Execution and Confession of Robert Marley For the Murder of Cope

Execution broadside printed with an account of the crimes, trial and execution of Robert Marley convicted of the murder of Richard Cope. Marley, a deserter from the military murdered the victim by attacking him with a life preserver during the attempted robbery of a jeweller's shop in Parliament Street where Cope was the manager. The broadside is printed with a woodcut engraving of the gallows and also includes a summary of the crime in verse. Marley had been transported to Australia in 1853 and had only just returned to London when he committed the murder for which he was publicly executed outside Newgate Prison on Monday, December 15th, 1856 before 'an unusually large concourse of persons.'

Until 1868 public hangings were a popular form of entertainment for the London crowd. Such occasions provided an opportunity for cheap printers and street vendors to 'turn a penny on the street' by selling accounts of the crimes, trial and 'dying speeches' of executed criminals as souvenirs to the baying spectactors. As soon as the trap fell the street vendors began running amongst the crowd selling the broadsides. Execution broadsides were published by a small number of printers many of whom, such as Thomas Birt, James Catnach and James Pitts were based around the Seven Dials area of London. Spelling and grammar was often poor and the details not always accurate. As the broadsides were printed between the end of the trial and the date of the execution (usually a gap of a few weeks) they were often published for condemned prisoners who were subsequently reprieved through royal pardons.The printers often used battered woodcuts, and, for the gallows scene used a stock block with a pierced central section to allow the sex and required number of hanging figures to be changed as required. Female criminals were depicted by using a block for a male figure, cut square at the knee to represent a skirt.