The Gruesome Gibbets of Newfoundland

Gibbet Hill on Signal Hill was named after the wooden scaffold that hung a contraption called a gibbet. Basically, it was a cage used to display the corpses of executed criminals. 

It was reserved for the worst criminals, and believe me when I tell you, it was a fate worse than death. 

Once an executed convict was hanged and cut down from the gallows, the process started. The body was wrapped in chains or caged and taken to a prominent location, often close to the site of the crime, hoisted high above the ground, and hung on the gibbet for all to see. It could remain there for years. They even tarred some criminals to slow decomposition.

Our great-grandparents did not take crap from anyone.

The chains were to prevent people, often the loved ones of the deceased, from removing the body and giving it a decent burial.

It was a cruel practice. Family members, already stigmatized by their relation to a criminal, had to endure watching the body of a family member be mocked as it decomposed before their very eyes.

The first known use of a gibbet in Newfoundland was near the base of Prescott Street, in St. John’s.

It was in 1754. William Keen was an elderly man and was known to keep money in his house.

Eight men and one woman conspired to rob him. The woman knew exactly where Keen kept the cash. Poor old Mr. Keen was asleep when the robbers broke in. They carried muskets and curved blades.

The woman, disguised as a man, broke in with the others, and a few kept an eye outside.

Carrying a single candle, they crept slowly toward the Keens’ bedroom. But Keen was awake. He’d heard them! He called out. They knew he had to be silenced immediately. The candle went out. They panicked and rushed him. One robber slashed him with the blades, and another smashed the musket handle into Keen’s skull.

It was the killing blow.

All nine of the robbers were convicted and sentenced to hang. Two of them, a male and the lone female, were to be hanged in chains from a gibbet.

The scaffold was set up near the base of Prescott Street, and the corpses were hanged, with the hope that the people of Newfoundland would never again dare such an audacious crime.

It didn’t work, of course, and the gibbet was called into use again and again.

In 1759, the gibbet was relocated to Gibbet Hill on Signal Hill and was torn down in 1796 to make room for new buildings. But Newfoundland was not done with gibbeting, though. It went on for years after that.

The Gibbets have been gone for a few hundred years, and the sites on which they stood still carry their name. Both St. John’s and Harbour Grace have a Gibbet Hill.

Nowadays, they are walking trails. Just be wary of any ghosts of the gibbet!