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    Dover's Place of Execution:

    "The buildings on the upper part of the west side of High Street are comparatively modern. In the 18th and the early part of the 19th centuries, on the rising ground at the upper corner, facing Bridge Street, was the place of execution of the condemned felons of Dover and its Liberties. Those executions were of frequent occurrences and were very sad and revolting scenes. The central object was a poor, unfortunate person conveyed in a cart, with a coffin beside him ready to receive his body, and the Chaplain of the Corporation imparted last words of counsel and comfort to his soul. The cart so laden was surrounded and followed by an excited mob, on whom the object-lesson was supposed to have a moral effect, although often it was quite the contrary. The hanging took place on the highground on the left entrance to Tower Hamlets Road, and the windows of the Black Horse Tavern, at the opposite corner of Tower Hamlets Road, offered a point of vantage to sightseers who did not care to jostle with the crowd.

    Amongst the executions which took place there in the early part of the 19th century, before the Municipal Reform put an end to them, were Turmain on the 8th March 1813; two men for forgery on the Margate Bank, 27th November 1817; Alexander Spence, for shooting an officer of the Coastguard, Friday 9 August 1822, and a young man for robbery at Margate in 1823 was the last person executed there."
    (Dover - by J. Bavington Jones, publ. by the Dover Express, 1907)

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    "The skeleton discovered at X-road at top of High Street is supposed to be that of SPENCE, a soldier, who was executed at the Toll Bar, Bridge Street, for shooting Lieut. GRAHAM at the Western Heights. He was the last man to be executed there. " (Dover Express 14.4.1888 p.4 col.6, and see Dover Express 28.4.1882 p.5 col.4),
    also see Dover Express 31.4.1882 p.5 col.2 "could NOT be Spence")

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