No hope of mercy for last to hang from city gallows

Thomas Stokes was the last person to be hanged from the Oaten Hill gallows, protesting his innocence until his last breath. Michael Steed, right, explores the story behind his uncivilised demise

The gallows at Oaten Hill, Canterbury, fulfilled its grisly role for the final time, 234 years ago this week.

Thomas Stokes died at about a quarter to one on Friday, January 17, 1783, protesting his innocence to his final moment.

The Kentish Gazette of January 18 recorded that he behaved with great decency and fortitude as the cart on which he had been brought from gaol was pulled away, leaving him dangling in front of what it called a great concourse of people. His case, as reported in the Gazette and the Gentleman’s Magazine, was far from straightforward; it seems he was put to death more for insulting a gentleman than for armed robbery.

Oaten Hill is now a rectangular space in three parts – a small triangular public car park, a group of mature trees (including an unusual evergreen holm oak) behind a modern curving brick wall and a stretch of Dover Street running diagonally across the middle.

It is busy today with people walking the main route between south Canterbury and the city centre or using the Old City Bar, which faces onto the car park. The pub was built in the mid-19th century on the site of an older inn, and the space is bounded by two more 19th century buildings – a large house (The Shrubbery) behind the trees and The Oast, now a Christ Church University student house .

However, two other present buildings were already there in 1783, so their upstairs windows would have afforded a grandstand view of Stokes suffocating to death. Opposite the Old City Bar lies an early 18th century white-painted brick-built terrace, while next to the pub is the timber-framed Nethersole House, medieval in style, but probably built around 1620.

I moved into this house in 1989 and soon heard it said that the gallows had stood outside it until 1799. As the putative 1999 bicentenary approached, I researched the gallows history so that the anniversary could be duly celebrated.

Alas, it turned out that the 1799 date was a misreading of a footnote added to the 1825 edition of Gostling’s ‘Walks in & about Canterbury, which recorded a temporary scaffold erected at the Westgate gaol in 1799. As hangings were not so frequent in Canterbury, the bicentenary had passed well before I moved in.

Canterbury used to have its own criminal jurisdiction, but only within a very restricted boundary which did not even include the Cathedral precincts, and it was one of the mayor’s duties to pronounce the death sentence crimes – though he had the Recorder, to tell him

The late Frank Panton – to be found in Kent University’s Templeman Library – on local government in Canterbury, lists 22 death sentences Canterbury between 1737 majority of those sentenced hanged, and most who committed murder. So Stokes put to death, 28 previous hanging at Oaten years before the first at Tower?

Stokes was born in Wingham started work as a brewer’s

Oaten Hill, Canterbury - the gallows here took their last life