1816: Philip Street
June 14th, 2016 Headsman
Two centuries ago today, a burglar named Philip Street hanged at London’s Newgate Gaol.
Though his were merely property crimes — which were still capital offenses at the time — Street was such a prolific burglar that the Old Bailey, faced with a stack of seven victims ready to pursue their cases against him, got a death sentence, and then a second for insurance, and paid the remaining five prosecutors to go away.
Street did enjoy some measure of representation: the barrister John Adolphus — whose subsequent representation of the likes of the Cato Street conspirators, John Thurtell and Benjamin Courvoisier all speak better to his prominence than his acumen — mounted the less than compelling technical objection that the court’s documents identified Street’s victim the Earl of Rosebery “as an Esquire, and commonly called a Lord, because in reality he was a Peer of the Realm, and therefore non constat that he an Esquire; and thefore the prisoner could not be convicted on such an indictment” — just the sort of lame cavil that would lead John Stuart Mill to lament in 1820 that “not one-half only but three-fourths at least of [a lawyer’s] business is deception.”
On this day..
- 2000: Qader Aktar Hassan, Anis Qassem Dahnassi and Fatima Yussef al-Din Sayed - 2020
- 1884: Seven anarchists of La Mano Negra - 2019
- 1797: Thomas Starr, penknife murderer - 2018
- Feast Day of Rufinus and Valerius - 2017
- 1662: Sir Henry Vane, Commonwealth parliamentarian - 2015
- 1972: Sanong Phobang, Thanoochai Montriwat, and Jumnian Jantra - 2014
- 1897: Choka Ebin, by his own relatives - 2013
- 2001: Jay Scott, trend-setter - 2012
- 1381: Simon of Sudbury and Robert Hales during Wat Tyler's peasant rebellion - 2011
- 1441: Corrado Trinci, Lord of Foligno - 2010
- 2008: Anandrao Sainu Koram, Naxalite informer - 2009
- 1856: Dr. William Palmer, the Rugeley Poisoner - 2008
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,England,Execution,Hanged,Public Executions,Theft
Tags: 1810s, 1816, john adolphus, june 14, london, philip street
