Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree

Tyburn, close to present-day Marble Arch, is synonymous with public hanging--over 50,000 people died there between the twelfth century and 1783. They include Perkin Warbeck, imposter and pretender to the English throne; Elizabeth Barton, the 'Maid of Kent' who denounced Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn; Claude Duval, the handsome, dashing highwayman and the hated Jonathan Wild, London's first 'master criminal'. Some who died at Tyburn were knaves, others just fools. They died bravely or in the last transports of terror. This is a vivid picture of crime and punishment, of social history and of London's murky past.