Arrest and Execution
George Lyon was 54 when he was executed in Lancaster by hanging for robbery, as the last Highwayman to be hanged there. Sentence was passed on Saturday 8 April 1815 along with two accomplices, Houghton and Bennett.
A fourth accomplice was Edward Ford, who had been working as a painter at Walmsley House, where the last robbery took place and for which Lyon and his accomplices were eventually indicted. Ford had suggested robbing the house to Lyon, and had himself taken part in some 17 previous robberies, but because he turned King's evidence he was spared the capital sentence. The execution of Lyon, Houghton, and Bennett, took place just before noon on Saturday 22 April 1815 - the year of the Battle of Waterloo.
All capital sentences passed that day were commuted, except for the Upholland trio of Lyon, Houghton and Bennett, and two others, Moses Owen for horse stealing, and John Warburton for "highway robbery".
After his death Lyon's body was handed over to Simon Washington, landlord of The Old Dog Inn in Upholland, and a companion, for its return to Upholland for burial (the inn building still stands on Alma Hill in the village). Lyon had not wanted his body left at Lancaster as it would have been handed over to surgeons for dissection as was the normal procedure with the bodies of executed criminals. In a letter to his wife written on 14 April (with the aid of the prison chaplain, the Reverend Cowley), he implored her to arrange for his body to be returned home.
As the cart approached the final part of its journey, a huge crowd was observed moving off from Orrell Post near Upholland in the direction of Gathurst, to observe the return of Lyon's body. When word came through that the cortege was instead passing through nearby Wrightington and heading for the road through Appley Bridge instead, the crowd rushed across the fields from the Gathurst Bridge which still spans the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, to meet the cart at Dangerous Corner, and then followed it in procession through Appley Bridge, and up the climb through Roby Mill, until it eventually reached Parliament Street in Upholland, and the last few hundred yards to The Old Dog Inn, where Lyon's body was laid out in the landlady's best parlour overnight.
Hundreds of people gathered outside the pub the next day, and even climbed onto the roofs of adjoining buildings, to see the coffin as it was taken for burial to St. Thomas's churchyard in Upholland on Sunday 23 April 1815. George Lyon was buried in his daughter's grave (not, as is traditionally believed, that of his mother or grandmother), the inscription simply reads "Nanny Lyon, Died 17th April 1804". His name is not recorded on the stone.
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Lyons,George |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 1761 |
| Place of birth | |
| Date of death | 22 April 1815 |
| Place of death | |
Read more about this topic: George Lyon (highwayman)
Famous quotes containing the words arrest and/or execution:
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)