1765: Three Burglarious Johns
August 28th, 2013 Meaghan
(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)
On this date in 1765, John Fagan, John Grimes and John Johnson alias Cochran were hanged in Burlington County, New Jersey in a rare triple execution.
The three Johns were convicted of home invasion robbery.
Wrong Three Johns.
On July 18 in Northampton Township, the three men, with their faces painted, burst into the house of Joseph Burr. By “threats of violence” they convinced Burr’s wife to give up her keys to the locked cabinets and made off with the following:
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1 silver sauceboat
8 silver tablespoons
9 silver teaspoons
A sum of money
A considerable quantity of shirts, aprons, caps and handkerchiefs
A great parcel of “wearing apparel made in the manner of people called Quakers”
They also took three valuable horses from Burr’s stable and rode off on them.
Burr and his wife told the authorities they knew the robbers were Irish because “they all had the brogue upon their tongues,” and it turned out three Irish laborers had gone missing from a farm near Mount Holly.
The thieves’ trail was discovered and a posse caught them red-handed, as it were, riding the stolen horses and carrying the stolen goods.
Justice acted quickly and Fagan, Grimes and Johnson were executed a mere six weeks after their crime. The Burlington County Treasury compensated the jailer his expenses in feeding the three men for 39 days.
According to Burlington County this Gallows Hill “stood not far from the Burlington-Mt. Holly Road (Rte. 541)” — perhaps the present-day Laurel Hill Cemetery.
On this day..
- 1955: Emmett Till lynched - 2020
- 1588: Eight Catholics after the defeat of the Spanish Armada - 2019
- 476: Orestes, father of the last Roman Emperor - 2018
- 388: Magnus Maximus, minimized - 2017
- 1628: Edmund Arrowsmith, Catholic priest - 2016
- 1648: Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, royalists - 2015
- 1948: Ragnar Skancke, the last executed in Norway - 2014
- 1987: Dale Selby Pierre, Hi-Fi Murderer - 2012
- 1941: Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Indochina Communist cadre - 2011
- 1793: Adam Philippe, Comte de Custine - 2010
- 1944: Bronislav Kaminski, Waffen SS collaborator - 2009
- Themed Set: Russian Revolutions That Weren't - 2009
- 1807: James McLean, twice - 2008
Entry Filed under: 18th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,England,Execution,Guest Writers,Hanged,New Jersey,Other Voices,Public Executions,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Theft,USA
Tags: 1760s, 1765, august 28, john fagan, john grimes, john johnson
