Willard and Louis Hazzard are executed at Newgate

The execution of John Francis Willard and Louis Hazzard at Newgate Prison is the public culmination of Washington Black’s long entanglement with Willard, the man who pursued him. Washington goes to witness the hanging rather than accept its reality secondhand. There, as two condemned men are put to death before a crowd, the event brings his private fear and uncertainty into a public ritual—and complicates his belief that sparing Willard had been an act of mercy.

Background and Decision to Attend

By the time the hanging is scheduled, Washington has spent seven months in London. A newspaper reports that two men are to be executed: Louis Hazzard, a Black man convicted of theft and arson, and John Francis Willard, a Scotsman convicted of murdering a free man. The report gives Washington reason to wonder what Willard has done in the months since their earlier encounter: whether he killed someone he mistook for Washington, or attacked another Black man whose freedom offended him. The uncertainty leaves the execution tied not only to Willard’s pursuit, but to the possibility that his violence has reached another victim.

Washington and Tanna decide they must attend. He cannot accept Willard’s death without seeing it himself, though the prospect makes him anxious. The trip is not a detached inquiry: Washington understands the hanging as a possible final scene in the drama that has dominated the previous five years of his life. Tanna travels beside him, holding his hand in the carriage and remaining with him as the crowd closes around them.

The Crowd and the Scaffold

The gathering at Newgate is immense. Washington estimates that at least four hundred people are moving through the mud outside the prison. He and Tanna leave their carriage before reaching the gates and push through a crowd that includes sailors, former slaves, women and children. The children move through the press looking for opportunities to pick pockets. Vendors sell food, and fiddlers cross the low barrier to tune their instruments. The scene has the atmosphere of a public holiday as well as an execution: spectators gather for the spectacle, while the prison and gallows make the state’s power visible at the centre of their attention.

Newgate appears to Washington as a tall, forbidding brick building, with a platform and gallows set before it. The wooden fence around the scaffold is low, while the crowd presses toward the nooses. Guards stand near the structure, but the crowd’s anticipation is not simply solemn. Vendors call out, spectators laugh and hiss, and the ordinary bustle of a gathering accompanies the preparations for death. The contrast makes the execution both a legal punishment and a public performance for which the crowd has assembled.

The Executions

At noon, Hazzard and Willard are led out. Washington sees Hazzard first. The man is unfamiliar, yet his appearance still unsettles Washington, who experiences the sight as a kind of recognition. Willard follows. Washington identifies him by the damaged, sightless eye behind his spectacles and by his fair hair; the prison shirt is described as immaculate. Willard looks exhausted and appears to search the crowd. His presence turns the expected report of a death into a direct confrontation with the person who had hunted Washington.

A young hangman places the prisoners beneath the beam, adjusts the nooses and covers their heads with bags. Before Willard’s face disappears, Washington sees him flinch in fear. A preacher speaks, and the crowd’s jeering grows louder. Washington draws Tanna’s face against his chest so she will not have to watch. The floor drops; the men struggle briefly and then become still. The hangman checks each body, holding the men for two minutes to ensure they are dead. The crowd responds with cheering, laughter and singing, then turns its attention to fights and scuffles among its own members. For Washington, the public event is over, but its conclusion does not bring uncomplicated relief.

Washington’s Reassessment and the Aftermath

Seeing Willard on the scaffold overturns Washington’s account of his own earlier conduct. He had taken pride in not killing Willard when he had the chance, treating that restraint as proof of decency. Now he recognizes that fear, rather than moral certainty, had determined his choice. He also understands that Willard may have wanted Washington to kill him: in Washington’s reading, Willard’s pursuit was bound up with a desire for a death that would confirm his own ideas and make him a martyr. That interpretation does not undo Washington’s earlier refusal, but it changes what he believes the refusal meant. The hanging closes Willard’s ability to pursue him while leaving Washington to reckon with the difference between mercy, fear and the death his enemy may have sought.

The execution also places Willard’s death beside Hazzard’s. The two men stand on the same scaffold, though the reported convictions differ: Hazzard for theft and arson, Willard for murdering a free man. Washington sees an irony in Willard’s death being administered by the law alongside that of another Black man. The shared punishment does not make their situations identical; rather, their juxtaposition sharpens the scene’s racial and legal tensions. The crowd’s response further complicates the ceremony: after witnessing the killings, spectators cheer and sing, then fight among themselves, while a nearby guard appears bored.

As Washington and Tanna remain among the spectators, Washington notices a tall stranger in a bright blue coat and yellow waistcoat, holding a black top hat. For an instant, the figure’s appearance makes Washington believe he has seen Titch. He calls out and pushes through the crowd, but the man turns, revealing a different face. The apparent recognition proves mistaken. Thus the execution’s aftermath offers no reunion or settled ending: after the death Washington came to witness, he is left with another brief, uncertain sighting and the immediate knowledge that the stranger is not Titch.