Remember to be humble about how small a portion is known compared to what could be known.

Well, good grief!  There is always something new to be learned.

I am increasingly disillusioned with my reach on X, so I am writing about stuff I like: English idioms. From 1188 to 1902 the Old Bailey Crown Court was attached to Newgate Prison.

The condemned men were taken by horse and cart to Tyburn, modern day Marble Arch, to be hung.… pic.twitter.com/b6XKIEKYsb

— David Atherton (@DaveAtherton20) March 13, 2026

His is an interesting observation on the origins of a couple of idioms.

That is not what has shaken me.

Marble Arch is the present day site of the old Tyburn Gallows, London's primary execution spot from 1196 until 1783?

I have lived in England on four occasions totaling six years from the mid 1960's onwards.  I have family there, including in London.  I have spent hundreds, if not thousands of days in London on business and leisure.  My sister had an apartment for a couple of years on Edgware Road not five or ten minutes from Marble Arch.  I have walked, ridden, and driven by Marble Arch thousands of times.  And yes, with tremendous trepidation, I have bicycled the roundabout around Marble Arch on more than one occasion as a teen courier.  

How on earth did I not know that it used to be Tyburn Gallows?

I read voluminously.  Maybe it just got crowded out.

I am no longer a youth.  Maybe I just forgot it.

Both seem unlikely.

My suspicion is that I knew that Marble Arch was the location of executions when I was anywhere up to my late teens but that the name Tyburn did not then have significance to me.  

My knowledge of the historical salience of Tyburn only came later with much deeper reading of English history.  I suspect that at different times I have known that Marble Arch was the site of executions and I must have even known that it used to be Tyburn Gallows but that by the time I focused on Tyburn Gallows from an historical reading perspective, I had forgotten the Marble Arch connection and never reconnected the two facts.  

It is a tissue thin rationale but I'll go with it.  And remember to be humble about how small a portion is known compared to what could be known.