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1858: Peter Williams and Abraham Cox, to the air of Old Ironsides

Add comment August 27th, 2018 Headsman

Peter Williams and Abraham (or Abram) Cox were hanged on this date in 1858* in Auburn, Maine, for the maritime murder of the crew of the Albion Cooper.

They’ll tell you all about it in a lyrical “last words” that would have you believe they did a musical number on the scaffold, to the air of the Oliver Wendell Holmes poem “Old Ironsides”. A couple of fine gentlemen have done us the favor of making a shanty of the poem on YouTube, if this helps put you in the mood, although, since “Williams and Cox” imitate Holmes’s meter and nautical theme but not his brevity, you’ll need to run it back a few times if you mean to make it to the end.

And a one and a two …

* The Espy file of U.S. executions erroneously attributes the double hanging to August 27, 1860.

On this day..

• 1830: Ebenezer Cox, gone postal gunsmith - 2017
• 1870: Charles Harth, Prussian spy - 2016
• 1824: Johann Christian Woyzeck, non compos mentis? - 2015
• 1610: Roger Cadwallador, English priest - 2014
• 1853: John Hurley, medicalized - 2013
• 1628: Milady de Winter, Three Musketeers villainess - 2012
• 1500: 18 thieves in Rome - 2011
• 1679: St. David Lewis, the last Welsh martyr - 2010
• 30 B.C.E: Caesarion, "Little Caesar" - 2009
• 1979: Eleven by a Firing Squad in Iran - 2008

Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Hanged,Maine,Murder,Public Executions,USA

Tags: 1850s, 1858, abraham cox, abram cox, auburn, oliver wendell holmes, peter williams, poetry

1638: The melancholy Dorothy Talby

8 comments December 6th, 2008 Headsman

On this date in 1638, Dorothy Talby was hanged in Boston for breaking the neck of her baby daughter (aptly named “Difficulty”) “in order to save the child from future misery.”

Though not the first execution of a woman in the territory of the future United States, it is the first that is reasonably well-documented … and for a disturbed, possibly insane, woman striking out against her troubled family life, a case that resonated for later Americans like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

For those of us, post-Andrea Yates, for whom “post-partum depression” has become a sadly familiar term of criminology, it is likely to resonate as well.

Mrs. Talby was esteemed for godliness, etc., but after the birth of the child she became melancholy and possessed of delusions. She sometimes tried to kill herself and her husband by refusing to eat “meat” and not permitting them to eat it, saying it had been so revealed to her. (Source)

Take a break from the Headsman’s noodlings and instead enjoy the thoughtful treatment given Talby’s case by crime blogger extraordinaire Laura James.

On this day..

• 1787: John Bly and Charles Rose, Shaysites - 2018
• 1889: Two Apaches in Arizona - 2017
• 2012: An unknown organ donor, executed at a hospital - 2016
• Feast Day of St. Nicholas - 2015
• 1985: Carroll Edward Cole - 2014
• 1938: Martha Marek, Zeliopaster - 2013
• 2006: A father-daughter drug smuggling team - 2012
• 1769: Two weavers, for the Spitalfield riots - 2011
• 1209: The Oxford clerks - 2010
• 1823: Dr. Edme Castaing, the first to kill with morphine - 2009
• 41 B.C.E.: Arsinoe IV, Cleopatra's sister - 2007

Entry Filed under: 17th Century,Abortion and Infanticide,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Diminished Capacity,England,Execution,Hanged,Massachusetts,Milestones,Murder,Public Executions,USA,Women

Tags: 1638, 1680s, andrea yates, boston, december 6, depression, dorothy talby, filicide, nathaniel hawthorne, oliver wendell holmes, post-partum depression