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Oliver Cromwell’s head

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The posthumous execution

After the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 under Charles’s son, King Charles II, nine surviving regicides who had participated in the trial and execution of Charles I were tried, convicted and sentenced to be dragged through the streets, hung by the neck and cut down live, disembowelled while alive, beheaded and dismembered.

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In addition, Charles II’s new Parliament ordered the disinterment from Westminster Abbey and theposthumous execution of the deceased regicides Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton. On the morning of 30 January 1661, the anniversary of the execution of King Charles I, the corpeses were dragged through the streets of London, hung in full public view, beheaded and buried in a common pit. oliver_cromwells_head_005_skull

The heads were placed on a wooden spike on a 6 metres pole, and raised above Westminster Hall. Cromwell’s head remained there until the late 1680s when a storm broke the pole throwing it to the ground. After then, it was in the hands of private collectors and museum owners until 25 March 1960, when it was finally buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge.

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Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of London

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The demon barber of Fleet Street

According to legend which first appeared in 1846 in a story titled The String of Pearls, Sweeney Todd was a barber believed to have murdered more than 150 of his customers at his barber shop situated at number 186 Fleet Street. Once they were sat in his barber’s chair, he cut his victims throats from ear to ear and dispatched them by pulling a lever which made them fall backward down a revolving trapdoor into the basement of his shop where he stealed all their valuables.

Helped by his lover Mrs Lovett, who ran a pie shop in nearby Bell Yard which was connected to Todd’s barber shop by a secret underground passage, she assisted him in disposing of the bodies by baking their flesh into meat pies and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop.

A String of Pearls or The Friend of Fleet Street (1847), Britannia, Hoxton. Sweeney Toddsweeney_todd 01, Timeline Trip London sweeney_todd_fleet_street_19th_century, A String of Pearls or The Friend of Fleet Street (1847), Britannia, Hoxton. Sweeney Toddsweeney_todd 01, Timeline Trip London

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