For the next two days, we draw a pair of odd cases from the ranks of Her Majesty’s men at arms.
Recently spooked by debacles in the Crimean War and a barely-suppressed Indian mutiny — both of which strained the army’s entire manpower — Britain’s Secretary of War spent the late 1860s and early 1870s putting the empire on new military footing.
These “Cardwell Reforms” ramped up recruitment, lowered enlistment barriers, eliminated inefficiencies and shifted more self-defense burdens onto Commonwealth dominions. (This is also when the Royal Navy got rid of flogging.)
The result was a British army both larger and leaner, and better-suited to its task of running the Pax Britannia.
Our next two days find two products of that force making their unfortunate intersection with another field’s titan of industrial-age rationalization: William Marwood, the dread hangman even then in the process of introducing the long drop and moving the ancient art of hanging towards a rational formula for scientifically breaking a man’s neck.
A consummate professional (this is his business card), Marwood insisted on the description of “executioner” — not “hangman”.
On this day..
- 1987: Lawrence Anini, The Law
- 1623: Reinier van Oldenbarnevelt, family tradition
- 1825: El Pirata Cofresi
- 1929: Luther Baker, moonshine bootlegger
- 1560: Baron de Castelnau, for the Amboise Conspiracy
- 4 BCE: Antipater, disinherited Herodian
- 1875: Richard Coates, gunner and rapist
- 1944: Roger Bushell and others for the Great Escape
- 1946: Laszlo Baky and Laszlo Endre, Hungarian Holocaust authors
- 1946: Phillip and William Heincy, father and son
- 1935: Thomasina Sarao, miscalculated
- 1796: Francois de Charette, Vendee rebel
- 1720: Charles Vane, an unsinkable pirate