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Council remembers convicted murderer whose real crime may have been to go on strike

William Jobling was one of the last people in the UK to suffer the cruel extra penalty of gibbeting, as a new memorial on Tyneside recalls
A depiction of a public hanging in Newgate, circa 1797
Those were not the days, especially if gibbeting followed the gruesome spectacle of execution. A depiction of a public hanging in Newgate, circa 1797. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

It sounds a bit dodgy, a council helping to pay for a memorial to a convicted murderer; but you won't find many objecting on South Tyneside to the sandstone plaque for William Jobling.

He is something of a legend in the area and has been since 1832, the year when the UK's old order finally began to crack with the passing of the Great Reform Act, when the striking miner was one of the last people in the country to be hanged and gibbeted.

The latter was a cruelty to relatives and friends rather than the actual victim, who was dead and no longer aware of the humiliation inflicted on his or her corpse. In Jobling's case, this consisted of being covered in pitch and exposed in an iron cage within sight of the cottage in Jarrow where his widow Isabella was still living.

The Jarrow crusade Jarrow's second most famous moment, after Bede: the march of unemployed workers to London in 1936. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

What had he done to deserve hanging and then this? He was convicted of killing a local magistrate, Nicholas Fairles, at the time of a bitter strike by colliers against the bonding system which tied them to pits for a year and a day. Historians are divided on the details of the incident, and you can read an interesting and detailed account of it in the Jarrow and Hebburn Gazette here.

But although Jobling may have been drunk and driven by poverty to beg in a threatening manner, which the 71-year-old Fairles refused, most students of the case believe that the fatal blow was struck by another miner: Ralph Armstrong, who is thought to have fled in a ship and made a new life overseas.

The stone, unveiled by the Mayor of South Tyneside, Coun Eileen Leask, cost £3000 and is inscribed:

This was the site of The Gaslight public house, formerly The Commercial, one of the oldest pubs in Jarrow. Legend has it that William Jobling, one of the last men in Britain to be executed and then gibbeted, was brought here after his death in 1832 and secretly buried somewhere by his friends and family.

The reference to the pub, also a famous part of local history and lore, would probably mollify those unconvinced of Jobling's innocence, but the council's decision to back the initiative by a former local councillor, Tom Hanson, and the Jarrow Partnership has not run into any controversy.

Coun Jim Perry, who formerly worked as miner at the now defunct Westoe Colliery in South Shields, says:

While we will never know the full truth of the case, I think it's right and proper to commemorate Jobling and the local mining industry in this area.

Another councillor, Alan Smith, who was also at the unveiling, says:

In my mind, there is no doubt that Jobling was made a political scapegoat.

And a third, Ken Stephenson who chairs Jarrow and Boldon community area forum, says:

It's a fitting memorial to both the good days and the not-so-good days of Jarrow's rich heritage.

The final resting place of Jobling's remains remains unknown, but Jarrow and South Tyneside is well worth a visit, especially Bede's World which commemorates the area's most famous historian.

This 16 minute film Jarrow Voices by North Eastern Films from YouTube tells more about William Jobling and the Jarrow Crusade.