Michael Curry and William Jobling, two Tyneside murderers (allegedly) and their gibbets

This talk opens with an introduction to gibbetting in England, when, how and why it happened, and how people felt about it. It then focusses on two particular gibbets and their story. The first was made for Michael Curry, who was convicted for the murder of a Hartley pub landlord in 1739, quite likely in the cause of adultery. He gives his name to Curry's Point, Whitley Bay. The second was built in 1832, after the execution of miner William Jobling. He was almost certainly innocent of murder, and his story centres on keeping down the newly-formed miners' unions. The second-to-last man gibbetted in the country, he was quickly removed from Jarrow Slake - but a piece of his gibbet can still be seen today. Photograph: William Jobling's gibbet, or at least part of it, under Creative Commons from "The Technology of the Gibbet", Sarah Tarlow, in International Journal of Historical Archeology, 2014.