The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

Two Executioners and a Doctor

Once upon a time, hanging was the punishment for almost any crime. Even the great Elizabethan poet Ben Jonson, for the trivial offence of murder, was sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted when Jonson proved that he could read and thus got Benefit of the Clergy. Instead of being executed, he had a T branded on his thumb and was sent home with a warning.

The T stood for Tyburn, which is where the hangings used to take place. We even know the name of the man who would have hanged Ben Jonson: he was called Thomas Derrick.

Thomas Derrick was a nasty man. There hadn’t been enough applicants for the role of executioner and so the Earl of Essex pardoned a rapist on condition that he would take on the job. That rapist was Derrick.

Derrick was a bad man and a good executioner. The two are probably connected. In fact, Derrick was something of an innovator. Rather than just slinging the rope over the beam, he invented a complicated system of ropes and pulleys, and it was by this method that he, in 1601, executed the Earl of Essex.

There’s a moral in that, but I haven’t the foggiest notion what it is – and the ethics get more complicated when you consider that Derrick’s name survives and Essex’s doesn’t. The rope system he invented started to be used for loading and unloading goods down at the docks and that’s why modern cranes still have a derrick. It’s named after a rapist and executioner. There’s no justice in this world: look at Jack Robinson.

There are three main theories on why things happen before you can say Jack Robinson. The first is that Robinson used to be the French term for an umbrella (because of Robinson Crusoe, in which the hero has an umbrella and very little else), and that French servants were usually called Jacques. This meant that when rich Frenchmen visited England and were surprised by the inevitable shower of rain, they would shout, ‘Jacques, robinson!’ There is, though, no evidence for this theory at all.

The second theory is that there was an eccentric fellow in early nineteenth-century London who would walk out of parties without warning, often before you could even say his name, which was Jack Robinson. However, there’s no contemporary evidence for this strange Jack Robinson’s existence, so the second theory looks as dicey as the first.

The third and most plausible theory is that the phrase comes from Sir John Robinson, who definitely existed and was constable of the Tower of London from 1660 to 1679. He was therefore in charge of executions and was a stickler for efficiency rather than solemnity. The prisoner was marched out, put on the block and shortened without any opportunity for famous last words or blubbering. He didn’t even have the time to appeal to the overseer of the execution. He was beheaded before he could say Jack Robinson.

So derricks and brief spans of time were both named after cruel and psychotic executioners. The guillotine, on the other hand, was named after a jolly nice chap.

Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin had nothing whatsoever to do with the invention of the guillotine. In fact, so far as anybody can tell, he was against the death penalty. Nobody is sure who designed the first modern guillotine, but we know that it was built by a German harpsichord-maker called Tobias Schmidt.

It was Guillotin’s kindness that got the machine named after him. You see, in pre-revolution France poor people were hanged, whereas nobles had the right to be beheaded, which was considered less painful (although it’s uncertain how they worked that out). So when the poor of France rose in revolution, one of their key demands was the right to be decapitated.

Dr Guillotin was on the committee for reforming executions. He decided that hanging was horrid and that axes were inefficient. However, a newfangled mechanism from Germany was, probably, the least painful and most humane method available. If there had to be executions, it was best that they were done with this new device. He recommended it.

In the debate that followed, on 1 December 1789, Dr Guillotin made one silly remark: ‘Avec ma machine,’ he said, ‘je vous fais sauter la tête d’un coup-d’oeil, et vous ne souffrez point.’ (‘With my machine, I cut off your head in the twinkling of an eye, and you never feel it.’)

The Parisians loved this line. They thought it was hilarious. In fact, they composed a comic song about it. And thus Dr Guillotin’s name was attached to one of the most famous methods of execution. Thomas Derrick and Jack Robinson were both sadistic, heartless thugs, whose names live on in innocence, if not glory. Poor Dr Guillotin’s family were so embarrassed that they had to change their surname. There’s no justice.

And sometimes with these eponymous inventions it can be hard to work out which came first, the word or the man. This is the case with Thomas Crapper, who invented the crapper.