1778: Samuel Lyons and Samuel Ford, Fort Mifflin deserters
September 2nd, 2016 Headsman
In Philadelphia this date in 1778, “Lyons, Ford and Wilson, late Lieutenants, and John Lawrence, late gunner, in the navy of this State, were taken from the gaol to one of the gallies lying off Market Street wharf, where the two former were shot agreeable to their sentence, but the two latter reprieved.” (Pennsylvania Evening Post, September 2, 1778)
Samuel Lyons, Samuel Ford, John Wilson and John Lawrence all served on various of the American “row galley” fleet that gave the American revolutionaries at least some seaborne presence in their fight against the world’s preeminent naval power.
The four, executed and pardoned alike, had deserted the American garrison when that preeminent power put Fort Mifflin in the Delaware River under siege the previous autumn. (There’s a very detailed account of this operation here; the British eventually captured the fort from its badly outnumbered defenders.)
While desertion between the antagonists was a common phenomenon in the American Revolution, this made for an especially bad look a year later once the British abandoned Philadelphia to the aggressively triumphalist Patriots.
Even so, the last-minute clemencies alongside the actual shootings were also very much a part of the Continental Army’s delicate enforcement of discipline, in an environment where it feared that being either too lenient or too harsh could fatally undermine the tenuous morale of the rank and file. Every enforcement was considered in the light of its public impression.
“The number of spectators was very great,” our short report in the Evening Post concluded. “And it is hoped the melancholy scene will have a proper effect upon the profligate and thoughtless, who do not seriously consider that the crime of desertion is attended with the dreadful consequences of wilful perjury.”
On this day..
- 2014: Steven Sotloff, two lives - 2020
- 1853: Gasparich Mark Kilit - 2019
- 1937: Alexander Shlyapnikov, Workers' Opposition leader - 2018
- 1942: Tom Williams, IRA martyr - 2017
- 1914: Eugene Odent, the mayor of Senlis - 2015
- 1944: Olavi Laiho, the last Finn executed in Finland - 2014
- Daily Double: The last executions in Finland - 2014
- 1887: Josiah Terrill, "I ain't guilty of this here charge" - 2013
- 1944: Six Milice collaborators in France - 2012
- 1772: Moses Paul - 2011
- 1983: Jimmy Lee Gray, drunk-gassed - 2010
- 1685: Dame Alice Lisle, first victim of the Bloody Assizes - 2009
- 1724: Half-Hangit Maggie Dickson - 2008
- Themed Set: Judging Abortion - 2008
Entry Filed under: 18th Century,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Desertion,England,Execution,History,Last Minute Reprieve,Military Crimes,Not Executed,Occupation and Colonialism,Pardons and Clemencies,Pennsylvania,Public Executions,Shot,Soldiers,U.S. Military,USA,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1770s, 1778, american revolution, fort mifflin, philadelphia, samuel ford, samuel lyons, september 2
