In the UK there was a tradition of burying criminals and suicides at the crossroads. This may have been due to the crossroads marking the boundaries of the settlement coupled with a desire to bury those outside of the law outside the settlement, or that the many roads would confuse the dead. Crossroads were also commonly used as a place of criminal punishment and execution (e.g. by gibbet or dule tree), which may have also been a reason for it being a site of suicidal burial as suicide was considered a crime. This ritual of crossroads burial dates back to Anglo-Saxon times and continued until being abolished in 1823.