On this date in 1770, inveterate burglar William Linsey was hanged in Worcester, Mass.
Linsey never killed anyone but just couldn’t lay off the thieving — as he owned himself in a gallows broadsheet: “Having so often escaped with impunity, for my wretched crimes, I was under no awe or restraint, neither learning God nor regarding man, resolutely bent upon working wickedness.” That didn’t mean he didn’t get caught: he frequently did, and once was pilloried, flogged, and branded all in the same day as punishment for fraud.
The quote is courtesy of a Linsey profile by friend of the blog and occasional guest poster Anthony Vaver, on his site Early American Crime — which notes that Linsey ultimately fell foul of a sort of colonial three-strikes law escalating penalties for mere property crimes all the way to the gallows in the case of repeat offenders.
On this day..
- 1944: Zainal Mustafa, resister
- 1974: Walkiria Afonso da Costa, the last Araguaia guerrilla
- 2009: Two Somali spies
- 1704: "French Peter"
- 1781: Gaspard de Besse, social bandit
- 2014: Reyhaneh Jabbari
- Feast Day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian
- 2006: Danny Rolling, the Gainesville Ripper
- 330 B.C.E.: Philotas, Alexander the Great Companion
- 1769: Nicolas de Lafreniere and four others for the Louisiana Rebellion
- 1415: French prisoners at the Battle of Agincourt
- 2007: Five young men