A ‘revolting deed of darkness’ 

On 10 August 1832 the Leicester bookbinder James Cook was hanged outside the County Gaol for the murder of John Paas of London, before a crowd of around 40,000 people. Paas, who made decorative bookbinding tools, visited Cook in May that year on business, and was struck dead with a press pin during a dispute about payment. Parts of his dismembered body were discovered in Cook’s workshop in Wellington Street after neighbours were ‘alarmed by the appearance of a light through the window’. They broke down the door and found what appeared to be a piece of meat on a large coal fire.

‘Intense excitement’

This was identified by surgeons as human flesh, a discovery that caused ‘intense excitement’ in and around the town. In the meantime Cook had fled, but was captured in Liverpool in an attempt to leave the country. During his time in gaol awaiting trial he was said to have repented his crime, declaring that ‘after he had struck the fatal blow, he would have given worlds to have recalled it’. At his trial on 8 August, at which he was said to show ‘the greatest self-possession’, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death by hanging.

An illustration of James Cook, left (British Museum) and a gibbet, right.

‘To be hung in chains’ 

The judge ordered Cook’s body to be ‘hung in chains’ after his execution, saying there ‘never was one greater atrocity… than to cut that poor Gentleman into pieces’. The gibbet built for the purpose was 33 ft in height, and set up at the junction of Saffron Lane and Aylestone Road. Around 20,000 people were said to have viewed the body, but following objections to this ‘barbarous custom’ and fears of public disorder it was taken down after three days on the orders of the government. Cook was the last person to be gibbeted before the practice was abolished in 1834.