A Morbid Tale

Faced with the challenge of something appropriate to the word 'MORBID' I delved into a bit of local history. I sort of knew about it but have found out a lot more, including places relevant to the tale within a stone's throw of 'where I live'!

A Morbid Tale:

The last gibbeting in Buckinghamshire was in Bierton in 1773, when a chimney-sweep from the nearby town of Tring paid the ultimate penalty for murdering a farmer in his own home.

Corbet, a rat-catcher and sweep, was employed in Bierton on the premises (amongst others) of a small farmer, Richard Holt. Holt’s daughter, Mary, had died and when Corbet arrived the farmer was kneeling in prayer. Corbet waited until Holt was asleep before he climbed down the chimney and murdered the man. It is said that traces of blood still remain on the floor of the cottage; this cottage remains a home today although no longer a farm house.

Corbet took various items and left by the door; he did not notice that his dog ran in to the house and was, thus, left behind. The next morning when the milk boy went to his master’s house and got no response, he raised the alarm. When the neighbours got inside they found the little dog which everyone knew belonged to the sweep.

Corbet was tried, found guilty and condemned to death. The local Bierton blacksmith made the ironwork for the hanging and the gibbet was erected in the corner of a field not far from where the murder was committed; there were so many spectators that “the road was impassable for a furlong each side …… from the crowds who came to witness the execution.” The hanging of criminals in irons was eventually banned in 1834.

More than 20 years later, in 1795, a visitor to the Bierton Feast noted,”…the gibbet was still standing, and to the irons was attached a human skull, which was the skull of the man who had committed the murder.”

Not surprisingly, the local people did not like walking past the gibbet with its grisly reminder, and so a temporary carriage-way was created to avoid this; it is still in existence as a footpath. Also, the lane on the western boundary of the gibbet’s location is known as Gib Lane - a permanent reminder of the morbid event.
The last remains of the gibbet, by that time being used as a gate post, were taken down in 1860 and bought by a local carpenter who intended making it into ‘various fancy articles’. So maybe someone, somewhere still has a remnant of the Bierton gibbet!