We have touched in the past on the odd practice of executing effigies of criminals, a custom for which France had a particular penchant.
On this date in 1638, mannequins of Andre Armand, Gabriel Bonnaud, Sebastien Mareschal, and Simon Armand were “hanged” for murder.
As described in this French text, proceedings were delayed when, the previous November, the wife and mother-in-law of one of the absconded offenders appealed the sentence in their own inimitable way: by vandalizing the mannequins.
Thanks to Sonechka for deciphering the archaic French.
On this day..
- 2011: Yaqub Ali, stabber
- 546: Croesus
- 1866: Charles Carrington
- 1963: Stanislaw Jaros, twice-failed assassin
- 1945: Robert E. Folkes, the first condemned man to see the Oregon gas chamber
- 1900: Geronimo Parra and Antonio Flores, the last hanged in El Paso
- 1771: Captain David Ferguson, for the murder of his cabin-boy
- 1655: Jane Hopkins, Bermuda's last known witch execution
- 1917: Sub-Lt. Edwin Dyett, shot at dawn
- 1993: Westley Allan Dodd, child molester
- 1527: Felix Manz, the first Anabaptist martyr
- 1463: Not François Villon