Stephen Brennan was sent to the island for bushranging. He was tried there and found guilty of the murder of another convict. There had been no quarrel between the two men, who were as friendly as circumstances permitted under the rigid discipline, nevertheless Brennan suddenly struck Patrick Lynch a blow with a stone-breaker’s hammer, and then stabbed him with a knife. The murder was committed avowedly so that the perpetrator might be hung, and thus escape the harsh treatment he was subjected to, and it is not improbable that it was committed with the consent of the victim, for although there is no evidence of this in this case, it is well known that men had actually drawn lots in Norfolk Island, to decide which should murder the other and get hung for the crime.
This is a very compelling parable, but as a factual matter we’re not sure the basis of the word “avowedly” here; be that mutual lot-drawing trend as it may, the reporting accessible from the National Library of Australia archives suggests that Brennan mounted a vigorousdefense, and continued to claim to the foot of the gallows that the homicide was strictly self-defense.
Incidents of “suicide by hangman” had been known among the prison population under the island’s rigorous recent commandant, Joseph Anderson.
But in the early 1840s, the once notoriously draconian penal colony was being run by noted reformer Alexander Maconochie, who relaxed prison discipline with mixed results. (Rougher varieties of discipline would be reimposed thereafter, contributing to the prison riot that resulted in the hanging of bushranger Jackey Jackey.)
Bushrangers, Victoria, Australia, 1852 by William Strutt.
Escaped convicts or other outlaws who could live rough on the remote frontiers of British imperial authority, rangers of the bush whether as gentleman outlaws or merely as robbers embodied the personal freedom so antithetical to the great penal colonies. Not uncommonly, they married that persona to a trenchant critique of the prisons state they escaped.
And no wonder.
The prisoners of all classes in Government are fed with the coarsest food; governed with the most rigid discipline; subjected to the stern, and frequently capricious and tyrannical will of an overseer; for the slightest offence (sometimes for none at all the victim of false accusation) brought before a magistrate, whom the Government has armed with the tremendous powers of a summary jurisdiction, and either flogged, or sentenced to solitary confinement, or retransported to an iron gang, where he must work in heavy irons, or to a penal settlement, where he will be ruled with a rod of iron.
Bailed Up, by Tom Roberts, depicts a Bushranger stagecoach robbery. (Details)
While they filled up the hangman’s docket in the 19th century and they weren’t all picturesque political refuseniks, Bushrangers by and large enjoy a positive posthumous image, celebratory songs and everything.
One hundred fifty years ago today, Qing China’s last great ruler, the Empress Dowager Cixi, having seized the helm of the state she would drive for 47 years, had her deposed predecessor executed.
Formally, China was being “ruled” at this time by the illustrious Tongzhi Emperor, age five.
This child’s old man, depressively self-medicating at the drubbing China was taking in the Second Opium War, had died young, leaving his only son the throne, in care of a council of regents.
As one of the late monarch’s key advisors, Sushun was among that eight-strong panel, and he was popularly regarded as the worst of the lot — vicious, drunken, spendthrift, and just the guy to blame (along with co-regents Zaiyuan and Duanhua) for all the vicious, drunken, and spendthrift stuff the deceased emperor had put his seal to. Or, just the sort of stories trumped up by the rivals of the man really steering the state. Either way is good.
The Empress Dowager Cixi (1905 photograph)
More perilous for Sushun was his burgeoning rivalry with “the Concubine Yi,” the master of harem politics and mother of the new boy-emperor. She had long distrusted the courtier.
Recast in both title and name with her lover’s passing, the woman now known as “Empress Dowager Cixi” was able to obstruct the regency’s policies. And she did one better than that, intrepidly allying with disgruntled princes to engineer a coup d’etat against Sushun’s faction.
The end of Sushun’s regency arrived within months, and transpired within days: less than a week separated Sushun’s liberty from his beheading in a vegetable market. (Striking a liberal pose, Cixi declined to have him put to death by lingchi.) Cixi’s side simply took him into custody, decreed his execution on the attainder of a secret committee, and speedily carried it out. Zaiyuan and Duanhua were ordered to commit suicide the same day.
But whatever the form, the poor torn country was in the hands of the Empress Dowager Cixi from here on in.
For a half-century, she would be the consummate survivor — but it was survival during an epoch of terminal decline for the Qing. Riven by conflicts within and without, the imperial system simply couldn’t adapt.
And when the cagey Empress Dowager finally died in her 73rd year, the whole enterprise came apart.
On her deathbed in 1908, Cixi named as emperor the toddler Puyi. A few years later, revolution ensured that Puyi would be the last person ever to hold that title.
On this date in 1823, Rafael Riego was hanged in Madrid.
Riego was a leading exponent of the supine cause of Spanish liberalism during the 1810s reign of the feckless Ferdinand VII, who had reversed Spain’s extraordinarily progressive 1812 constitution.
On the first day of the 1820s, he led an army mutiny that forced the king to restore that constitution.
Feckless Ferdinand went along with the new sheriff, and the result was a three-year interregnum of constitutional government — the Trienio Liberal.
But the Bourbon king was only too pleased to solicit the aid of Europe’s counterrevolutionary monarchs.
In 1823, a French expedition — the “hundred thousand sons of St. Louis — invaded Spain at Ferdinand’s invitation and swiftly crushed Riego’s liberals. Then Ferdinand crushed Riego himself.
Induced like Cranmer to sully his reputation by recanting in the vain hope of a pardon (and by starvation and other coercions), Riego was instead stripped of military honors, given a summary trial, and ignominiously drug to the gallows in a basket.
Text of a propaganda leaflet that circulated in England following Riego’s execution. (Source)
Post-Riego, Spain’s liberal and absolutist factions still had years of bloody fighting and martyr-making yet to go.
And we’re not just talking 19th century. There’s a Himno de Riego, which was also the anthem of the 1930s Spanish Republic that Franco laid low.
On this date in 1600, the emergent Tokugawa Shogunate beheaded three men as rebels in Kyoto after they lost one of the pivotal battles in Japanese history.
The Battle of Sekigahara, on Oct. 21 of that same year, had pitted the shogunate’s founder Tokugawa Ieyasu against a coalition known as the Western Army.
This was the culmination of Japan’s bloody process of national unification.
The preceding ruler, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, had more or less unified Japan under central authority to end a century of civil war. But when Hideyoshi shuffled off leaving a five-year-old heir, a squabbling coterie of regents began elbowing for position.
The political scene eventually crystallized into one of those regents — the said Tokugawa Ieyasu — against all the others. Give yourself a gold star if you guessed that the guys who had their heads lopped off by the Tokugawa Shogunate played for the “all others” team.
Ishida Mitsunari
Ishida Mitsunari, a daimyo who served the late national unifier Hideyoshi, became the focal point of the opposition to Ieyasu.*
Mitsunari failed in a 1599 assassination bid on Ieyasu, and so the two came to outright warfare the following year — a war that Ieyasu economically won by routing Mitsunari at the Battle of Sekigahara.
That, in turn, cleared the way for Tokugawa Ieyasu eventually to take the title of shogun and found his eponymous dynasty — a dynasty whose intellectuals circled that decisive battle as the keystone in the arch.
“Evildoers and bandits were vanquished and the entire realm submitted to Lord Ieyasu, praising the establishment of peace and extolling his martial virtue. That this glorious era that he founded may continue for ten thousands upon ten thousands of generations, coeval with heaven and earth!”
It was this date in 1978 that Saleh, here just months on the job after a predecessor was assassinated, finished taking his demonstrative vengeance against a bushel of soldiers alleged to have been planning to overhrow him. New York Times, Nov. 6, 1978:
Vengeance is swift in the lands at the southern tip of the Red Sea. On Oct. 26, 17 persons convicted of attempting a coup against Somali President Mohammed Siad Barre last April were publicly executed by firing squad in Mogadishu. The 17 were said to have sought to overthrow President Barre because of his handling of the so-called Ogaden war with Ethiopia which led to a rupture in Somalia’s alliance with the Soviet Union and ended with Somalia forces retreating ignominiously from the Ethiopian province they had tried to annex. In a similar vein, after an abortive coup in North Yemen against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s pro-Egyptian and pro-Western regime last month, the firing squads were busy. Soon after the attempted coup was crushed, nine army officers were executed. Yesterday, 12 more men were shot. Four of the accused were reported to have confessed at their trials that they had received money and arms from radical Libya.
On this date in 1818, murderer Matthew Clydesdale was publicly hanged at Glasgow’s High Court building, along with a habitual burglar named Simon Ross.*
But they weren’t there only to mete out justice to the killer of elderly Alexander Love: there as another attraction, too. Ross, the small-timer, was done for after his hanging and buried away unceremoniously.
But Clydesdale’s body “was put into a coffin, and was forthwith conveyed, for the purpose of dissection, to the Professor of Anatomy. The cart was followed by a large portion of the crowd.” (London Times, Nov. 11, 1818)
Before a mob of rubbernecking — sometimes fainting — onlookers, the flesh that had lately belonged to Matthew Clydesdale was subjected to the fashionable and creepy science of galvanism.
Andrew Ure and James Jeffray hooked up a galvanic battery and for an hour excited the corpse with various electrically-charged proddings. Ure, at least, dreamt of the hypothesis that the right jolt to the right spot might in principle achieve a Frankenstein-like reanimation.
We are almost willing to imagine, that if, without cutting into and wounding the spinal marrow and blood-vessels in the neck, the pulmonary organs had been set a-playing at first … life might have been restored. This event, however little desirable with a murderer, and perhaps contrary to law, would yet have been pardonable in one instance, as it would have been highly honourable and useful to science.
I mean, you’d have to think it would at least be good enough for tenure.
every muscle of the body was immediately agitated with convulsive movements … the leg was thrown out with such violence as nearly to overturn one of the assistants, who in vain attempted to prevent its extension …
Every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action: rage, horror, despair, anguish,and ghastly smiles united their hideous expression in the murderer’s face …
When the one rod was applied to the slight incision in the tip of the forefinger, the fist being previously clenched, that finger extended instantly; and from the convulsive agitation of the arm, he seemed to point to the different spectators, some of whom thought he had come to life.
* Two others condemned for the same date’s harvest of souls — James Boyd (housebreaking) and Margaret Kennedy (passing forged notes) — were reprieved.
On this date in 1324, Ireland entered the witch-burning club by burning to death servant Petronilla de Meath for the infernal traffickings of her escaped mistress.
Kyteler was on to her fourth husband and had done well from her previous matches: a little too well, in fact. The various stepchildren from Kyteler’s various marriages were aggrieved that she took the assets she married into, and lavished them on her own son from the first union — a lad sporting the unfortunate handle of William Outlaw, and the unfortunate profession of moneylender.
When these restive relations presented to the local bishop a complaint couched in a supernatural hocus-pocus, family spat met an emerging and violent continent-wide jurisprudence around huntingimpiety. That bishop was English-born and French-trained Franciscan Richard de Ledrede, who saw behind the tissue of rumor and folklore a diabolical hand bent on tearing down the edifice of faith.
In this he was merely a man before his time. Civil law in these parts had previously treated witchcraft as a petty criminal offense, but in the century to come it would be promoted to existential menace, with the body count to match. That transformation was already well underway closer to Europe’s continental heart.
A veritable witches’ brew of dangerous charges against Alice ensued: that she spellbound men to steal their money; that she conducted arcane magical rituals to summon demonic aid; that she took a supernatural familiar to bed; and more. Alice and William had their own clout, however, and the case graduated into a rousing political donnybrook against the controversial bishop, “this vile, rustic vagabond from England”** — who, not obtaining the cooperation expected, outraged and/or terrified his congregants further by placing his diocese under an interdict.*
Alice eventually escaped Ireland no worse the wear — at least bodily — while William Outlaw got off with a penance.
But their politically punchless servant Petronilla (or Petronella) de Meath was left holding the bag and achieving an unwanted milestone. She would be made to confess to a litany that, while familiar by now, must have been exotic stuff in 1324 Kilkenny — a brand-new import courtesy of the church hierarchy. We’ll give this as translated from the Latin Contemporary Narrative of the proceedings by William Renwick Riddell in “The First Execution for Witchcraft in Ireland,” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, Mar. 1917
On this same day was burned Petronilla of Midia, the heretic, one of the accomplices of the said Dame Alice, who after she had been flogged by the Bishop through six parishes for her sorceries, then being in custody, confessed publicly before all the clergy and the people that at the instance of the said Alice she had wholly denied the faith of Christ and of the Church, and that she had at Alice’s instigation sacrificed in three places to devils, in each of which places she had sacrificed three cocks at cross-roads without the city to a certain demon. who called himself Robert Artson (filiam Artis) one of the inferior order from Hell, by shedding their blood and tearing them limb from limb, from the intestines of which, with spiders and black worms like scorpions with a certain plant called millefoil and other plants and disgusting worms along with the brain and the swaddling bands of a child dead without baptism, she, in the skull of a certain thief who had been beheaded, and on the instruction of the said Alice, made many confections, ointments, and powders for afflicting the bodies of the faithful, and for producing love and hatred and for making the faces of certain women on the use of certain incantations appear to certain persons to be hored like goats. She also confessed that many times she at the instance of the said Alice and sometimes in her presence had consulted devils and received responses; and that she had agreed with her (Alice) that she (Alice) should be the mediator between her and the said devil Robert, her (Alice’s) friend.
She also confessed publicly that with her own eyes she was a witness when the said demon in the form of three Ethopians carrying three iron rods in their hands appeared to her said mistress (Alice) in broad daylight and (while she was looking on) knew her (Alice) carnally, and after such a shameful act he with his own hand wiped clean the place where the crime was committed with linen from her bed.
Amongst other things she said that she with her said mistress often made a sentence of excommunication against her own husband with wax candles lighted and repeated expectoration, as their rules required. And though she was indeed herself an adept in this accursed art of theirs, she said she was nothing in comparison with her mistress, from whom she had learned all these things and many more; and indeed in all the realm of the King of England there was none more
skilled or equal to her in this art …
Publicly confessing her detestable crimes, she was burned in presence of an infinite multitude of people with due solemnity.
And this was the first heretical sorceress burned in Ireland.
A podcast about this case for Irish Heritage Week can be found here or here. (Two different links, but the same podcast.)
Feminist artist Judy Chicago set a place for this unfortunate woman at her Dinner Party, an installation piece featuring dining places for 39 notable women from history.
On Oct. 27, 1972, North Vietnamese communists seized the town of Ban Kengkok, near Savannakhet.
Though several other western missionaries escaped, and were evacuated by helicopter, Anderson and Kosin were captured and tied up in a hut.
A mission to extricate them was scratched — allegedly from on high because the ongoing secret negotiations between the U.S. and North Vietnam on ending the war had just reached a turning point. Someone evidently felt this a skirmish across the border concerning (and possibly killing) good Christian heartland girls might prove politically inflammatory at this delicate moment.*
So it didn’t happen, and that October 1972 diplomatic breakthrough eventually formed the basis of the Paris Peace Accords, publicly unveiled in January 1973, that set the framework for American withdrawal and gave Henry Kissinger his controversial Nobel Peace Prize.
This was all very nice — but also very far from Anderson and Kosin, who were left to swallow to the dregs their sacrificial draught.
A coded message sent early on Nov. 2, 1972 (American radio operators intercepted it) ordered their immediate execution, and the directive was accomplished without delicacy: the hut they were held in was simply torched, with them still inside.
It’s also a couple of trips overseas, a long move, a random hospitalization, and whatever else it is that comprises a life.
Back when I first started toying with this concept, I told people who asked where the material came from that the annals held such a vast forest of heads on pikes that if the blog didn’t go for 3-5 years it would only be for want of its writer’s energy.
The sentiment was a means of setting a bar for myself. Short of three to five years, the project would have been ill-done, relative to my vision for it, no matter how compelling the reason to abandon it.
Though it’s absurd in a site that’s all about endings, I have to admit that I never thought about what winding down would look like — what comes after three to five years, and when.
Although a great deal of the lowest-hanging fruit has obviously been plucked, the upper branches are so heavy with ripe delectables that there would be ample scope for three to five more years without even counting on new cases. (As we observed last year, more human beings are added to the executioner’s register day by day than are disposed of in this chronicle.)
I wouldn’t bet on that longevity … but then, I wouldn’t have bet on actually making it this long in the first place.
Charley Workhorse
As always, I depend heavily on guest contributors, enumerated in detail below.
But special gratitude is due (and regularly experienced) to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project.
For reasons best known to herself, Meaghan “adopted” this site sometime after she discovered it and has been an absolutely prolific contributor — all while maintaining a vast and important site of her own on missing persons in the U.S. By my count, Meaghan has squeezed in time for 32 posts in the past 15 months, and that’s not counting those that are queued up for the months ahead. She’s got a nose for a great story, a knack for retelling it, and an unnatural level of patience for my scatterbrained harried-editor act. She’s been the margin between a night’s sleep and a total constitutional collapse so often that it’s fair to say she’s been the margin that has enabled Executed Today to keep up its run at all.
Meaghan, thank you.
Traffic
Overall traffic to the site grew last year, but only modestly: from 1.6 million pageviews during the November 2009 – October 2010 period, to 1.9 million pageviews in the succeeding twelvemonth. (It’s north of 4.6 million all-time to date.)
I like to think it’s a discerning crowd that hangs about for what, after all, is an exceedingly niche subject with no marketing muscle. Exponential growth is fun while it lasts, but if you ever catch me complaining that my audience is too small, please slap some sense into me. I’m thrilled that so many people so regularly stop by to visit.
Top Search Terms
Not a whole lot of news in this department relative to previous years — excluding the searches on “executed today” and “executedtoday”, the top 10 searches (and the top 50, and the top 100 …) are overwhelmingly the names of executed individual men and (especially) women.
executed today ted bundy
michael x
ruth snyder
thomas cromwell
lingchi
charles starkweather
najibullah
albert pierrepoint
ling chi
samuel doe
soraya manutchehri
thomas cromwell execution botched
maggie dela riva
amon goeth
karla faye tucker
rainey bethea
masha bruskina
hamida djandoubi
caryl chessman
nam cam
Twitter
The Twitter feed has more than doubled to about 1,100 followers, who have endured 7,200 tweets.
Top Posts
The most popular posts on Executed Today have a familiar look about them. And it’s not just the accumulation of preceding years’ traffic stats; most of the top posts on this list are also among the top posts week in and week out.
Home of a thousands-long comment thread on everything Bundy, this one post has been viewed nearly 100,000 times on its own — more than numbers two through four on this list combined.
The former Soviet-backed Afghan ruler hanged from a traffic pylon by the Taliban has been the year’s biggest mover: it was merely #35 as of last October, but it’s been second-most-trafficked (behind only Bundy) during the past year.
The most-trafficked post actually put up since last Halloween is that of Eva Dugan, a grisly botch in Canada — which is #123 all-time and stands a good chance at cracking the top 50 by this time next year.
Jan. 6, 1939: Joe Arridy, posted the day before Arridy was posthumously pardoned, a guest post + interview with one of the campaigners who helped make that pardon possible
Other than guest posts, which are always among the best content on the site, these are a few of the everyday posts that I found most interesting to write.
