Broughton Lane, close to Sheffield Arena, holds a dark secret. It is named after a mail robber called Spence Broughton, thought to be the last man to be gibbeted in Yorkshire.

In the bloodthirsty age of the eighteenth century, the gibbet was the usual punishment for convicted murderers. After being hanged, the felon's body faced further humiliation by being suspended in a gibbet, a open cage-like structure, where it was left to the mercy of the elements and, no doubt, a few hundred onlookers who had turned out for the occasion.

Lincolnshire born Broughton started out as a farmer but a gambling habit caused him to leave his wife and family for the cock-fighting scenes of Sheffield, Grantham and Derby. Here he met John Oxley and in February 1791 the pair conspired to rob the Sheffield to Rotherham mail.

During the robbery, at Ickles near Attercliffe Common, Broughton and Oxley stole the post boy's mailbag, but the only item of value was a French bill of exchange for £123 from a London merchant. Legend has it that the hapless robbers had to use a French dictionary to find out how to cash the bill.

The pair were arrested the following October in London. Broughton was sent to Newgate Prison but Oxley was taken to Clerkenwell where he managed to escape, leaving Broughton to face the music alone. At Broughton's trial, in York, Mr. Justice Buller passed the death sentence and asked that the body be suspended in a gibbet.

Broughton was hanged on April 14, 1792. It is said that while on the scaffold Broughton asked onlookers to pray for his soul and remarked that his sentence was just. Two days later his body arrived in Sheffield and was put in its gibbet on Attercliffe Common.

It is estimated that 40,000 people visited the common on that day to look at the gruesome spectacle. By 1817 (25 years later!) Broughton's tattered clothes and bones were still visible. The gibbet was not taken down until 1827 when the owner of the field where it stood complained of over enthusiastic sightseers trespassing on his property.

And what of Broughton's accomplice, John Oxley, who escaped without trial? It seems he also met a sticky end - his body was discovered on Sheffield's Loxley Moor in January 1793.

Photograph of Spence Broughton courtesy of Sheffield Libraries.