Where did the "hanging from lamp posts" meme originate?

Factual Questions
1

Googling around I see a few sporadic references of one or two unfortunate people being hanged from a lamp post during the French Revolution. I also see stories that the SS or local Nazi partisan groups in Berlin would use lamp posts as makeshift gallows to discourage desertion and defeatism in the final days before the Soviets moved in.

But I don’t see any historical references to a mob rising up in revolution, pulling bankers or lawmakers out of their offices and stringing them up on lamp posts along the main thoroughfare. But it seems to have become a metaphor or meme or something in online conversations in the recent economic downturn.

So was there any historical or fictional source for this idea?

2

It was referenced in the draft riots of the Civil War, as well.

3

gangs of new york, but it was a racist thing.

4

It was featured in the chorus to one version of Ah, ça ira!, one of the songs of revolutionary France:

Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira
les aristocrates à la lanterne!
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira
les aristocrates on les pendra!
Si on n’ les pend pas
On les rompra
Si on n’ les rompt pas
On les brûlera.
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira
les aristocrates à la lanterne!
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira
les aristocrates on les pendra!

Ah! It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine
aristocrats to the lamp-post
Ah! It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine
the aristocrats, we’ll hang them!
If we don’t hang them
We’ll break them
If we don’t break them
We’ll burn them
Ah! It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine
aristocrats to the lamp-post
Ah! It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine
the aristocrats, we’ll hang them!

5

That’s very interesting, thanks.

6

Incidentally, “La Lanterne” is also the name of a hunting lodge in Versailles used by the prime ministers of France. I seem to remember an anecdote where somebody wishing to see the PM during a crisis was told that “monsieur le Premier Ministre est à La Lanterne.” “Oh, I had no idea the situation was that bad already!”

I couldn’t find any reference to it online, though.

7

You mentioned finding references to “one or two unfortunate people” who met their ends in this manner during the Revolution. I suspect that the “hanging from lamp posts” meme likely originated with the execution of Joseph Foullon de Doué, Controller-General of Finances.

If Foullon’s hanging and subsequent beheading did not drive the creation of a metaphor that persists today, it certainly must’ve contributed to its inherent imagery.

8

IIRC, during the London apprentice boy’s riots in the 1590’s, it was customary to hang looters at the scene of the crime.

9

Wasn’t Mssolini and his GF (Claretta Petacci) killed and hng from a lamppost?
Seems to be a popular fate for unpopular ex-dictators.

10

That particular example was upside down on meathooks.

11

If it was one of my posts that sparked the OP, I got it from Tale of Two Cities. Well, that and the fact that I teach the French Revolution, so I know about de Doué.

12

People were, obviously, first hung from tree limbs.
Later, scaffolds.
Mass executions would create a shortage of both inside a city, ergo streetlamps would be pressed into service.

13

I was thinking of the specific theme or meme or whatever of a popular uprising storming the offices of the elite, carrying them outside and stringing them up specifically from lamp posts. As opposed, say, to shooting them or throwing them out of windows.

14

I was thinking Mussolini but a quick google revealed he was hung from a gas station, not a lamppost.

Lampposts I definitely associate with lynchings such as of African Americans during the US Civil War draft riots.