ABSTRACT
There were notable shifts in the staging of the theatre of the gallows and intense debate about the merits of public punishment in the first half of the nineteenth century, which culminated in the removal of executions from Britain’s scaffolds to behind the country’s prison walls in 1868. The chapter further develops this long-term public bodily punishment narrative by examining the case of Alexander Gillan – the last malefactor hung in chains in Scotland in 1810. The judges decided to stage Gillan’s execution and hang his body in chains upon the spot where he had carried out a brutal murder to act as a stark and lasting reminder of the reward for such an atrocious crime. However, the responses to his exhibited corpse were reflective of the broader increasing reticence towards the prolonged punishment of the body and, in Gillan’s case, its entrenchment within the landscape. The disappearance of the gibbeted body thereafter in Scotland marked an important step towards removing the executed body from public view in 1868.
