Category Archives: Connecticut

1915: A day in the death penalty (and lynch law) around the U.S.

Posted on by

U.S. hangmen clocked overtime on this date in 1915. The Washington D.C. Herald of August 8 covered the bloodbath thus:

Robert Watkins and John Salter were executed for the murder of Mrs. Mary Lassiter at Evergreen. A militia guard prevented a mob from burning the negroes. The other two executions in Alabama [Millard Carpenter and George James -ed.] were for the murder of white men.

At Fresno, Miss., Peter Bolen and Jim Seales, who killed another negro, were executed while 5,000 persons sang “There Is a Land of Pure Delight.” Bunyan Waters was executed at Fayetteville, Miss.

Nor were legal executions the end of it.

A dispatch from Shawnee, Okla., relating the story of the lynching of Ed Berry, stated that the affair was “one of the most orderly lynchings in the State.” Berry was hanged from a railroad bridge, and his body was riddled with bullets, after which the mob dispersed “in an orderly manner.”

In Trilby, Fla., a crowd of citizens lynched Will Leach, accused of attacking a 13-year-old girl.

Early today a report from Liberty stated that a lynching was almost certain if a mob caught a negro laborer who attacked a farmer’s wife near there.

While this piece focuses on the U.S. South, there was also a hanging on August 6, 1915, in Connecticut. Just minutes after midnight, with the words “Good-bye, Father, good-bye,” followed by a firm “not guilty!” from under the hood, Bernard Montvid died for murdering a Catholic priest named Joseph Zebris, along with Zebris’s housekeeper Eva Gilmanaitis in a home invasion/robbery that earned less than $5. Worse yet, Montvid had to split this paltry blood money with his partner, Peter Krakas — who had already been separately hanged by the time Montvid paid his own penalty.

The Espy file of U.S. executions, a wonderful resource but liable to errors, attributes an August 6, 1915 hanging to the state of Georgia. I’ve trawled several newspaper databases without substantiating this supposed execution of Henry Floyd.

On this day..

1677: Benjamin Tuttle

Posted on by

On this date in 1677, Benjamin Tuttle expiated the murder of his sister Sarah in New Haven, Connecticut.

His parents, William and Elizabeth, were yeomen who left their Northamptonshire village for the colonies aboard the Planter in 1635, bringing the first three of what were eventually 12 children. (Two other Tuttell/Tuttle families, seemingly those of William’s brothers, shared the same passage.)

After a short stint in Boston, they were among the founding settlers who struck up the New Haven colony: William Tuttle’s signature appears on the “Fundamental Agreement of New Haven” establishing the town.

William waxed wealthy and he counts among his descendants the Great Awakening preacher Rev. Jonathan Edwards* and mercurial Vice President/duelist Aaron Burr. “His descendants,” David Greene remarked, “are famous for intellectual brilliance and, in some cases, for homicidal insanity.”

It is of course the homicidal insanity that earns their foothold in the pages of Executed Today … although we can scarcely avoid by way of character development noting that Sarah Tuttle, the eventual victim relevant to this post, attracted the tutting of the Puritan court as early as 1670 when as “a bold virgin” she ventured an illicit dalliance with a Dutch sailor named Jacob Murline and carried on “in such an imodest [sic], uncivil, wanton, lascivious manner.”

When her father William died unexpectedly in 1673, the younger cohort among his children had not been provided for, which set up years of tussling over the family estate. What surfaces in colonial court records down to 1709(!) is certainly just the tip of the iceberg; the Puritan God only knows what fathoms of crossed words and festering grudges compounded among the Tuttle children.

The most dramatic of these was an argument between Sarah and her younger brother Benjamin one night in November 1676. The surviving record of the jury’s inquest does not make clear how their argument began, but it ended with Benjamin barging into her house and fatally bashing her with an axe, leaving “the Skull and Jaw, eaxtremly broken, from the Jaw to hur neack, and soo to the crown of the head, one the right Sied of the Same, with part of her brayens out, wich ran out at a hool.” We’re grateful to this rootsweb page for the primary document; the narrative below comes from Sarah’s 12-year-old son John Slauson — hence the reference to “his mother” — as corroborated by John’s younger sister Sarah Slauson, and it ensues upon an exchange of “very short” words between their elders over the seemingly trifling matter of Sarah’s husband having to perform his town watch duties that night without having had his supper. Rebuked by his sister for his nastiness about this wifely shortcoming, Benjamin

went out of the dooars, an when he was out his bothar bead his Sistar Sarrah, Shutt the dore, beang It Smockt, and as She went to Shut It, bengiman tuttall came In with Sumtheng In his hand and Spock these words anggarly: Ile Shut the doar for you and soo went to his mother and struck her one the right Sied of the heed with that he broght In his hand, but knoes not whethar It was an ax or other weppon; at wich blow She fell and nevar Spock nor groned more; and followd with Sevrell blows aftar She fell, Standeng over hur, a pone wich he rune out of doars and cried [two illegible words]. Just as he struck his mothar the furst blow, bengiman tuttell Sayed I will tech you to Scold and a pone thaire criyeng out, bengiman tuttell fled; There beeng no parson In the hous when the mistchef begun, to help them.

Nor was Benjamin Tuttle’s death at the end of a rope the following June 13 the last this generation of Tuttles would know of axes. The very youngest daughter, Mercy, in 1691 wielded the same instrument to murder her young son Samuel in a fit of madness — although in this instance, the court found her worthy of her name because

she hath generally been in a crazed or distracted condition as well long before she committed the act, as at that time, and having observed since that she is in such a condition, [we] do not see cause to pass sentence of death against her, but for preventing her doing the like or other mischief for the future, do order, that she shall be kept in custody of the magistrates of New Haven.

* While it hardly rises to the level of homicide, this generation of the family also endured a wrenching divorce. Benjamin’s, Sarah’s, and Mercy’s sister Elizabeth, the paternal grandmother of Jonathan Edwards, was put aside by her husband in 1691 for a long-term refusal to sleep with him even as she carried on extramarital liaisons; biographers have not been above speculating on the family scandal as an influence upon Edwards. Elizabeth got overdue biographical treatment of her own in Ava Chamberlain’s 2012 The Notorious Elizabeth Tuttle: Marriage, Murder, and Madness in the Family of Jonathan Edwards.

On this day..

1959: Frank Wojculewicz, paraplegic electrocution

Posted on by

October 27, 1959 headline of the Palm Springs, Calif., Desert Sun.

Connecticut reluctantly electrocuted paraplegic murderer Frank Wojculewicz on this date in 1959.

A lifetime crook, Wojculewicz was surprised by two patrolmen in the course of robbing the AYO Meat Packing Company of New Britain, way back in 1951. In the gun battle that ensued, Wojculewicz shot dead Sgt. William Grabeck, as well as a bystander named William Otipka — but Wojculewicz was also struck in the spine by a police bullet.

That left the robber alive — and it left Connecticut a very uncomfortable case.

His guilt was in no question whatever and the death sentence for his two murder convictions was mandated by law. But the prospect of putting a permanently paralyzed man into the state’s electric chair was so aesthetically discomfiting that his legal odyssey dragged on for nearly 8 years at a time when the median death penalty case resulted in execution in 15 months. He had to be tried in a prison hospital bed.

As this retrospective from the New York Daily News observes, slow-walking Connecticut officials were likely hoping that the killer’s injuries would take his life “naturally” before it came to that. But the tough bastard kept hanging on, and not only that, but fighting for his own life both in the courts (where State v. Wojculewicz cases reached the Connecticut Supreme Court in both 1953 and 1956) and the court of public opinion. Wojculewicz passed his time “feeding pigeons through barred windows. He lobbied for life, arguing in letters to supporters that his paralysis was ‘a greater punishment than death’ and calling state execution ‘the evil of evils.'”

In the end, though, Wojculewicz was a fully competent, fully guilty criminal asking an exemption from the law based on an injury that he’d suffered in the course of committing the crime. Nobody really wanted to put an invalid in the electric chair but neither did anybody have a proper reason not to do so.

Time ran out for Frank Wojculewicz on the frosty night of October 26, 1959. Death row guards found him lying face-down as usual. They gently lifted the helpless man from his mattress and placed him in a wheelchair. Then began a slow procession. One by one the other condemned men called their farewells to Wojculewicz as he was wheeled past their cells. The scene was extremely affecting. When the procession entered the execution chamber it was greeted by the warden. He then asked Wojculewicz if he had a last request. Bitter to the end, the doomed man asked that the prison chaplain not be allowed near him. He said that he neither wanted nor needed any pious prepping for what he was about to face. The warden was displeased but he granted the request. Guards then wheeled Wojculewicz to the middle of the chamber. There they carefully lifted him from the wheelchair and put him in the electric chair. A wooden box was used as a stool to support his paralyzed legs. When the guards completed the task of affixing the electrodes and adjusting the straps they signaled that all was ready. Then the executioner turned on the current and Frank Wojculewicz was no more.

–Legal Executions in New England: A Comprehensive Reference, 1623-1960

On this day..

1807: Henry Niles

Posted on by

From the Greenfield (Massachusetts) Gazette, November 30, 1807:

NEW LONDON, (Con.) Nov. 11.

On Wednesday last, Henry Niles, an Indian, was executed in this city, for the murder of his wife, pursuant to the sentence of the Supreme Court.

The day before his execution the prisoner attempted to anticipate his sentence, and with a piece of the blade of a knife opened a vein in his thigh, from which a large quantity of blood issued before his purpose was prevented.

On the day of execution, he was taken from prison by the Sheriff and his Deputies, (the Independent Company acting as guards) and carried to the Presbyterian meeting house, where a sermon was preached by the Rev. Mr. [Abel] M’Ewen.

At the place of execution the prisoner made a short speech to the spectators, and was then launched into eternity.

It is 21 years since the execution of a criminal in this city, and the spectacle of the public death of a human being, though “a poor Indian,” drew together a large concourse of people; the number has, by many observers, been computed at 6, 8, and 10 thousand. The prisoner behaved with much calmness, and when passing from prison thro’ the crowd, his countenance bespoke the magnanimity of the American savage.

The death of his wife was occasioned by a quarrel produced by intoxication, the effects of which are known to be peculiarly mischievous among the aborigines of America.

On this day..

1790: Joseph Mountain, Atlantic picaro

Posted on by

The remarkable-if-true criminal autobiography of Joseph Mountain, executed on this date in 1790 in New Haven, Connecticut, is transcribed here from the Dec. 14 and 21, 1790 issues of Spooners Vermont Journal, which has repurposed them from the American Mercury.

From the AMERICAN MERCURY.

Sketches of the life of JOSEPH MOUNTAIN, a Negro, who was executed at Newhaven, on the 20th day of October, 1y790, for a Rape, committed on the 26th day of May last.

I, Joseph Mountain, was born on the 7th day of July, A.D. 1758, in the house of Samuel Mifflin, Esq., of Philadelphia, father of the present Governor of Pennsylvania. My father, Fling Mountain, is a Mulatto, and now lives at Philadelphia. My mother is a Negro and was a slave until she was twenty one years of age. She now lives at Reading in Pennsylvania.

The first seventeen years of my life were spent in Mr. Mifflin’s family. As a servant in the house I acquired the reputation of unusual uprightness and activity. My master was industrious to instruct me in the Presbyterian religion which he professed, teach me to read and write, and impress my mind with sentiments of virtue. How grossly these opportunities have been neglected, the following story will too fully evince.

In the 17th year of my age, on the 17th of March 1775, with my master’s consent, I entered on board the ship Chalkley, commanded by Joseph Spain, and owned by Messirs. James and Drinker of Philadelphia, and on the 20th of May following we arrived in the Downs. I soon quitted the vessel, and in four days was strolling the streets of London in quest of amusements. In this situation, the public will easily conceive, I could not long remain an idle spectator. It will not be surprising to find me speedily initiated in practices disgraceful to human nature, and destructive of every moral virtue. Unfortunately for me, a scene began to open which will close only in the shadow of death.

One day, at an alehouse in London, I accidentally became acquainted with one Francis Hyde, originally from Middlesex, and one Thomas Wilson, of Staffordshire in England. They were travelling the country, with a hand organ and various other musical instruments, pretending to great art in numerous performances, and really professing surprising knowledge in every species of juggling. This was their employment in the day time, for the purpose of executing more effectually the principal business of their lives, viz. highway robbery. [Here a footnote in the original text clarifies that “the reader will note, that when we use the term footpad we mean him who robs on foot only; highwayman intends one who robs on horseback.” -ed.] They soon found me susceptible of almost any impression, and neither incapable of, nor averse to, becoming a companion in their iniquity. We all set out from London about 8 o’clock in the evening after I had joined them, each armed with a hanger and a brace of pistols. We had also suitable dresses and a dark lanthorn. Our landlord, who kept tavern at the sign of the Black horse, in Charingcross, furnished us with every requisite for the expedition. His name was William Humphrys. The plan this evening was to attack the mail coach, which would start at 12 o’clock at night, from the ship tavern, between Woolwich and Gravesend, about 9 miles from London.

We were on the spot at the hour agreed upon, and dignified ourselves for the adventure. Hyde and Wilson were dressed in white frocks and boots, with their faces painted yellow to resemble Mulattoes. Mountain was dressed in the same manner, with the addition of a large tail wig, white gloves, and a black mask over his face. When the stage arrived, I started, and caught the leading horses by their bridles, while Hyde and Wilson each presented a brace of pistols in at the coach window, and demanded of the passengers their money. There were four gentlemen and one lady in the coach. They denied having any money. Wilson said, “Deliver, or death.” They then gave us a bank note of 50 l. one other of 20 l. and about 60 guineas in cash. We then retired to an unfrequented place, shifted [?] our dresses, and prepared to prosecute our journey to Chathaw in the County of Kent.

In the day time, Hyde and Wilson commonly played upon their instruments, and preformed [sic] various feats of slight of hand, as though that was their sole occupation. We were also very particular in making observations upon all travellers, to learn if they might be touched (For that was our word for robbed).

In four days after the former robbery, we met a Capt. Hill, at the foot of Rochester bridge near Chatham — He was a captain of the marines, and we had seen him in the day time at Brumpton Barracks, about half a mile from the bridge. We walked directly before his horse. Wison asked him the time of night. He made no reply. Hyde then caught the bridle; I, his left hand, and Wilson presented a pistol to his breast, and said, “Deliver, or death.” He assured us that he had no money worth taking. Wilson said, “then give us your watch,” which he did. The watch was gold, and valued at 50 guineas. We then walked off about 300 rods towards Gravesend, and immediately tacked for Rochester, where we lodged at the mariner’s inn. There was a great hue and cry for us; but the pursuers, supposing from Capt. Hill’s information, we had gone for Gravesend, entirely mistook our rout. The next morning we took postchaise for London, where we arrived about 6 o’clock in the evening. Our booty was delivered to a broker whom we constantly employed. He was a Jew, and lived in St. Katherine’s Row, near Tower-hill, and his name was William Moses. There were also other brokers in different parts of England, with whom we had constant communication, and who were perfectly acquainted with our modes of acquiring property. After such a jaunt we thought it adviseable to recruit ourselves by rioting on our spoils.

In a few days, it was concluded that I should go alone, and attempt to “touch” some gentlemen who frequented the play at Covent Garden: this, considering my age and inexperience, was thought rather a bold stroke. Being villain enough to attempt any thing, I did not hesitate; but posted myself agreeably to direction. My efforts were wholly unsuccessful and I returned empty. The next night I was placed at London bridge, while Hyde stood at Blackfriars, and Wilson at Westminster. At half-past 11 o’clock I met a Captain Duffield, and asked him the time of night. He told me. I said, “You know my profession; deliver or death.” He stepped back to strike me with his cane; I cocked my pistol, and told him to deliver instantly, or death should be his portion. He then threw me his purse, which contained about 10 guineas and a silver watch, which was valued by our broker at 6 l. Hide, the same night, obtained about 40 guineas of Sir John Griffing, Wilson about 30 of a Mr. Burke; and each a watch, one gold, the other pinchbeck. The next day we saw advertisements describing the robberies, and offering rewards for the perpetrators.

The next night, with little difficulty, I robbed Hugh Lindsly of 16 guineas, and a gold ring. Hyde, on the same evening, took from Lord John Cavendish about 20 guineas, and Wilson robbed William Burke of 11 guineas.

We now concluded to remain in London for a while, gentlemen of pleasure. the repeated robberies had furnished us with cash in abundance, and we indulged in every species of debauchery. We gambled very deeply at dice, cards and billiards. Hyde and Wilson were very expert at this business, and wou’d almost invariably swindle, a stranger out of his money.

In March 1776 we went to the city of York, about 200 miles from London. Here we continued several weeks, waiting some favorable opportunities to rob at the plays; but none presented. We went from York to Newmarket, to attend the famous races which took place about the first of June. There we found Lord Gore of Richmond, and Lord Tufton of Sheffield in Yorkshire: We were much perplexed to invent the most advantageous mode of “touching” them. It was at length concluded to attack them at their lodgings, which were at an inn very large and greatly frequented by various classes of people. About 7 o’clock in the evening, while the attendants of those gentlemen were in the kitchens and stables, we entered the front door, and having bribed the porter with a few guineas, were immediately let into the room. Lords Tore and Tufton were sitting over a table at a dish of coffee, and reading newspapers. We instantly presented our pistols and demanded their money. Lord Tufton delivered us one bank note of 100 l. and three others of 50 l. each. Lord Gore delivered us about 100 guineas and two gold mourning rings. We quitted Newmarket next morning, and went in the flags to York, where Wilson presented his bills for payment. Unfortunately for us, Lord Tufton immediately after the robbery dispatched his servant to the bank, with orders to stop those bills if offered. The bills were accordingly stopped, and Wilson arrested and sent to Newmarket to be examined before a justice of the peace. Upon his examination he pressed Hyde to swear that he was riding from Newmarket to York with Wilson, and that he saw him pick up a pocket book containing those bills. The coachman, having been previously bribed, swore to the same fact. Upon this testimony, Wilson was acquitted. I was not sent for as a witness at this examination, as I understood Lord Robert Manners was then in Newmarket, and would probably attend the trial. The reason why I did not wish to meet his Lordship’s eye was, that on the night before we left London, I made a most daring attack upon him. He was walking unarmed, near Hounslow Heath, attended by his footman. I met him, presented my pistol, and he gave me 75 guineas, two gold watches, and two gold rings. Hyde and Wilson were near at hand; but they did not discover themselves, leaving me “to play the hero alone.”

In the latter end of June we again met at the old rendezvous in London and divided our plunder. The property which I then had on hand enabled me to live very freely for some months. My time was spent in that round of dissipation which was the necessary attendant upon so vicious a character, and which was tolerably well supported by the stock of cash in my own possession, and that of my broker.

I now resolved to quit this course of life which I had hitherto pursued with so much success. Accordingly I entered on board the brig Sally [?], as cook, and made two voyages in her to Lisbon. Upon my return, after exhausting my pay, I made another voyage in the Fanny, Capt. Sinclair, to Kingston in Jamaica: Which being finished in nine months, I again visited London, and concluded to relinquish the seafaring business for the present. At the old place of resort I became acquainted with one Haynes and Jones, both of Yorkshire. They were partially initiated in the science of footpads. They soon proposed that I should resume my profession, and join them. My former mode of life, though singularly vicious, yet possessed many charms in my view. I therefore complied with their request; at the same time doubting, if they were possessed of sufficient courage and skill for companions to one who had served under experienced makers, and who considered himself at the head of the profession. Our first object was to assail the Newcastle stage, which would be in Tottenham Court road at 8 o’clock in the evening. We were on the spot in season, and Mountain addressed them thus: “My lads, it is a hazardous attempt — for God’s sake make a bold stroke.” Upon the arrival of the coach at half past 7 o’clock, four miles from London, I seized the bridles of the two foremost horses. Jones and Jaynes went to the coach door, and said, “Deliver, or death.” Lord Garnick and several others were passengers: His Lordship said, “Yes, yes, I’ll deliver,” and instantly discharged a pistol at Jones, the contents of which entered his left shoulder: Upon which he and Haynes made their escape. The coachmen was then directed to drive on. He replied, “There is a man who yet holds the leading horses.” Lord Garnick then fired at me, but without damage; upon which I discharged my pistol at the coach, but without effect. Jones was so badly wounded, that Hyanes and I were obliged to carry him into London upon our shoulders. We were soon overtaken by two highwaymen, who had assaulted Lord Garnick about 15 minutes before our engagement, one of whom was badly wounded. The next day we saw an advertisement offering a reward of 60 guineas for the detection of the robbers, and informing, that it was supposing three were killed. This specimen of the enterprize of my new associates convinced me, that they were not adepts in their occupation, and induced me to quit their society.

The business which now seemed most alluring to me, was that of highwayman. Considering myself at the head of footpads, I aspired for a more honorable employment, and therefore determined to join myself to the gang of highwaymen, whose rendezvous were at Broad St. Giles’s, up Holborne, at the sing of the Hampshire hog, and kept by a William Harrison, a native of the Isle of Man. Harrison was the support, the protector and the landlord of this whole company. The horses and accoutrements were kept and furnished by him, and occasionally supplied to adventurers. He inquired my name, and finding that I was Mountain, who was confederate with Hyde and Wilson, he readily admitted me to the fratnerity. He asked if I dared to take a jaunt alone; and finding me willing for any thing, he quickly furnished me with equipments proper for the expedition. Mounted on a very fleet horse, and prepared with proper changes of dress, I set out for Coventry, about 90 miles from London. I made great dispatch in travelling, and about 10 o’clock the night after my departure, I met Richard Watts coming out of a lane about two miles from Coventry. I rode up to him, and inquired if he was afraid of highwaymen. He replied, “No, I have no property of value about me.” I then told him that I was a man of the profession, and that he must deliver or abide the consequences. Upon this he gave me his gold watch: I insisted on his money, and cocked my pistol, threatening him with instant death. He perceived that resistance and persuasion were equally unavailable, and threw me his purse, containing 13 half guineas and some pocket pieces. The gold watch was valued at 40 guinea. I then ordered him back down the lane, accompanied him thither, and fled with the greatest haste into an adjacent wood: Here I shifted my own and horse’s dress, leaving them in a bye place, rode directly to a neighboring town, and there put up for the night: Thence I took my course for Newcastle in Devonshire, about 270 miles north of London, and thence to Warrington in Lancastershire. Here about 7 o’clock in the evening I met with a gentleman who drew his watch, and told me the hour. I observed, “You have a very fine watch.” He answered, “Fine enough.” “Sir, ’tis too fine for you — you know my profession — deliver.” He drew back, I caught his bridle, with one hand, presented a pistol with the other, and said, “Deliver, or I’ll cool your porridge:” He handed me his purse of 8 guineas, and a gold watch valued at 30 l. sterling. To complete the iniquity, and exhibit the extent of my villany [sic], I then took a prayerbook from my pocket, and ordered him to swear upon this solemnity of God’s word, that he would make no discovery in twelve hours: He took the oath: I quitted him, and heard nothing of the matter until the next morning about 10 o’clock, when I saw a particular detail of the transaction in the newspapers.

Liverpool was my next stage. Here I tarried two days making observations for evening adventures. On the night of the second day I robbed Thomas Reave of 6 guineas, and a gold watch worth 30 l. sterling. To insult him in his distress, after committing the act, I pulled off my hat, made a low bow, wished him good night, and set out for Lancaster in company with the stage. It occurred to me, that riding as a guard to the stage would secure me against suspicion. Accordingly, I accompanied it to Lancaster, and there put up at the “swan and two necks.” Here I continued three days, waiting a favorable opportunity to exercise my profession. On the third evening at eight o’clock, I stopped a Col. Pritchard, took from him a gold watch valued at 44 guineas, a purse of 30 guineas, 3 gold rings, and a pair of gold kneebuckles worth 6 l. The kneebuckles appeared so tempting, I told Pritchard, I could not avoid taking them. At 11 o’clock I left Lancaster, and having rode about one mile from town, I stopped, pulled off my hat, and bid them “good bye.”

My course was now for Manchester, where I put up for about 24 hours at the “bull’s head.” The evening following I touched a Quaker. It was nearly 9 o’clock when I met him. I inquired if he was not afraid to ride alone. He answered, No. I asked him his religion; he replied, “I am a Friend.” I observed, “You are the very man I was looking for — you must deliver your money.” He seemed very unwilling, and said, “Thou art very hard with me.” I replied, “You must not thou me.” He then gave me his plain gold watch, 6 guineas, and 4 bank notes of 20 l. each. I then presented a prayer book, and demanded an oath that he would make no discovery in 3 hours: He refused an oath, alledging that it was contrary to his religion, but gave his word that my request should be complied with. I then dismissed him, returning the bank notes and took a circuitous rout for London. The guineas which I had obtained in this jaunt, I concealed and carried in the soles of my boots, which were calculated for that purpose, and effectually answered it. The mare which I rode was trained for the business. She would put her head in at a coach window with the utmost ease, and stand like a stock against any thing. She would travel also with surprising speed. Upon my arrival at Harrison’s (having been gone eleven days) I gave a faithful narrative of my transactions, and produced the plunder as undeniable proof. I never shall forget with what joy I was received. The house rung with the praises of Mountain. An elegant supper was provided, and he placed at the head of the table. Notwithstanding the darkness of his complexion, he was complimented as the first of his profession, and qualified for the most daring enterprizes.

Fatigued with such a jaunt, and fearing lest too frequent adventures might expose me, I determined on tarrying a while at home. My horse was given to another, and he directed to seek for prey.

After one month’s absence he returned with only 16 guineas, and was treated accordingly by the gang. He was inadequate to the business, and was therefore ordered to tarry at home, just to visit the playhouses and sharp it among people who might easily be [choufed?] of their property. Each took his tour of duty in course; some succeeded; others, from misfortune or want of spirit, was [sic] disgraced. One young fellow of the party was about this time detected at Guilford in Surry, tried, condemned and executed. He made no discovery, though we all trembled. A plan was now in agitation to dispatch two or three of the gang to Portsmouth, to attack some of the navy officers: It was finally adopted, and one Billy Coats, a Londoner, and Mountain were selected as the most suitable for the expedition. We mounted our horses on the next morning, and reached Portsmouth that day, a distance of more than 70 miles. We took lodgings at an inn kept by a rich old miser. We were soon convinced that he had cash in plenty, and that it “was our duty to get it;” but the difficulty was what plan should be concerted. At length, by a stratagem which was deeply laid, and faithfully executed, we plundered the old man’s hosue of 300 guineas, and 50 l. sterling in shillings and sixpences. There was a very great clamor raised the next morning. The house was surrounded with the populace. The old fellow was raving at a great rate for the loss of his money. I was a spectator of this chagrin of the old man and his wife. We remained at Portsmouth two days, and then returned to London richly laden, and received the applause of our companions. The three following months I spent in frequently ale-houses, defrauding and cheating, with false dice, and practicing every species of imposition which ingenuity could invent, or the most depraved heart execute.

In the beginning of June 1780, I joined the mob headed by Lord George Gordon. This mob was the result of a dispute between the Papists and the Protestants. It was a matter of the most sovereign indifference to me, whether the rebellion was just or unjust: I eagerly joined the sport, rejoicing that an opportunity presented whereby I might obtain considerable plunder in the general confusion. Lord Gordon represented to us in a speech of some length, the open attempts upon the Protestant religion, and the manner in which the petitions of the injured had been treated by parliament. He exhorted us all to follow him to the house of commons, and protect him while he should present, with his own hand, the parchment roll, containing the names of those who had signed the petition, to the amount of about 120,000 protestants. His speech was answered with loud huzzas, and repeated assurances of our zeal to support him and his cause. The whole body of us, in number about 50,000, left St. George’s fields, and marched directly for the parliament house: We were in four separate divisions. A most tremendous shout was heard from all quarters, upon our arrival before both houses. Lord Gordon moved that he might introduce the petition; but the house would not consent that it should be then taken up. The mob became greatly inflamed; they insulted several members of the house of lords, who narrowly escaped with their lives. Several gentlemen of parliament reprobated the conduct of Lord George in the severest terms; and Col. Gordon, a relation of his Lordship, threatened him with instant death the moment any of the rioters should enter the house. At length, when the question was put in the house of commons, in defiance of the menaces of the mob, only six out of two hundred voted for the petition. The rioters now disposed themselves into various parts of the city, destroying and burning the chapels of the Roman Catholics and their houses. The five succeeding days were employed in demolishing the houses of Sir George Saville, in burning Newgate, and relieving about 300 persons confined in it, (some under sentence of death) in setting fire to King’s Bench and Fleetprisons, and in innumerable other acts of violence and outrage towards those who wer ein the opposition. The bank was twice assailed, but was two [sic] well guarded for our attempts. On the 7th day we were overpowered by superior force, and obliged to disperse. During this confusion, I provided for myself, by plundering, at various times, about 500 l. sterling.

(To be concluded in our next.)

(The narrative continues in the Dec. 21 issue)

After leading a live of such dissipation, for five or six years, an incident occurred which caused me, for some time, to abandon my former pursuit and settle down in tolerable regularity. I became acquainted with a Miss Nancy Allingame, a white girl of about 18 years of age. She was possessed of about 500 l. in personal property, and a house at Islington. It may appear singular to many, that a woman of this description should be in the least interested in my favor; yet such was the fact, and she not only endured my society, but actually married me in about six months after our first acquaintance. Her father and friends remonstrated against this connexion; but she quitted them all, and united herself to me. My whole residence with her was about three years, during which time I exhausted all the property which came into my possession by the marriage. We then separated, and she was received by her father.

In June 1782, having joined Hyde and Wilson, we determined to quit England and see if the French gentlemen could bear “touching.” We accordingly crossed at Dover, and at Dunkirk about 7 o’clock in the evening robbed a gentlemen of about 200 French crowns. We then proceeded to Paris by way of Brest. On the second evening after our arrival in this city, we robbed Count Dillon, on his return from the plays, of a gold watch and 12 French guineas. The next day, about 1 o’clock in the afternoon, we attacked Governor Du Boyer, at his country seat, about four miles from Paris, and took from him about 200 l. in bank bills. Hyde and Wilson performed this, while I lay about 250 yards distant.

Dispatch in travelling, after such bold adventures, became very necessary. We immediately quitted Paris, and rode all night for Havre de Grace, where we arrived the evening of the next day. Here we found an advertisement, which prevented our changing the notes and induced us to burn them.

Bayonne was the next object of our pursuit. At this place Hyde robbed two gentlemen in one night, Willson one, and Mountain one — the whole of that evening’s plunder amounted to about 500 l. sterling. France now became dangerous, and therefore we pushed with all possible expedition for Spain, and arrived at Madrid, the capital, in a few days. The regulations of this city were such, that we were obliged to quit the object of our pursuit. The city was strongly walled in, and most scrupulously guarded. The gates were shut every evening at 8 o’clock, and every man compelled to be in his own habitation. After spending several months in rioting on our booty, we went to Gibraltar. We bribed the Spanish centinel, and entered the British lines. We appeared before the English commander, General Elliot, and informed him we were Englishmen, and mechanicks by profession. The fleet commanded by Lord How, arrived there on the fourth day after us. General Elliot consented that we should enter on board the fleet as seamen. Accordingly I joined myself to the Magnificent of 74 guns, commanded by Capt. John Elverston; Hyde entered the Victory, Lord Hose; and Wilson a 74 gun ship, whose name I do not recollect. This was in the fall of 1782. I never saw Hyde and Wilson again until since the peace took place between England and the United States. I tarried on board the Magnificent about three months, during which time we had an engagement with the French and Spanish fleets. We drove them out of the Straits, sunk their junk ships with hot shot, and captured the St. Michael, a Spanish ship of 74 guns. The Magnificent sailed with the fleet for Spithead, where, directly after my arrival, I made my escape from her by bribing the centinel with 5 guineas, and swimming three quarters of a mile to the Isle of Wight. From this place I went to London by way of Plymouth. The landlord at the old place of resort received me very cordially.

The business of robbing again solicited my attention, and in the fall of the year 1783, as I was walking in Wapping in quest of plunder, I accidentally fell in company with my old companions, Hyde and Wilson. They had remained in the sea service ever since we left Gibralttar. We concluded it adviseable to join ourselves to the gang at Harrison’s, and resume our occupation. Holland now appeared an object worth attention. In November 1783, we went to Ostend, and thence to Amsterdam. On the road through Holland, we knocked an old Dutchman down, and took from him 1100 guilders. The next day about 4 [o’]clock in the morning, Hyde attacked a merchant, and obtained about 100 guilders; and the evening following, we robbed four gentlemen of about 150 l. sterling, and three silver watches of small value. We continued living very freely at Amsterdam 4 weeks, without effecting any thing: During which period we were preparing to assail a bank. At length, by the help of various instruments, we entered it about 1 o’clock at night. We found an iron chest which we could not open. We brought a way two bags of gold, containing about 1100 l. sterling. We buried them about 2 miles distant, and suffered them to remain there two months. The noise, relative to the robbery having by this time subsided, we took our money, entered on board a vessel bound for England, and were safely back in London in the spring of the year 1784. To invest our cash, &c. in real property and quit a course of life attended with so much fatigue and hazard, was thought the most eligible plan. In pursuance of this idea, Hyde bought him an house and lot about four miles from London. My share was joined with Hyde’s. Wilson purchased him a situation at Cherry gardenstairs. Each kept an house for the reception of gamblers, swindlers and footpads.

The rioters who were concerned in Lord Gordon’s rebellion were now daily arrested, tried and executed. Knowing myself deeply concerned in this mob, and supposing it probable that Mountain’s turn might come next, I quitted London, went on board an European vessel, and made a voyage to Grenada. From this period until August 1789, I was employed as a sailor, during which time I made two voyages to the coast of Guinea, and brought cargoes of negroes to Jamaica; one voyage to Greenland; one to Leghorn and Venice; three to Philadelphia, and one to St. Kitts. Upon my return from voyages, I frequently went from Liverpool to London, and put up at Hyde’s or Wilson’s. In October 1786, we committed a burglary upon the house of General Arnold, who then resided in London. We entered his house about 2 o’clock at night, with a dark lantern, and, from a bureau in the room where the General and Lady were asleep, we stole about 150 l. sterling, in cash, and a pair of stone shoe buckles.

In the month of August 1789, I left Newyork in the Briton, with a cargo of bread and flour owned by Mr. John Murray, jun. of New york, and went to Bilboa in Spain. The vessel proved leaky, and was sold. Being discharged, I entered on board the brig Aunt, commanded by Captain Thomas Mosely, and owned by William Gray, of Boston, sailed from Bilboa the 7th day of March, and arrived in Boston the 2d of May last. On the 14th of the same month I quitted Boston on foot for Newyork. On my journey, at Easthartford, I stole five dollars from the cabin of a sloop lying in Connecticut river. I was immediately apprehended, carried before George Pitkin, Esq. and adjudged to be whipped ten stripes. The sentence was executed forthwith, and I dismissed. This was the first time I was ever arraigned before any court. No event in my antecedent life produced such mortification as this; that a highwayman of the first eminence, who had robbed in most of the cities in Europe, who had attacked gentlemen of the first distinction with success; who had escaped King’s bench prison and Old Bailey, that he should be punished for such a petty offence, in such an obscure part of the country, was truly humiliating. On the Saturday evening following, I arrived at Newhaven. The Wednesday following, being the 26th of May, about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, I set out for Newyork: At the distance of one mile, I met the unhappy girl whom I have so wantonly injured. She was in company with an older [friend?], going into Newhaven. I began a conversation with them, and attempted, by persuasion, to effect my purpose. They were terrified at my conduct, and endeavored to avoid me. Upon this I seized the eldest girl; she, however, struggled from me. I then caught the younger, and threw her on the ground. I have uniformly thought that the witnesses were mistaken in swearing to the commission of a Rape: That I abused her in a most brutal and savage manner; that her tender years and pitiable shrieks were unavailable; and that no exertion was wanting to ruin her, I frankly confess. However I may attempt to palliate this transaction, there can be no excuse given for me, unless intoxication may be pleaded in mitigation of an offence. It was a most cruel attack upon an innocent girl, whose years, whose intreaties must have softened an heart not callous to every tender feeling. When her cries had brought to her assistance some neighboring people, I continued my barbarity, by insulting her in her distress, boasting of the fact, and glorying in my iniquity. Upon reflection, I am often surprised that I did not attempt my escape; opportunity to effect it frequently presented before I was apprehended. Yet, by some unaccountable fatality, I loitered unconcerned, as though my conduct would bear the strictest scrutiny. The counsel of heaven determined that such a prodigy in vice should no longer infest society. At four o’clock I was brought before Mr. Justice Daggert for examination. The testimony was so pointed, that I was ordered into immediate confinement, to await the approaching session of the Superiour Court.

On the 5th of August last, I was arraigned before the Bar of the Superiour Court. My trial was far more favorable than I expected. There was every indulgence granted me which I could have wished; and the court, jurors and spectators appeared very differently from those I have seen at Old Bailey. The jury had little hesitation; indeed the most compassionate hearer of this cause could have only pronounced me Guilty. I beheld with astonishment the lenity of the court, and am sure, that in a country where such a sacred regard is had to the liberty of the subject, no man’s life can be unjustly taken from him. On the Tuesday following, the Chief Justice pronounced Sentence of Death against me. I thought myself less moved with this pathetic address than either of the court, or any spectator, and yet, I confess, I was more affected by it, than by any thing which had previously happened in my life. On the next sabbath I attended meeting. The address of the Rev. Dr. Dana on that day, and the subsequent advice and admonitions which I have received from the Clergy of this and other places, were calculated to awaken every feeling of my heart. Much gratitude is due to those gentlemen who have exhibited such a tender concern for my immortal interest.

It now remains that I die a death justly merited by my crimes, “The crimes of injured innocence have entered the ears of the Lord of Sabbath, and called for vengeance.” If the reader of this story can acquiesce in my fate, and view me “stumbling on the dark mountain of the shadow of death,” with composure, he will yet compassionate a soul stained with the [strongest?] crimes, just about to appear unembodied before a God of infinite purity.

JOSEPH MOUNTAIN.

On this day..

1797: Thomas Starr, penknife murderer

Posted on by

“Sermon preached at Haddam [Connecticut], June 14, 1797. On the day of the Execution of Thomas Starr, condemned for the murder of his kinsman Samuel Cornwell by seven wounds given him, by a penknife, in the trunk of his body, July 26th, 1796, of which he languished a few days and died; with a sketch of the life and character of said Starr,” by Enoch Huntington, pastor of the First Church of Christ of Middletown, Connecticut.


Also available online here.

The good minister was brother to the late governor of the state, and (eventually) maternal grandfather to abolitionist William Huntington Russell, co-founder of famed Yale secret society Skull and Bones. Russell was a personal friend of anti-slavery militant John Brown and received the honorary rank of Major General for his service organizing the Connecticut militia for the Civil War.

On this day..

1871: James Wilson, steely burglar

Posted on by

From the San Francisco Daily Call (Oct. 28, 1871) via a curious trans-Pacific audience in Australia’s Queanbeyan Age (Dec. 21, 1871). As usual, paragraphs added for readability.

EXECUTION OF JAMES WILSON, AT HARTFORD — DESPERATE ATTEMPT AT SUICIDE.

The last hours in the life of the burglar and murderer hanged at Hartford Conn., on Friday, the 13th instant, were sensational enough to suit his morbid craving for notoriety, and strangely rounded out a long career of adventure and rascality.

James Wilson, or to give his true name, David Kently, has been for many years a public outlaw.. He is charged, and justly according to his own confession, with between 200 and 300 burglaries.

The crimination of this career, it will be remembered, was the murderer of Warden Williard, of the State Prison at Weshersfield, on August 16th, 1870. The Warden called to Wilson’s cell-door to hear one of the complaints that troublesome prisoners were always ready with, and was perfidiously stabbed by a sword-cane (how obtained no one knowns), which Wilson thrust between the bars of his door and into the Warden’s abdomen.

Wilson asserted then and to the last that maltreatment provoked the deed.

For this he was condemned to death. Five days before legal limit of his live [sic] expired he was removed from State prison to the Hartford jail.

He had during the previous months exhibited a remarkable mental activity and versatility. He invented several ingenious little machines. He wrote a considerable ways in an autobiography, which was to have been entitled “Thirty Years in the Life of a Crack,” and would certainly have ranked among the curiosities of both crime and literature, had he not in a fit of rage destroyed it.

He made many attempts to get a new trial; then to obtain a communication to Sheriff Russell, designed to explain the desperate means he took, shortly after midnight, to evade the scaffold and the noose.

This attempt at suicide, briefly mentioned by telegraph, was made with a wire three inches long and an eighth of an inch in diameter, sharpened at one end, which he had got from the rim of a ration pan in prison, two months before, and had kept sheathed in leather torn from a Bible binding, concealed as probably no man ever thought of doing so before, in his rectum.

This wire, while keepers slept, he thrust into his heart; but it struck the muscular portion and would not pierce it. He turned over and bent upon the weight of his heavy body, and finally grasped the Testament at his side, and dealt blow for blow upon the wire. He drove it in quite half an inch below the skin, but in vain. The life pulse did not stop, and there in terrible agony the man could no longer suppress a groan, and the keepers found him in a dead faint.

When he was brought to consciousness, he had no regret except for his failure in the attempt.

His demeanour was unshaken thenceforward. He walked to the scaffold, though physically weak, and made a few remarks to the two hundred people in the jail yard, which are thus reported:

I don’t suppose it will amount to much what I can say, or stop the execution. I suppose most of you know why I shall say but a few words to-day. With three inches of steel in his heart a man can’t say much nor be expected to. I did all I could to avoid being here; not that I fear death, but such a kind of death — not fit for a dog or a murderer. I am not a murderer. I killed William Willard in self-defence, and I did just right and I hope his fate will be a warning to all other tyrants like him.

At this time the Deputy Sheriff stood behind Wilson with rope in his hand.

The victim turned round quickly seized the rope in his own hands, and then advanced quite dramatically, and leaning over the railing he continued, with great earnestness:

When a man puts this over his head in the cause of humanity, it is not a disgrace in that cause I put it over mine. And Sheriff Russell you may tighten it up as quickly as you please.

While saying these words he had pulled the noose over his head and thrown the rope out toward the sheriff’s hands. The sheriff then said, “Wilson, do you desire to have prayer offered up for you?”

“Well, yes. I have no objection to a short prayer,” replied the victim calmly but rather coolly.

The minister then offered a short but fervent prayer, keeling at Wilson’s side. When the minister had finished, Wilson repeated the word “Amen” quite audibly. While he was being pinioned, he bade all on the scaffold good-by; and to Captain Wooding he said, “I hope, if you have the opportunity, you will tell the warders of Wethersfield Prison they may profit by the example they have had to not oblige any other convict to murder a warden for humanity’s sake.”

The hanging was decently done, and the pulse extinct in fourteen minutes.

The authorities of the Yale Medical College at New Haven must have accepted the body on the terms he required in his will, as it was but in charge of his counsel, Mr Aberdeen, and sent by him to New Haven.

On this day..

1850: Henry Leander Foote, sex crazed

Posted on by

On this date in 1850, Henry Leander Foote was hanged in Connecticut.

Foote was an educated man who used his time languishing in jail — there was nearly a full year between his conviction and his execution — to bestow upon the world an autobiographical narrative of his peregrinations, which the reader can peruse in its entirety at the bottom of this post. Affected with wanderlust, he struck out from home as a teenager and began a rambling career that would take him all over America.

One of his first stops was the bustling and burgeoning metropolis that will become the hub of his narrative and, as Foote conceived it, the source of his ruin — New York city. There he was introduced to the city’s vast sexual marketplace.

At the end of two or three weeks, I found myself in the city of New York. What a place for a stranger, a young man of seventeen or eighteen years of age to visit alone, without any guardian to conduct him or advise him, and warn him against evil company! I had no acquaintances except three or four young men, whom I met on board the boat, who were also from Connecticut. They were in company, all belonging to one town, and then invited me to stop at the same public house with them. I had been informed that one of them was the son of a minister of the gospel, consequently I concluded that the company was good and safe to be with. But I found, to my astonishment, that this young man was the ring leader, the rudest and wildest of the crowd. The first night I was led to the Theater, from there to the brothel, and from there to the gambling house and drinking saloon. Here we must be fashionable and have a game of cards and a bottle or two of champane. [sic] … We played and drank till sometime past midnight, when we concluded it was time to retire.

Foote is coy here and suggests that his virginal young self repelled the subsequent invitation to a brothel. Whether or not this is so, he soon became by furtive subsequent visits whose purpose he was careful to conceal from his family an intimate of the city’s many whores.

These youthsome frolics are only foreshadowing for the excuses that Foote would be obliged to make many years later in the pall of the gallows. He spent the 1830s and 1840s bouncing around the growing republic — upstate New York, westward to Cleveland and St. Louis, south to Charleston where he married but lost his wife within a year to childbirth. (The son died, too.) After that, he enlisted in the cavalry and fought in the Seminole Wars.

Foote does not give us much of his sexual adventures on these trips, but between the lines it appears that the concupiscient fornicator and the New England prude ever travel side by side with him. He ships to Rio de Janeiro and does not fail to notice that “the dress of most of the women was not much better than none, being merely a short gown, all open in the neck and breast, and reaching only half way to the knee, fastened round the waist with a belt. They would make any civilized man blush from head to foot, but they were not at all particular as to what position they happened to be in.” Nevertheless, he affects shock when “a mixed-blood, half Spanish and half Indian publican” offers him a girl for the night. (According to Foote, he did not take the girl.)

As for the army, well, it “is a most dangerous and destructive place to the morals of young men. It is a school of intemperance, profanity, licentiousness, obscene language, filthy communications, and all kinds of vile and lewd company” thanks to the degrading example of officers who “when at home, or where they are known, always assume the character of gentlemen, and presume to walk in respectable society, unite with the ‘upper ten,’ and [associate] with virtuous females, who, if they knew their true character, would turn from them with disgust.”

By 1849 we find the peripatetic Foote back in his native hamlet of Northford, Connecticut, 37 years old and again, or still, preoccupying himself with the diversions of the Tenderloin. To the best of my knowledge he is the subject of no biography save his own, and since we find that the diverse sojourns of the previous 20 years have ultimately changed neither his conduct nor even his locale, we might be excused for speculating how many adventures were contrived by the author’s hand.

Wherever it was that he had been, he was becoming a worldly denizen of the bagnio.

A few months before the murder, I spent one week in the city of crime and pollution, viz., New York. As usual on former occasions, I spent my evenings and nights in a theater, gambling house, or brothel. Also on a former visit I had attended an exhibition of nudes, or model artists, as they are termed. But at this time the company had gone to New Orleans; a few of them, however, remained in New York, with one of which I had the misfortune to become acquainted. She was an arrogant prostitute, residing in a house of the higher class. I found her at the Bowery Theater; she enticed me, and I consented to accompany her home. As we entered her room she locked the door, laid aside her upper garments, and invited me to take a glass of wine with her. She poured out two glasses, and took a phial from the drawer of her toilet, drew the cork, and pretended to drop some of the contents in her glass of wine, but not a drop did she let fall. She said it was Cream of the Valley, it would give the wine a delightful flavor, and then made a motion to drop some into my glass. But I was too wide awake for her. I knew it was some drug that might upset my ideas, so I told her to save her cream, I did not need any cream of that sort. She looked at me, and said, “you are not so green as you pretend. I gues syou understand a game or two.” I replied, “I understand enough to know the nature of your cream.” And said I, “what was your object in giving it to me?” “O,” she replied, “I was only going to give you a drop or two, to make you feel keen.” She was very proud of her perfect symmetry of form, and proceeded to make a model artist of herself again, that she might give me a clear view of her model, and also of the extra manoeuvres which she had learned in the model artist plays.

After passing the night with his model artist’s “extra manoeuvres,” Foote pinched the potion for himself thinking to deploy it for his own benefit. He first called on a prostitute who had previously robbed him, engaged her charms for the night, and administered the drug to her, thereby having leisure to rob back the lost funds (“with interest,” Foote admits) as well as to leave behind a taunting note. He also found that she, too, possessed a dose of this potent Cream of the Valley, and duly replenished his supply.

Our dissolute principal was much given to exploiting his moment of notoriety for moral grandstanding, and we again should treat his account with caution.* Another author who visited Foote and published his observations in a pamphlet titled Death Cell Scenes, Or, Notes, Sketches and Momorandums of the Last Sixteen Days and Last Night of Henry Leander Foote is by no means hostile to his subject but often notices his unbecoming worldly preoccupations when he ought to be attending his imminent death with due gravity: he “showed a singular disposition to make money even at the hazard of his soul” by cranking out paintings to sell to the gawkers come to gape at him through the prison-bars and on one occasion arrives only to be brushed off as Foote is “in the height of glory and ambition, vending pamphlets and pictures to persons surrounding his cell with as much gusto as though he had to live twenty years or more!”

He was a doomed man with a keen sense of his audience; Foote even took the trouble to pre-order his own inscribed marble tombstone. (The stone can still be seen at Northford Old Cemetery in New Haven.)

He had a gift for rationalizing and segmenting his hypocrisies, surely honed by his years alternating Puritan piety with opportunistic harlotry. At the end when it could no longer be denied, he surfaced the contradiction by way of attenuating his own guilt.

“By this and other means, the hags who keep brothels contrive to get many of their recruits,” Foote wrote of the drugs like Cream of the Valley — subtly conflating his own loss of self-control with white slavery. “And if an inexperienced young man allows himself to visit their houses once, perhaps for mere curiosity, when he is not aware of any danger, they will bewitch him in some way that will induce him to come again; and so he will continue to go until his ruin is completed. Beware, young man, and shun all such places! Once in, you insensibly lose self-command. It is not easy to resist such temptations when once poisoned. These female Satans use the very arts of old Satan himself, and some that he does not use. Once in their power, you are not your own keeper.”

Not your own keeper — even as he admits and bewails his own crime, Foote wants to convey to posterity the notion of a Jekyll-and-Hyde: that there is a Foote distinct from the murderer.

Back at Northford, “my thoughts were continually revolving upon the obscene views which I had witnessed in New York, particularly upon the model artist female … I seemed to have a bewitching anxiety to see the same again, or to see something of the same kind, and this base desire I could not overcome. A curiosity to see and examine some female in the same state of nudity was constantly haunting my mind.”

Although he’s taken the care to secret the prostitutes’ powerful draught in his trunk, it is not quite he who addresses himself to the “bewitching anxiety”: he gets drunk, and then “Satan himself was certainly busy with me, driving me on to ruin with all his power … [using] me as an instrument for the destruction of innocent life.” At length, “Satan” suggests him his young cousin Emily as the object to satisfy his base desire. Foote intercepted her on the way to school and, he said, lured her into the woods to snack on some tomatoes which he had dosed with the sleeping potion after which, you know, stuff happened. For a guy who carried out a premeditated plan to incapacitate and molest his underage kin, he sure expected to be given a lot of latitude.**

But with shame! shame! do I write it, I now proceeded to examine her person, which inflamed my baser passion to an unmanageable degree; and after my eyes were satisfied, I violated and robbed her of her virgin purity. She gave no signs of feeling except to draw one deep sigh. My brutish passion was now satisfied. I meditated upon what I had done, the criminal nature of the awfully wicked deed, the meanness of the act itself, and the base stratagem which I had employed to gratify my shameful curiosity. In the first place I had no intention of doing any thing more than to satisfy my eyes; but this created a passion so strong as to overrule all better feelings, honor, and decency. I stood over the wreck of beauty, innocence, and purity, and sincerely wished I had never seen the city of New York, or any of its bewitching female satans … my head was wild, and my heart felt as if it had turned into a great stone. I would have given half of the town had I possessed it, if I could have undone what I had done that morning. But that was impossible.

And having come this far, Foote realized if he should allow her to revive and be on her way, her story would send him to prison. “As if I almost heard an audible voice,” “something” suggested to him that he murder her. Foote floridly describes himself alternately resisting and impelled to the idea until “I acceeded [sic] to the horrible proposal, and Satan used me as an insensible instrument for his nefarious, bloody, and soul-destroying purpose.” Then Satan used him to slash Emily’s neck through the windpipe.

It’s a bit difficult to disentangle the actual or purported sequence of steps to the next murder; Foote writes of it as if he was hurled into despair by his crime and only paused from his intention of suicide to murder his mother when he reflected that the incestuous rape-murder imputed him might destroy her after he was gone. We get a somewhat different picture from the period’s newspaper accounts which suggest that he was no suspect at all when Emily first turned up missing and coolly played it as if shocked, before getting drunk and bashing mom’s head with a hammer. If you liked his story about how Satan made him rape Emily, you’ll love this.

I drank several times during the forepart of the afternoon, and about three o’clock I went to get another drunk, but the jug was missing — my mother had hid it, and it was not to be found by me. This enraged me … if she had let the liquor alone, it is possible, and not improbable, that I would have drank so much as to render me incapable of making any attempt upon her life; and thereby she might have escaped entirely. But she was often very unwise in provoking me, especially when I had liquor in my head. It was a wrong way to deal with me, to take liquor from me to prevent my drinking, for I was generally sure to go and get a larger quantity and drink so much the more. But she has many times done it, and thereby caused me to behave much worse than I should otherwise have done. Late years my mother has been very petulant towards me; whether I had been drinking or not, it seemed to be about the same. This I attributed to trouble, and the influence of opium, which induced her to pack the faults of others upon me, charge me with things of which I was entirely innocent, and find fault with me when I was not in the least to blame; and to complain of things which I knew were right.

Foote insists that he tells us all this not “for the purpose of defending or screening myself from any blame” from the matricide he committed for mom’s own benefit. Just wanted to contribute to the historical record. And then he has the chutzpah to accuse a neighbor who came running to the battered woman’s shrieks of being a big old pussy for backing away and yelling for help when threatened with the bloody hammer. This is a man who required a more forceful minister, a good psychiatrist, or a better P.R. team. Even to the last, the killer’s self-awareness only amounted to his own narcissism.

“The last act of Foote in his cell,” writes the hanged man’s companion in Death Cell Scenes, “was to make use of a quantity of mus on his hair, six cents worth of which he had ordered the night previous, besides ‘two pleasant Spanish cigars.'”

* As pertains the potion specifically, Foote cites (and perhaps may be suspected of borrowing from) the story of temperance moralizer John Bartholomew Gough, who disappeared in New York for a week in 1845 and was discovered in a whorehouse, floating in an opiate daze.

** There was a witness who heard a scream, presumably by Emily. Foote’s account essentially renders the attack “non-violent” (he says, as if to complete his travesty of Eden, that at one point she shrieked when she caught sight of a snake). It really is entirely possible that he simply perpetrated an uncomplicated wilderness rape and subsequently concocted every other convenient detail. (“No intention of doing any thing more than to satisfy my eyes” indeed.)

On this day..

1816: Peter Lung, uxoricide

Posted on by

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)

On this date in 1816, middle-aged uxoricide Peter Lung was hanged in Middletown, Connecticut for the murder of his wife the previous year.

The facts of the case are simple: both Mr. and Mrs. Lung were alcoholics. Peter, a laborer, thought it was all right for him for drink as much as he wanted, but he was violently opposed to his wife Lucy doing any tippling of her own. But tipple she did, and she and her husband had frightful quarrels about it.

On July 15, 1815, Peter came home late. He found the front door wide open, no dinner on the table, and Lucy passed out cold in her bed and reeking of liquor. Her husband violently kicked her awake and then told her to make him some dinner. She told him to go fix his own food if he was so hungry.

Things went downhill from there and the argument ended with Peter punching his wife several times and then kicking her in the backside. He then went out to the garden and dug up some vegetables for the family dinner. The couple passed the rest of the night normally — for their argument, violent though it was, was typical for them.

A day or so later, Lucy began complaining that her right side was hurting her. Her side hurt too badly for her to lie down two days after the beating and she fell asleep in her rocking chair, and never woke up. The autopsy showed she’d died of internal injuries: evidently Peter’s kicks had ruptured something inside her.

He was charged with capital murder. He had a long-standing habit of mistreating his wife, and everyone knew it. The jury was decidedly unsympathetic to his protests that he’d never meant to kill her.

The Lung case is one of those miscarriages of justice that people often don’t think about: where a person is indeed culpable, but not necessarily guilty as charged. Peter obviously did not intend homicide when he and his wife had their last fight, and neither of them were aware that he’d seriously injured her until it was far too late. Certainly he was responsible for Lucy’s death, but was it manslaughter more than murder?

Connecticut’s judiciary was aware of this issue, and Lung’s original conviction in September 1815 was actually overturned as a result. But he was re-convicted of the same charge at his second trial in December. It was probably his bad reputation that ultimately doomed him.

He was hanged before “a multitude, amounting as was supposed to eleven or twelve thousand.” It was the third execution in Middlesex County.

Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, July 1, 1816.

The deportment of the prisoner on this awful occasion, was such as to justify a strong hope that by a sincere and timely repentance, he had found the mercy of his Saviour equal to the greatness and enormity of his guilt. He conversed freely on his past life — declared that he believed his wife died in consequence of the wounds he gave her, but denied that he ever intended her death — He fully acquiesced in the justice of his sentence; — that his life was justly forfeited and that it was an atonement due from him to the offended laws of society.

During the religious solemnities previous to his execution, his deportment manifested resignation and composure. He marched with the guard to the fatal spot, ascended the Gallows, warned the silent and solemn auditory, against the evils of intemperance, and ungoverned passions; and a few minutes before four o’clock, was launched into eternity. The official duty of the execution was performed with great propriety and with such fatal exactness that the unfortunate sufferer sunk into the arms of Death without a single struggle, and almost in the same moment, was a tenant of both worlds. The day was pleasant, and few occasions of this kind we believe, have drawn together a greater concourse of spectators.

Among the immense crowd assembled in this place to witness the execution last week, a regular company of pick-pockets was present, which must have enriched their finds very considerably, as a number of gentlemen were deprived of their Pocket Books, containing money and notes to a large amount, with a dexterity which would do honor to the most regular bred gentry in the streets of London. A very valuable horse was also taken from a stable in this city, the night succeeding.

On this day..

1642: George Spencer, pork loin

Posted on by

On this date in 1642, George Spencer paid the penalty at the New Haven (Connecticut) colony for a pig-fucking that he probably never perpetrated.

Seven and a half weeks previous, a farmer named John Wakeman had reported to magistrates that his pregnant sow had delivered a litter of healthy piglets … plus one abomination from the nightmares of H.P. Lovecraft and Ron Jeremy.

Itt had no haire on the whole body, the skin was very tender, and of a reddish white collour like a childs; the head most straing, itt had butt one eye in the midle of the face, and thatt large and open, like some blemished eye of a man; over the eye, in the bottome of the foreheade which was like a childes, a thing of flesh grew forth and hung downe, itt was hollow, and like the mans instrument of generation.

Genetics is a funny thing. Once in a while the little variations in a new generation will produce an adaptive advantage that takes the species another step down its evolutionary path.

And then other times what you get is dickface swineclops.

As so often with a proper monster story, it was the frightened townsfolk who produced the real horror.

The resemblance of this poor (and mercifully stillborn) pig to a man — “nose, mouth and chinne deformed, butt nott much unlike a childs, the neck and eares had allso such resemblance” — looked like palpable divine anger to New Haven worthies, and inspired a suitably inquisitorial response.

Its target was localized to George Spencer, a former servant to the pig’s former owner. Spencer had a bum eye himself plus a reputation as a “prophane, lying, scoffing and lewd speritt.” With a model of heredity we might strain to credit as primitive, it emerged as widespread suspicion that soon manifested into fact that Spencer had fathered the penis-headed chimera.

Maybe George Spencer really did go hog wild. Who really knows? But the account of the “investigation” — in which the only actual evidence was Spencer’s own confession plus his mutant “progeny” — has every hallmark of the false confessions whose prevalence is only lately becoming well-understood. European and American “witches” were also telling their persecutors just what they wanted to hear in the mid-17th century.

Spencer denied the charges at first. The magistrate Stephen Goodyear(e)* interrogated him: did Spencer not “take notice of something in [the monster pig] like him”? Goodyear implied that they already knew Spencer was guilty.

During a nervous pause, which Goodyear took to be Spencer preparing his soul to unburden itself but a less hostile viewer might have taken to be the frightened farmhand fretting about how he was going to escape with his neck, Goodyear hit him with Proverbs 28:13. It’s a nice dual-purpose verse to stamp the divine imprimatur on the good cop-bad cop approach: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.”

Spencer wasn’t getting anywhere denying everything. He decided to try confessing and getting in on that mercy.

(Even at this, he told someone else that he had only confessed “for favor”. Upon hearing this, Goodyear stalked back to Spencer’s cell and made him commit to the confession.)

The next day, a team of town grandees showed up to get the details. Again, Spencer denied it, but now his previous day’s remarks hemmed him in. His story was shifty; he changed the location of the sin from the sty to the stable, varied between a half-hour and two hours engaged in his sin.

By the time of the trial that commenced on March 2, Spencer — perhaps now realizing that the proverb he ought to have heeded was “don’t talk to police” — was back to full denial. This time he stuck to it all the way through the proceedings, and little good it did him as witness after witness who had heard various iterations of his confession reported the admission. The judges had to decide how to adjudicate this kind of case at all, and they decided to go straight to the Pentateuch.

according to the fundamentall agreement, made and published by full and generall consent, when the plantation began and government was settled, that the judiciall law of God given by Moses and expounded in other parts of scripture, so far as itt is a hedg and a fence to the morrall law, and neither ceremoniall nor tipicall, nor had any referrence to Canaan, hath an everlasting equity in itt, and should be the rule of their proceedings. They judged the crime cappitall, and thatt the prisoner and the sow, according to Levit. 20 and 15, should be put to death.

By hanging-day on April 8, Spencer was still refusing to admit the charges, and he even continued his obstinacy to the gallows — giving only the sort of standard-issue hanging-day exhortation to straighten those laces and not skip church that everyone always gave. To this he still “joyned a denyall of his fact.”

Only at the very last, with the noose about his neck, “and being tolde it was an ill time now to provoke God when he was falling into his hands, as a righteous and seveere judge who had vengeanc at hand for all his other sins, so for his impudency and atheisme, he justified the sentence as righteous, and fully confessed the bestiality in all the scircumstances,” meanwhile blaming for the probable damnation of his soul a sawyer in the audience named Will Harding who tried to keep the flesh alive by counseling Spencer to just keep his damned mouth shut and not confess anything in the first place. This death’s-edge admission would have satisfied onlookers, but ought not satisfy us; the complex psychology of false confessions with their underlying fear of punishment and need to please a captor are potentially even sharper at the communal performance of a public execution — the offender’s last opportunity to spiritually rejoin his own community. Spencer knew he was doomed; he knew everyone thought he was lying; he would presumably have genuinely feared hell and deeply desired to give his own certain death meaning. Somewhere in this id soup is surely reason enough to say the thing his friends and neighbors all but willed him to say.

Thing said, the poor sow was butchered under Spencer’s eyes first (as Leviticus demands). Then Spencer was strangled on hemp, “God opening his mouth before his death, to give him the glory of his rightousnes, to the full satisfaction of all then present.”

* Goodyear(e)‘s daughter Hannah would eventually marry the son of John Wakeman, whose sow it was that gave birth to the pig that started all the ruckus. In the early 1650s, Stephen Goodyear would favor colonial authorities with suspicions of a witch in his very own household, but that poor servant managed to avoid execution.

On this day..