Monthly Archives: November 2016

1759: William Andrew Horne, long-ago incest

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On this date in 1759,* a man hanged at Nottingham for destroying the bastard infant of an incestuous affair … and for his belligerence decades afterwards.

William Andrew Horne, a sybaritic and well-off “bumpkin squire” in the estimation of the Newgate Calendar, had his way with the Nottingham ladies in the early 18th century including two servants of his mother’s and a local farmer’s daughter who we are informed thereafter “died in consequence of her grief.”

Even kin were not immune to the charms of such a ladykiller, and Horne had an affair with his sister that produced a child born in February 1724. Days later, Horne and his brother Charles took the tot out for a midnight ride and abandoned it in a haystack at a country estate. Many years later, Horne would claim that he intended the child be rescued there as a foundling; what actually occurred was that the boy died of exposure from being abandoned in the middle of a winter’s night.

Neither Horne nor Hornier breathed word of the affair thereafter but it seems that the other Horne — that brother Charles — was shocked enough to tell some others, like his father. Practical-minded dad ordered Charles to keep his big mouth shut, as did a local magistrate Charles blabbed to years later — who “said I had better be quiet, as it was of long Standing, and might hang half the Family.” (That’s via this 18th century pamphlet on the case.) But his conscience and an obvious sibling resentment** vis-a-vis brother Bill needled Charles. Over time, the reluctant accomplice revealed the secret rather promiscuously to folks including “John Kessell … Mr. Cook, of Derby … one Septimus Riley, a Tenant of my Brother’s … Mr. John Cooper, of Ripley, as I came back from Derby” and finally, when he feared he might be on his deathbed, to “Mr. John White, of Ripley.”

Though most of these were at a loss to urge action about Charles, all this whispering to the reeds successfully put the rumor abroad — and at long last the story returned to William’s ears, and neck.

In 1758, 34 years and who knows how many brokenhearted lovers after his midnight ride with the family’s shame, William Horne as a crotchety codger of 72 fell into a barroom row over game-hunting with a fellow by the name of Samuel Roe. Roe called Horne “an incestuous old dog,” and the combative Horne retaliated against this public calumniation by taking Roe to court and winning a judgment against him even though Roe’s description was precisely correct.

Roe in his fury tracked the infanticide rumor back to Charles and finally persuaded the vacillator to swear out a warrant. He wasn’t one to let a sleeping incestuous old dog lie.

* The date is frustrating here because I have not been able to locate an original news or trial document that definitively establishes a November 30 execution. I’m going ultimately with the date on the thorough and highly reliable Capital Punishment UK site; the careful reader will have noticed that this post cites a primary document which contradicts it: A genuine account of the life and trial of William Andrew Horne, of Butterly-Hall, in the County of Derby; who was convicted at Nottingham Assizes, August 10, 1759, for the murder of a child in the year 1724, and executed there on the 11th of December, 1759 … (This is also the date that the Newgate Calendar adheres to.)

Two things: first, this account situates the trial on Saturday, August 10 — but August 10 was not a Saturday in 1759. We have credibility issues right out of the gate.

Second, it is noted both in this document and elsewhere that our man got the name William Andrew in honor of his birth on the Feast of St. Andrew, which is Nov. 30. The prisoner “mentioned several Times” that he was to be hanged on his birthday.

This hanging occurred just seven years after England finally switched to the Gregorian calendar, entailing at the time a leap eleven days forward. As one side effect, this leap also created a stratum of “old” feast days that also shifted eleven days to maintain a 365-day distance from their former occasion. The case for December 11 would entail supposing that Horne from 1752 began treating December 11 as his actual birthdate, the “old St. Andrew’s Day”. Did Horne in fact do this? The documents I have seen are far less interested than some guy with an almanac blog would like them to be.

Someone with access to an 18th century database of Nottingham newspapers could probably clear this right up.

** As the oldest son, William inherited all the real estate: that is part of Charles’s pique. Another part is that William was “universally feared and hated” in the words of Edmund Burke’s Annual Register, acted the asshole towards everybody including Charles, and even “though he knew [Charles] was master of such an important secret, would not give the least assistance to him, nor a morsel of bread to his hungry children begging at their uncle’s door.” (William called several witnesses who testified that Charles often complained about his miserly sibling and publicly mused about swearing William’s life away.) It’s a wonder it took Charles so long to find someone to give him the thumbs-up on turning Judas against this lout.

Part of the Themed Set: Sexual Deviance.

On this day..

1740: Edward Shuel, for a Catholic-Protestant marriage

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For today’s post, we’re revisiting one of our favorite troves, James Kelly’s Gallows Speeches From Eighteenth-Century Ireland — for the remarkable story of the minister executed for secretly marrying a Catholic to a Protestant. (We don’t usually think of tragic romance as being tragic for the officiant.)

Though it was hardly commonly enforced in this way — and it’s obvious from these pamphlets that it was the political pull of the groom’s family that doomed our Edward Shuel or Sewell — Ireland indeed had a real Marriage Act that made it a capital crime to officiate an interconfessional wedding, an act that persisted into the 19th century. It was the product of a campaign by to “de-Catholicize” Ireland that also included a wide variety of other encumbrances upon Catholics, and likewise upon Protestants who failed to shun them — such as disenfranchising Protestants with Catholic wives.

This case, scandalous in its own time, inspired Dublin’s rival broadside publishers to churn out multiple scandal sheets to service the appetite of a voracious public.

Edward Shuel, in “his own” words:

The Genuine Declaration of Edward Shuel

a degraded Clergyman of the Church of Ireland, who is to be Executed near St. Stephens Green, this present Saturday being the 29th of this Instant November 1740. For celebrating the Clandestine Marriage of one Mr. Walker a Protestant, to Margaret Talbot a suppos’d Catholick, on Sunday the 16th of August last, at the World’s End near Dublin.

Good Christians,

I might reasonably have expected my Life wou’d have been saved, having obtain’d a Reprieve; but there being a Point of —– Policy strongly against me, to fulfill which I must Resign this Life sooner than Nature or Accident might have otherwise taken it. I must confess tho’ I strove to bear my Sentence with the utmost Resignation and Christian Patience; yet the imbitter’d Reports of my having two Wives tingeing my Character, affected me in some Measure; and in order to clear such infamous and malicious Aspertions which my Enemies (whom the Origin of Heaven and Earth forgive) which I heartily pray for.

To be Concise, I was Born in the North of Ireland, and bred up in the University of Dublin, where I pursued my Studies, and behav’d as became a Student: Having received Orders, I officiated in the Curacy of Carlingford, St. Michans, Christ Church Dublin, and several others Places; where I behav’d as a Gentleman, and suitable to my Function; untill most unfortunately a vile Woman prostituted herself, and seduced me to her dire Embraces; upon which she Reported that I Married my self to her, which is utterly false; and in Order to acquit my self of that Calumny, of Marrying her my self, and fully to extirpate the publick Notion of my having two Wives, I went to Georges Church near Dublin, and there received the Eucharist that I never was Married or Contracted to any Woman under Heaven, but to the Woman now my unhappy Wife, by whom I have two innocent but unfortunate Babes, of which I got a Certificate from the Minister of said Church, which I gave to his Grace _____ which must be acknowledg’d.

The Nature of the Crime for which I am to undergo this most Publick and scandalous Death, is notorious in this Kingdom. The Manner in which I now a poor and unhappy Sufferer was precipitately led into it is, that on the 16th of August last, one Richard Walker came in Disguise in a poor Habit, under the fictitious Name of Wilson, with one Margaret Talbot and another Woman in Company, who intreated me to Marry them: After I had examined them, and swearing them on the Book, who swore they were Protestants; and I believing Richard Wilson as he called himself, to be a Tradesman of no Fortune or Birth, and in his own Power, and I wanting of Support; my Children having not even Bread to Eat that Night, I unfortunately married them ’tis true, for which I received from Wilson Six Shillings and Six Pence.

But had I surmised he had been the Son of the Man he was, or any other Person of Credits Son, I would not for any Consideration have perform’d the Ceremoney, [sic] Nay, I would have sent to the Parents or next Relation and detected him, and at the same time given up the Woman, to the just resentment of the injur’d Parents.

‘Tis true I was degraded and by that Means render’d incapable of supporting an helpless Family; nor was it in my Power to get a Livelihood by Teaching School, for any attempts I made that way which prov’d Abortive, Work either Mechanical or otherwise I was ignorant of; and by my infirmities render’d if capable not to follow it, to beg publickly I was a shame’d, and very well knew the Amount of Charities to Street Beggars, privately I did beg by Petitions to many Persons whose Grants were small, and that but from a very few; and e’en those few wou’d not a second time assist the Wretched, this was my Case; what I then follow’d to support my Family was the Trade as its so call’d of Marrying; but always took care to examine strictly their Religion, Birth, and parentage, avoiding as much as possible to keep out of Disesteen of Families of Credit, so that it might not lie in their Powers to punish me, or to be griev’d at the undoing of their Children.

Yet all this Precaution has not hinder’d my unhappy Exit, which I hope this Calamity of mine, may be a perpetual Bar to others who are after me, who may be drove to the pressing Wants which I have often struggled with, but may God Support them.

O Lord Strengthen me to bear my Misfortunes, bless my Children and be to them a Father, and give them thy Grace, Comfort my Wife, and be to her a Husband, protect my Friends, and forgive my Enemies, and receive me into thy glorious Abode, and that I may this ‘Day sing Praises and Thanksgiving unto thy holy Name, ad infinitum, Amen.

Edward Shuel.

Note. The above was deliv’d to the Printer hereof, in the Presence of Mr. Nelson and several others, in his own Hand Writing, and Word of Mouth.

Dublin: Printed in Montrath-Street, by Chr. Goulding Book-Seller.

The Last and True Speech of Mr. Sewell

a degraded Clergyman, who was executed last Saturday the 29th of November 1740, at St. Stephen’s-Green, for a clandestine Marriage
delivered by him at the Place of Execution

Countrymen and Christians,

It may be thought, perhaps, that the Length of Time given me by the Clemency of the Lords Justice might turn my Thoughts to poor Transitory, Worldly Affairs, I hope thro’ the Merits of Christ I have not been affected so foolishly, for I will not boast, but will humbly hope, I have so numbered my Days as to apply my Heart unto Wisdom, for the Love of the Lord is the Beginning of it. I return to the Chief Governors of Ireland, the only Return I can make, my Thanks and Prayers for their Benignity in extending my shortning Length of Days to the present, in this World unhappy, but in the World, thro’ Christ, in the future, a Blessed Consummation. — Praise be to God on High Peace and Good Will amongst Men.

I am brought forth this Day, as a Precedent and Example to the Marriage Act, as a Sacrifice to its Rigor, the first, and I hope through the Almighty, the last of the kind that shall hereafter be read of in the Annals of the Holy Catholick and Reform’d Protestant Church; nor is it the smallest Pang that I feel in this solemn Anguish of my Spirit that my Memory shall reflect some Disgrace upon my Reverend, Learned and Pious surviving and future Brethern [sic] of the Ministry. Could Worldly Things now amuse or disturb my Mind, I might also be touch’d with a Sense of the Triumph, my unhappy Catastrophe, must give to the Enemies of the Establish’d Religion; but in this, as in all Things else in Heaven and Earth, the Will of the All Powerful and Eternal Father be done, yet let them consider that the Man, the poor weak Man transgress’d and not the Function; let them think that the Transgressor suffer’d, and with his Blood wash’d away Polution [sic] from the Sanctuary. The blessed Twelve should not be blamed for their fallen Member, nor should the Body of the Clergy be reproached for one wretched, sinful, misguided, but thro’ Grace repentant Brother.

Speeches and Declarations are a Custom I know observed by People in my wretched Circumstances; but this has no Influence on me, I only promulgate these few Lines to prevent many gross and ignorant Pieces of Print which may be ascribed to me, when I am past the Power of contradicting such Falshoods. [sic] I am, bless’d be my Saviour, in universal Charity with the World, and therefore neither Bitterness nor Untruth shall fall from me: I am convinced, as my Condition is particular and my self remarkable, the World will be desirous to know what I may say either in defence of myself, or Attenuation of the Crime for which I die; I will therefore briefly go thorough the Heads of my Accusation and Conviction.

I confess that I did solemnize a Marriage between Walker and Talbot, but at the same Time I declare I did not suspect that he was any other than an ordinary working young Man, and not the Son of one of so much Consequence in the City. I had their Oath of Secrecy and an Assurance of their both being of the Protestant Religion, but he appear’d as an Evidence against me; Heaven forgive him and me, and for this Crime I lay down my Life. Were it worth a Moment of my little remaining Time, I might here controvert Margaret Talbot’s Marriage not within the Act, a Point of Law which I did but faintly Urge upon my Tryal: I might have pleaded the Inefficacy of my Degradation, the Indelibility of the Clerical Character, Validity of a Sentence pass’d by a Layman on a Person Canonical, and have spoken to an Appeal which I always apprehended was lodg’d in order to the Subversion of the Sentence of Degredation; [sic] but alas! they are Things below my Notice, for my Mind is above, and perhaps were I to illustrate on these Particulars, it may be construed either Indiscretion or Malice in a Dying Clergyman, and in my last Moments, what ever my past Life may be, I would not give Scandal to the Divine Function.

I acknowledge that I have been a frail weak Man, and that my Transgressions are numberless, and that I have done several unwarrantable and idle Things, inconsistant [sic] with the Character of a Gentleman, a Scholar, and a Divine, but let Man deal with me as I hope to be dealt with by my Heavenly Father, who will thro’ the Merits of Christ cast a Veil over my Sins, and blot out my Transgressions for ever.

I would Recommend to all Parents, with my dying Breath, a Resolution of never forcing the Dispositions of their Children, or thrusting them into a College with a View of the Pulpit, till they, if they are capable, or some Person of sound Judgment shall thoroughly examine if they have such Qualities, and Propensions as may fit them for such Office. On this Rock many Split, too many, and after some Years of Study, they come forth either contemptible for their Ignorance, or abhorr’d for their Vice. But, suppose them never so well endowed for the Ministry, the miserable Provision made for the Inferior Clergy, still more miserable by their Number, and their generally ill-judg’d Early Marriages throws them upon things which after endanger their Bread, and sometimes their Lives, of which I am a wretched Instance.

I beg that my wretched Family may not be Reproached with the Ignominy of my Death, to which I submit with Meekness, Resignation, and Resolution, hopeing [sic] that my Sufferings shall be Sanctified to me, and thro’ this Gulf of Darkness a Passage to Eternal light and Joy thro’ the Merits and Mediations of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to whom, with the Father and Holy Ghost be given all Praise and Worship now and ever more. Amen.

An Hymn
Compos’d by the Reverend Mr. Sewell, while under Sentence in Newgate, and sung by him in the Coach as he went to Execution.

Oh Fountain of Eternal Light!
Oh glorious Lord of Host!
With Mercy view my wretched Plight,
Oh spare me or I’m lost.

Grim Death in all it’s [sic] Horrors dress’d
Is ever in my View,
Where is my Hope, now I’m oppress’d?
My only Hope is You.

Injutious Man has laid the Snare,
I’m fallen, alas, I’m caught,
Man drink my Blood, but Father spare
The Soul thy Son has bought.

And suffer not my Blood to reign
O’er his Posterity,
Oh God wash out the Scarlet Stain
And cleanse both him and me.

From Vengeance turn thy gracious Eye,
And see my throbbing Heart,
That melts at thy Divinity,
And feels and heavenly Smart.

And thou, O Son, who didst sustain
A Cross and shameful Death,
Who suffering more than mortal Pain
Groan’d out thy dying Breath.

Sustain me in the Hour of Death,
In the disgraceful Cart,
And when the Halter stops my Breath,
Save my Immortal Part.

Thou dost not judge like wretched Man,
For shoudst thou be severe
And all the Faults of Mortals scan,
Who cou’d thy Judgments bear.

Receive me Blessed Trinity,
Receive my Soul in Grace,
And in thy Kingdom let me be
When Times and Worlds shall cease.

DUBLIN, Printed by Edward Jones in Dirty-lane.

Part of the Themed Set: Sexual Deviance.

On this day..

1798: Dennis Nugent, for child rape

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Dennis Nugent was hanged on this date in 1798 for raping an eight-year-old girl — a crime whose particulars were so revolting that “The Court ordered that the evidence upon this trial should not be published.”


Bell’s Weekly Messenger, Sept. 23, 1798

Nugent denied committing the crime all the way to the end.

Part of the Themed Set: Sexual Deviance.

On this day..

Themed Set: Sexual Deviance

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We have from time to time in these pages glimpsed the scaffold as the paradoxical junction of death to eros — the “little death” writ large, as when St. Catherine of Siena orgasmically clutched the falling head of a political prisoner. Modernity has half-lost the sense with our medicalized executions, but through most of human history the scaffold has been a site of sheer carnality: spurting blood, clashing flesh, involuntary priapism.

Far more obvious is the propensity of illicit desire to send a person into the clutches of the carnifex in the first place; take, for example, the dozens of crimes on this site alone attributable to love triangles.

Power has always concerned itself deeply with sexuality (and vice versa!), defining and delimiting its forms with the scaffold as an ultimate albeit infrequent guarantor against unauthorized concupiscence. For our next few posts, we’ll meet some people who transgressed the lines in their worlds to their grief.

On this day..

1702: David Myles, incestuous

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Broadside via the National Library of Scotland:

THE LAST
Words and Confession
of
DAVID MYLES

Who was Executed for Incest, at Edinburgh, on the 27 Day of November, 1702.

David Myles, having commited Incest with his Sister Margaret Myles, both were Condemn’d to be Hanged: the Woman upon the Twentieth and the Man upon the twenty Seventh of November; She Dyed very obduredly [sic] and Obstinately, and gave little or no satisfaction to the Spectators; But he (a young man, not 20 years) dyed very Seriously and Christianly; for when he was brought to the place of Execution, Mr. James Heart Exhorted to Repentance, and now at his last Hour to confess, what he had to say, concerning his Crime before the People.

Whereupon he went to the Eastern end of the scaffold, and said, Good People, give ear a while, I now confess before you all, That I was a very bad Liver, and a great Sabbath breaker, and not only a Sabbath breaker, but also a Swearer and Blasphemer of the Holy Name of GOD; and Guilty both of Incest and Fornication. I got a very ill Example from my Parents; Therefore I desire all you that are Parents to give a good Copy to your Children and desire that you would all pray to GOD for me; Whereupon the Auditors cryed out, Lord have Mercy upon his Soul; And Mr. Heart Prayed to this purpose, viz. That God would give him a sight of his Sins, and open a Door of Mercy to him and that the infinit [sic] Goodness might speedily prevent him, &c. Then he sung the first 4 Verses of the 51 Psalm: which being done, he went to the Western end of the Scaffold, and earnestly prayed to GOD, to pardon all his sins, to wash him, and cleanse him from all his Iniquities, thro’ his mercy, and with the Blood of Jesus Christ his Saviour: and that he was unworthy to come before so holy a GOD, for he was a great Sinner and Transgressor: His Sins were great and many, but tho’ he was weary and heavy laden, yet hoped he would find Rest; and tho’ his Body suffered upon the Gibbet, yet he hoped his soul would go to Glory, &c.

Then he went up the Ladder, and weeping sore, entreated the Spectators to take warning by him, and avoid Sin, lest they fall in the same snare. Then he said, O ye that are Parents of Children, God grant ye may cast them a better Copy than ever I got; And all ye that are young folk, who have your Years before your hands, seek God, and fly all Sin, for one Sin brings on another.

O all of you that see me this day, Take warning by me, and put up your petitions to God for me. Then Mr Heart prayed earnestly for him again; who, when be had done, enquired at him if he was willing to dye? He answered, Ay, ay, I am very willing: my Offence is great, very great: I do not deserve nor desire to live, for I deserve both Torment here, and Torment hereafter: I am very weary of my Sins.

Being enquired at, if he thought his Sentence just? or if he pardoned the Judges? He answered, My Sentence is very Just, I forgive the Judges, and all the World, and God forgive them. Mr. Heart asked him, what hope he had of his going to Heaven, or which of the promises of the Bible he could lippen to, or rely upon. He answered, many, many, but the particular places do not Strik [sic] me in the mind, at present.

Mr. Heart said, you told me in prison, of that in the 11 of Matthew, Came unto me all ye that Labour, and are heavy Laden, and I will give you rest. Whereupon he said, I indeed am in Labour, and am heavy laden, but I hope God will give me rest, and receive my Soul in Glory. He confessed again, that he had been a great Sabbath breaker: After which Mr.Heart recommended him to GOD.

A podcast about the trial — and the subsequent dissection — is available from BBC Radio Scotland, here.

Part of the Themed Set: Sexual Deviance.

On this day..

1936: Vladimir Mutnykh, Bolshoi director

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On this date in 1937, the director of Moscow’s famed Bolshoi Theater was shot in the Gulag … even as Uncle Joe mangled his greatest commission.

Vladimir Ivanovich Mutnykh is the man whose suffering occasions this post but as with the Terror itself he will for us be a footnote to a different story.

Mutnykh ultimately fell prey to the chill that Stalin cast over Soviet arts — where come the 1930s the only fare liable to pass muster with the censors (or indeed, with the executioners) were creations of turgid doctrinal correctness or cautious revivals from the pre-Revolutionary literary canon.

The strictures on artists also reflected Moscow’s abiding preoccupation with the cultural preeminence of Russia and of Communism.

Among the USSR’s many and varied exertions towards the latter end during the 1930s, not least was a project to induce a return to the motherland by genius (and homesick) composer Sergei Prokofiev, who had been mostly living and working Europe since the Bolshevik Revolution.*

In the mid-1930s, Stalin’s cultural ambassadors finally got their man.** And one of the plums that secured Prokofiev’s permanent repatriation was a commission to create for Mutnykh’s Bolshoi Theater a ballet version of the Shakespeare classic Romeo and Juliet.

Today, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet is one of the best-known and most widely performed of all his considerable output.

Some might even call Romeo and Juliet Prokofiev’s magnum opus. But Prokofiev wouldn’t have called it that.

Having gone to such great trouble to lure back a revolutionary artist, Soviet cultural officers were predictably aghast to discover that he produced a revolutionary reimagining of the Bard. In Prokofiev’s original composition, the star-crossed lovers get a happy ending and escape together instead of dying in the tomb. “Living people can dance, the dead cannot,” Prokofiev explained, unavailingly. The idea is that their love transcends the shackles of their family rivalry; even, that they had transcended the backwards political order that made them enemies. But Soviet bureaucrats were positively hidebound when it came to fiddling with the classics, and the director was forced to return to the tragic ending.

Nor was this the end of the meddling.

In 1936, joyless cultural commissar Platon Kerzhentsev ransacked the Bolshoi leadership, including Mutnykh — who had given the initial green light to Prokofiev’s first, heretical version.

For the next several years, the ballet with the checkerboard floor was twisted into shape by the Soviet bureaucracy, wringing change after change out of a frustrated but powerless Prokofiev. By the time it finally premiered — at the Kirov, not the Bolshoi — Prokofiev’s collaborator dramatist Sergei Radlov disgustedly wrote to friends that “I take no responsibility for this disgrace.”

“The version that’s known and loved around the world is completely incorrect,” said Simon Morrison, a Princeton professor. “There’s an act missing. There are dances orchestrated by people against Prokofiev’s wishes, and other stuff he was forced to put in there against his will.”

In the course of researching his 2010 book on Prokofiev, The People’s Artist, Morrison amazingly dredged up the original Prokofiev composition and documentary trails showing that the composer was forced to scrap three too-exotic dances, to “thicken” the orchestration, and to add elements like a group dance number and solos to show off the Kirov’s talent.† The ballet didn’t debut at the Bolshoi until 1946, when Stalin himself signed off it.

“Once the work was performed, Prokofiev was dismayed at a lot of things, including the sound of the orchestra. He wrote a long letter of protest but none of the changes were made to the score,” Morrison told the London Independent. “It became the canonic version, a reorganised, torn-up work. It’s a testament to how great the melodic writing is – it still became a great classic despite this mangling of it.”

A few books by Simon Morrison on Prokofiev and his world

* Prokofiev was neither an exile nor a refugee; his departure from the USSR in 1918 was voluntary and legally blessed. He had had no problem in the intervening years coming back to Russia and leaving again.

** One immediate product of Prokofiev’s return was the beloved 1936 children’s production Peter and the Wolf.

He also in 1938 gloriously scored Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky.

† Morrison in 2008 staged performances of Prokofiev’s original version of Romeo and Juliet.

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1944: Victor Gough, of Operation Jedburgh

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On this date in 1944, British Capt. Victor Gough was shot at Ehrlich Forest as a German POW.

Gough had been parachuted into occupied France a few months before as part of Operation Jedburgh — a campaign to grow internal anti-German resistance to complement the Allied push via Normandy.*

Unfortunately as Colin Burbidge details in Preserving the Flame, Gough’s destignated stomping-grounds — the Vosges Mountains on the eastern borderlands — had some of France’s most pro-German populace. (Burbidge is Gough’s nephew.)

His complications were exacerbated when his wireless operator was injured — and the wireless set wrecked — in the parachute jump. The British wireless man was soon captured and their third, a French officer, killed in a gunfight, leaving Gough on his own. “Great difficulty working alone,” he managed to report to SOE headquarters. He was finally captured in October of that year, tortured by the Gestapo, and eventually shipped to the labor camp at Gaggenau.

In accordance with Hitler’s anti-saboteur Commando Order Gough was shot at a nearby forest in a gaggle of 14 POWs — six British special forces, four American airmen, and four French civilians. Their fate was discovered in part thanks to a German fellow-prisoner, a former officer in the Wehrmacht who had been sent to the camps for refusing orders to issue his men sawed-off shotguns, a weapon prohibited by the Hague Convention, who escaped shortly before the executions using a British map that Gough gifted him. That Captain Werner Helfen survived the war and gave evidence to a British war crimes investigation.

Many years later, Helfen gave something else too: according to Burbidge, his mother — Gough’s sister — in 1991 received a package from Germany containing a photo of Werner Helfen by Victor Gough’s grave, and the escape map that Gough had given to Helfen.

* Future CIA director William Colby was a notable Jedburgh alumnus.

On this day..

1440: The Black Dinner

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Edinburgh Castle, toune and towre,
God grant thou sink for sin!
And that e’en for the black dinner
Earl Douglas gat therein.

-Sir Walter Scott

On this date in 1440, 10-year-old King James II of Scotland celebrated the Black Dinner and saw two Clan Douglas rivals sent straight to the block.

Scotland in the early 15th century was a fractious kingdom that was often governed by rivalrous regency councils ruling in the stead of absent or enfeebled kings. That was the case after the 1437 assassination of King James I passed the crown to his young son.

On these councils, the clan Douglas always swung a very large claymore. Elevated to the first rank of lowland families by their early support of Robert the Bruce a century before, the Earls of Douglas had become perhaps the realm’s preeminent noblemen — the sort of overweening powers-behind-the-throne that everyone starts thinking about how to topple. No surprise, James II’s regent was this very Earl of Douglas, Archibald Douglas — until the latter died in 1439 and passed the title to a young heir of his own.

Only about 16 years old, the new Earl, William Douglas, wasn’t exactly a child by the standards of the time. (He already had a wife.) But he was no match for the grizzled schemers he was pitted against among James II’s other guardians, Crichton and Livingston. These two perversely connived with William’s own uncle James to be rid of the whelp before he could grow into another overmighty Earl of Douglas.

This day’s infamous meal accomplished the plot.

Caledonia’s answer to the Red Wedding — and an actual inspiration for that literary slaughter in the Game of Thrones universe* — the Black Dinner of folklore is supposed to have featured both William and his little brother David naively accepting an invitation to Edinburgh Castle for noshes with the king.** Having left their own strongholds, they were vulnerable here.

After their feast on this date, it is said — though this excessive detail was undoubtedly concocted by generations of folklore — that a severed black bull’s head was plopped onto the table, to symbolize the imminent decapitation of the Douglas alpha males.† Then the Douglas lads were subjected to a mock trial as traitors and instantly dragged outside for beheading. That devious uncle James happily inherited as the seventh Earl of Douglas.‡

* The Massacre of Glencoe, another great Scottish bloodbath, also figures in the Red Wedding’s source material. “No matter how much I make up, there’s stuff in history that’s just as bad, or worse,” said Thrones author George R.R. Martin. Amen to that.

** Along with Sir Malcolm Fleming of Cumbernauld, who was seized along with the Douglas boys but seemingly only killed a few days later.

† Still, not as terrifying as a Thanksgiving Cthurkey.

‡ While the child king was more prop than participant in the events of the Black Dinner, he would have the privilege little more than a decade later of personally stabbing to death the eighth Earl of Douglas, James’s son William.

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1910: Johan Alfred Ander, the last executed in Sweden

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On this date in 1910, Sweden made its first and only use of the guillotine — in the very last execution of that country’s history.

The milestone subject’s name was Johan Alfred Ander, a failed hotelier and petty thief who, on January 5 of 1910, robbed a currency exchange outfit and in the process beat the clerk to death with a steelyard balance. As Ander had been casing his target from a nearby hotel whose own staff had grown suspicious of him, it didn’t take long to connect criminal to crime. An ample supply of incriminating booty in Ander’s possession (e.g., the beaten clerk’s wallet) confirmed the link.

Executions were already disappearing in Sweden at this point; by 1910, it had been a decade since the most recent one, ferry spree killer John Filip Nordlund. On the other hand, Sweden clearly anticipated repeat performances in the future because in the meantime it had ordered a guillotine. (Nordlund’s beheading was done by hand, by Albert Gustaf Dahlman, who also executed our man Ander.)

Ander never copped to the murder and refused to appeal for royal clemency.* Whether it was the savagery of the crime or the pride of its author, he was found a worthy candidate to interrupt the hiatus.

The death penalty was formally abolished in Sweden in 1921.

* Ander’s father did make an appeal on his behalf. It was (obviously) refused.

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1946: Twice double executions around the U.S.

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On November 22, 1946, American executioners recorded a double-double with twin killings in both North Carolina and Georgia.

North Carolina

Charles Primus, Jr., and Wilbert Johnson carjacked a couple in Raleigh, forced them to drive six miles into the country,

got out and ordered the occupants to do likewise, demanded their pocketbooks, commanded them to go down a road in the woods; the defendants then held a whispered conversation, after which Johnson, with gun in hand, directed Miss Lipscomb to “stay there,” with Primus and marched Guignard approximately 200 feet down a path and demanded to know where his money was. While the parties were thus separated, Primus had intercourse with the prosecutrix after threatening to kill her if she did not submit. She says, “I submitted to Primus on account of fear.” The defendants were over 18 years of age; and the prosecutrix was 25 years old at the time of the assault.

Soon after the rape was accomplished the defendants freed the prosecutrix and her companion and allowed them to make their way to a house in the neighborhood.

The defendants admitted in statements in the nature of confessions that they obtained $650 from Guignard and $38 from Miss Lipscomb. Each originally claimed the other committed the rape, but finally Primus admitted he was the one who actually assaulted the prosecutrix. Johnson was tried on the theory of an accessory, being present, aiding and abetting in the perpetration of the capital offense. He was referred to by Primus as “the boss” of the hold-up conspiracy.

The specification abut “submitt[ing] on account of fear” — obviously, right? — mattered because Primus and Johnson took an appeal all the way to the state Supreme Court that this submission made intercourse no longer legally “forcible.”

Georgia

Johnnie Burns and Willie Stevenson were both electrocuted at Georgia State Prison November 22, 1946 for the ax murder of a man named Lucius Thomas, a crime that netted the pair $27.14.

Stevenson was only 16 years old at the time of the murder, and 17 when he was executed.

Arkansas

There was also a fifth, singleton execution on the same day in Arkansas: Elton Chitwood was electrocuted for murdering Mena pharmacist Raymond Morris during an armed robbery.

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