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William Hogarth's The Idle 'Prentice Executed at Tyburn.
(London, September 30, 1747)
In the eighteenth-century, hangings were popular events which could bring as many as 50,000 spectators. This print shows an execution attended by a mob. In the cart with the condemned man are his coffin and a demonstrative Methodist preacher whose exhortations seem to have reformed him at the last minute.
On the gallows' top a hangman smokes his pipe nonchalantly. In the stands a pigeon is released to signal the cart's approach. A company of guards follows the cart. At each side of the scene outside the picture hang skeletons suspended by pins driven into their skulls.
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