Corpses Strewn: Collmore and his gang
February 18th, 2016 Headsman
For this month’s brief but quite graphic Corpses Strewn series (pair, really) concerning Irish outlaws who were hanged and cut apart in 1719, we are indebted to the curated collection of gallows broadsheets in James Kelly’s Gallows Speeches From Eighteenth-Century Ireland.
Gallows Speeches delivers what it promises to the tune of 61 broadsheets and one pamphlet transcribed from surviving originals; we’ll certainly have occasion to revisit some choicest morsels in future posts.
But Kelly really makes the book with a 58-page introductory analysis of this genre’s evolution through the 18th century, and the difficult job we have in posterity to situate such artifacts confidently in their own world: how accurate were they? how much did the genre’s formula and the demands of commercial publishers swallow up the convict’s “true” voice? how wide a readership did these broadsheets enjoy, and how did the general populace engage with them?
We don’t have answers in these specific instances or hardly any others, either. If nothing else, their discomfiting content — a performance of spectacular public butchery, preceded by the criminals’ own self-conscious performance of contrition — give us a window into the period of the death penalty as exemplary deterrence.
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February 18, 1719: Charles Calahar alias Collmore
February 21, 1719: Collmore’s nephew Patrick Carraghar
On this day..
- 1935: Benita von Falkenhayn and Renate von Natzmer, Germany's last beheadings by axe - 2020
- 1820: John and Lavinia Fisher - 2019
- 1974: Khosrow Golsorkhi and Keramat Daneshian, Iranian revolutionaries - 2018
- 1836: Felipe Santiago Salaverry, President of Peru - 2017
- 1719: Collmore, Hang'd, Quarter'd and his Intrals burn'd - 2016
- 1813: W. Clements, War of 1812 deserter - 2015
- 1478: The Duke of Clarence, in a butt of malmsey - 2014
- 1862: Margaret Coghlan, the last woman hanged in Tasmania - 2013
- 1799: Constantine Hangerli, tax man - 2012
- 1957: Walter James Bolton, the last hanged in New Zealand - 2011
- 1960: Oliviu Beldeanu, for the Berne incident - 2010
- 1957: Dedan Kimathi, Mau Mau commander - 2009
- 1873: Vasil Levski, for Bulgarian independence - 2008
Entry Filed under: Corpses Strewn
