[MIDGLEY, Samuel].

Halifax, and its Gibbet-Law placed in a true Light. Together with a Description of the Town, the Nature of the Soil, the Temper and Disposition of the People, the Antiquity of its Customary Law, and the Reasonableness thereof. With an Account of the Gentry, and other Eminent Persons, born and inhabiting within the said Town, and the Liberties thereof. With many other Matters and Things of great Remark, never before Publish'd. To which are added, the Unparallel'd Tragedies committed by Sir John Eland, of Eland, and his Grand Antagonists.

Halifax, P. Darney for John Bentley, [1761]. Two parts in one vol., small 8vo, pp. [iv], 95, [1] blank; with a frontispiece depicting the town and its gibbet; divisional title ‘Revenge upon Revenge: or, an Historical Narrative of the Tragical Practices of Sir John Eland’, whence the date, after p. 58; browned throughout, with paper repairs to a few leaves, text unaffected; contemporary full tree calf, rebacked, raised bands, spine lettered gilt. Second edition; ‘the real author of this volume was Dr S[amuel] Midgley, a physician, who wrote it while in Halifax jail, for debt, where he died, 1695. His poverty prevented him from printing it, and William Bentl[e]y claimed the honor of writing the work after Midgley’s death’ (Marvin), publishing the text in 1708 with his own additions and signing the dedication to the Duke of Leeds.According to Sweet & Maxwell, ‘the Halifax Gibbet-law is an institution which throws light on the nature of trial by jury in its earliest form’. Walker defines the Law as ‘a right, probably a survival of the right of infangtheft, or possibly derived from a forgotten royal grant, held by the Burgesses of Halifax, to execute anyone taken within the liberty of Halifax found guilty of the theft of the value more than 13 pence. The execution was carried out on a hill outside the town by decapitation with an instrument resembling a guillotine’ (Oxford Companion to Law, p. 550). The victim could save himself from death, however, if he succeeded in escaping during the execution process, and get over the Hebble Brook, a small river which marks the Parish boundary of Halifax. The first instance of its use was in 1286, thereby arguably making it the first guillotine device in history. It was used for the last time in 1650 and receives mention by Daniel Defoe in A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain (1724–27): ‘The force of this engine is so strong, the head of the axe being loaded with a weight of lead to make it fall heavy, and the execution so secure, that it takes away all possibility of its failing to cut off the head.’Marvin, p. 512; see Sweet & Maxwell I, 238 for the first edition.

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