On this date in 1691, Jack Collet was hanged for “sacrilegious burglary.”
This little-known highwayman ditched an apprenticeship with a Cheapside upholsterer to take the road, and carved a niche as the guy what robbed while dressed up as a bishop. (Once having lost his ecclesiastical garb at dice, he re-robed by sticking up a churchman on the road and forcing his victim to dis-.)
“As if he had been determined to live by the Church,” clucks the Newgate calndar, “he was at last apprehended for sacrilege and burglary, in breaking open the vestry of Great St Bartholomew’s, in London, in company with one Christopher Ashley, alias Brown, and stealing from thence the pulpit cloth and all the communion plate.”
For this bid to render un-from God, Caesar rendered Collet unto Tyburn.
On this day..
- 1945: Harold Pringle, the last Canadian military execution
- 2010: Akram al-Samawi
- 1530: Johnnie Armstrong, border reiver
- 1723: Thomas Athoe the Elder, and Thomas Athoe the Younger
- 1453: The garrison of Poucques, Jacques de Lalaing's cannonball killers
- 2007: Jafar Kiani, stoned
- 1731: Jose de Antequera, Paraguayan comunero rebel
- 1655: Grete Adrian, Ruethen witch
- 1983: Aleksandr Kravchenko, in Chikatilo's place
- 1917: Gasim, by Lawrence of Arabia
- 1600: Jean Livingston, Lady Waristoun
- Themed Set: The Ballad
- 1947: Ding Mocun, not as hot a lay in real life