Gallows a broken neck rather than through strangulation, especially if extra weights were fixed to their ankles. During the era of public execution in London, England, a prominent gallows stood at Tyburn, on what is now Marble Arch. Later executions occurred outside Newgate Prison, where the Old Bailey now stands. Gallows A gallows (or scaffold) is a frame, typically wooden, from which objects can be hung or “weighed.” Gallows were thus widely used for public weighing scales for large objects such as sacks of grain or minerals, usually positioned in markets or toll gates. The term was also used for a
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey painting. The figures play their parts like actors through the expressions and gestures of grief and despair of the two women, the almost fatherly tenderness with which the Lieutenant of the Tower assists the blindfolded girl to take up the required position and the displeasure in the face of the executioner at the task that confronts him. Other narrative details include the rings on the block with the ropes which lash it steady to the floor, and the well-honed but well-worn edge to the axe. Kenyon points out that the clean straw, commonly placed near the site of an execution