Colonial counterfeiter Owen Syllavan (Sullivan) was executed in New York on this date in 1756.
An Irish runaway, Syllavan followed an indenture to the North American colonies and wound up enlisted in the army during the French and Indian War. As a militia armorer, he picked up the smithing skills with which he would later turn out plates to to clone the colonies’ bills of exchange.
Anthony Vaver, author of Bound With An Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America, tells the charming crook’s story on Vaver’s blog Early American Crime; click onward to find out whether Syllavan’s gallows appeal for his 29 confederates to get out of the currency fraud game saved their necks.*
* Anthony Vaver has also guest-blogged for Executed Today.
On this day..
- 1682: Four at a Lisbon auto de fe - 2020
- 1942: Julius "Babe" Hoffmeister, alcoholic POW - 2019
- 1896: Five Persians by gatching - 2018
- 1643: The Book of Sports - 2017
- 1945: Sudeten Germans, known but to God - 2015
- 1527: Johann Hüglin, Meersburg martyr - 2014
- 1794: Elisabeth of France, sister of the king - 2013
- 1956: Andreas Dimitriou and Michalis Karaolis, the first EOKA men hanged - 2012
- 1900: Three Algerians in Setif - 2011
- 1821: Stephen Merrill Clark, boy arsonist - 2010
- 1994: John Wayne Gacy, scary clown - 2009
- 1987: Sadamichi Hirasawa, by old age - 2008