26th May 1868: the last public execution in England
On this day in 1868 the last public execution in England was carried out. Michael Barrett, an Irish Fenian nationalist, had been convicted of murdering twelve people; he had been attempting to free one of his comrades from the Clerkenwell House of Detention on 13th December 1867 by blowing up the prison wall using gunpowder, but the explosion was too powerful and took down several neighbouring houses. Barrett was hanged outside Newgate Prison in front of a crowd of two thousand spectators - many of whom would have caught the Underground to watch the execution, which had opened just five years prior.
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