Speakers' Corner

Abstract

Speakers' Corner is located in the northeast corner of Hyde Park, London. This entry shows that its origins lie in Tyburn hanging tree, which, in early modern England, was also situated in the northeast corner of Hyde Park. Interestingly, many onlookers in the Tyburn crowd frequently rioted in favor of the condemned body, seeing the hanging spectacle as unjust. Tyburn therefore carved out a public space at Hyde Park for regular debate and discussion. While Tyburn was disbanded by 1783, nineteenth‐century social and political movements, for example Chartism, used this public space for radical forms of free speech. In 1872 the government passed the Parks Regulation Act, allowing people the right of “public address” in Hyde Park. Subsequent activists in the twentieth century subverted the meaning of “public address” by making it refer to a more inclusive and populist place for free speech, which gradually became known as Speakers' Corner.