 Writing in 1834 John William Parker, publisher of "The Saturday Magazine", suggested that the gibbet might have remained in use for longer in Halifax had the bailiff not been warned that if he used it again he would be "called to public account for it".Midgley comments that the final executions "were by some persons in that age, judged to be too severe; thence came it to pass, that the gibbet, and the customary law, for the forest of Hardwick, got its suspension".Oliver Cromwell finally ended the exercise of Halifax Gibbet Law.