The grave of one of the very last people to be sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered is at the Church of the Holy Trinity with St Edmund in Horfield.
John Frost (1784-1877) was one of three men condemned to this medieval punishment, normally reserved for high treason – a serious crime against the king or queen.
Along with William Jones and Zephaniah Williams, Frost was convicted of leading an uprising.
Frost was born in Newport, Monmouthshire. His parents died while he was young and he was brought up by his grandparents. He became a draper’s apprentice and tailor, working in Cardiff, Bristol and London before returning to Newport, where he ran a successful business.
Partly out of conviction, but also because of the corruption of some of Newport’s prominent citizens, Frost became a Chartist. Chartists wanted to reform the political system with demands including secret ballots, the vote for all men over 21, parliamentary constituencies of similar populations, and pay for MPs, so that men of modest means could afford to be elected.
Chartist demands have since been met (though the issue of votes for women doesn’t seem to have arisen at the time), but in the early 19th century, with Britain ruled by an oligarchy of rich men, this was dangerous radicalism.
In November 1839, Frost, Jones and Williams led the “Newport Uprising”, a march of 10,000 or so demonstrators, some of them armed, into the town. It ended in violence, with a detachment of soldiers opening fire on the crowd, killing perhaps 20 people and wounding many more.
Though Frost and his two companions were sentenced to the severest punishment, the likelihood is that they would not have suffered the traditional horrors of being publicly hanged, then cut down while still alive to be disembowelled and castrated. That sort of thing had gone out a century or two previously; they’d probably have just been hanged, then beheaded once they were dead.
They had a great deal of public sympathy and support and good legal representation. Most of all, the government was very nervous about further unrest. The sentences were commuted to transportation to Australia, and Frost was sent to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) where he served two years hard labour for disrespecting the Colonial Secretary before working as a clerk and, later, schoolteacher.
Back home, many people lobbied for the three men to be pardoned. Frost got his unconditional pardon in 1856 and he returned to Britain, settling in Bristol. He lived quietly at Stapleton, though he continued to write articles calling for political reforms until he died, aged 93, in 1877.
At his own request he was buried at Holy Trinity Horfield. In the 1980s the site of his unmarked grave was rediscovered and a new headstone was carved, and unveiled in October 1986 by Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.
Following Chartist tradition, he placed a single red rose on the stone.
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