to death in England

  11. The last man to be hung, drawn and quartered under British rule was an Irish man called Robert Emmet, who suffered this cruel death on the 20th September, 1803 in Dublin city for trying to free his country.

    • Wrong. Emmet was hung until dead then decapitated. The last people to be given the sentence were the Cato St. Conspirators in 1820. All were hung until dead then decapitated. The Age of Enlightenment and the Revolutionary period put an end to mediaeval barabarity throughout Europe at the same time.

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  13. Pingback: ExecutedToday.com » 1676: Joshua Tefft, drawn and quartered in Rhode Island

  14. “Before he was drawn up, he delivered a paper, setting forth, that he had authorised no person to publish any account of his life, nor was there any one who knew sufficiently of him to give any genuine particulars of his transactions in the world.”

    Interesting touch, that he would do a preemptive strike against those ubiquitous “Life and crimes of…” pamphlets.

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