1896: Charles Thomas Wooldridge, of The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Posted on 7 July, 2009 by Headsman

On this date in 1896, Royal Horse Guard trooper Charles Thomas Wooldridge was hanged by the neck until dead at Reading Gaol, for the crime of murdering his wife.

Celebrated playwright and wit Oscar Wilde had been clapped in that same prison the previous November after his sensational conviction for “gross indecency” — that is, homosexuality.

Wilde’s immortal poetic rendering of the “Hell” of prison, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, is written to Wooldridge’s memory, and about his hanging. Its dedication frontispiece reads:

In memoriam
C.T.W.
Sometime Trooper of the Royal Horse Guards.
Obiit H.M. Prison, Reading, Berkshire,
July 7th, 1896.

Having no words to improve on Wilde’s, we offer his “Ballad” in its entirety for the savoring (the audio file is a reading of the text). Find it on Gutenberg or Google Books.

[audio:http://ia311533.us.archive.org/3/items/ballad_of_reading_gaol_jg_librivox/ballad_of_reading_gaol_wilde.mp3]

I.

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
“That fellows got to swing.”

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty place

He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass;
He does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.

II.

Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
In a suit of shabby grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every wandering cloud that trailed
Its raveled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun,
And drank the morning air.

He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!

And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.

And strange it was to see him pass
With a step so light and gay,
And strange it was to see him look
So wistfully at the day,
And strange it was to think that he
Had such a debt to pay.

For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the spring-time shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its adder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its fruit!

The loftiest place is that seat of grace
For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer’s collar take
His last look at the sky?

It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!

So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.

At last the dead man walked no more
Amongst the Trial Men,
And I knew that he was standing up
In the black dock’s dreadful pen,
And that never would I see his face
In God’s sweet world again.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each other’s way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
We had no word to say;
For we did not meet in the holy night,
But in the shameful day.

A prison wall was round us both,
Two outcast men were we:
The world had thrust us from its heart,
And God from out His care:
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
Had caught us in its snare.

In Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard,
And the dripping wall is high,
So it was there he took the air
Beneath the leaden sky,
And by each side a Warder walked,
For fear the man might die.

Or else he sat with those who watched
His anguish night and day;
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
And when he crouched to pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
Their scaffold of its prey.

The Governor was strong upon
The Regulations Act:
The Doctor said that Death was but
A scientific fact:
And twice a day the Chaplain called
And left a little tract.

And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
And drank his quart of beer:
His soul was resolute, and held
No hiding-place for fear;
He often said that he was glad
The hangman’s hands were near.

But why he said so strange a thing
No Warder dared to ask:
For he to whom a watcher’s doom
Is given as his task,
Must set a lock upon his lips,
And make his face a mask.

Or else he might be moved, and try
To comfort or console:
And what should Human Pity do
Pent up in Murderers’ Hole?
What word of grace in such a place
Could help a brother’s soul?

With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fool’s Parade!
We did not care: we knew we were
The Devil’s Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.

We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.

So still it lay that every day
Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:
And we forgot the bitter lot
That waits for fool and knave,
Till once, as we tramped in from work,
We passed an open grave.

With yawning mouth the yellow hole
Gaped for a living thing;
The very mud cried out for blood
To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
Some prisoner had to swing.

Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom
And each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.

That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
White faces seemed to peer.

He lay as one who lies and dreams
In a pleasant meadow-land,
The watcher watched him as he slept,
And could not understand
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
With a hangman close at hand?

But there is no sleep when men must weep
Who never yet have wept:
So we–the fool, the fraud, the knave–
That endless vigil kept,
And through each brain on hands of pain
Another’s terror crept.

Alas! it is a fearful thing
To feel another’s guilt!
For, right within, the sword of Sin
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And as molten lead were the tears we shed
For the blood we had not spilt.

The Warders with their shoes of felt
Crept by each padlocked door,
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
Grey figures on the floor,
And wondered why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed before.

All through the night we knelt and prayed,
Mad mourners of a corpse!
The troubled plumes of midnight were
The plumes upon a hearse:
And bitter wine upon a sponge
Was the savior of Remorse.

The cock crew, the red cock crew,
But never came the day:
And crooked shape of Terror crouched,
In the corners where we lay:
And each evil sprite that walks by night
Before us seemed to play.

They glided past, they glided fast,
Like travelers through a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
Of delicate turn and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
The phantoms kept their tryst.

With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
They trod a saraband:
And the damned grotesques made arabesques,
Like the wind upon the sand!

With the pirouettes of marionettes,
They tripped on pointed tread:
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
As their grisly masque they led,
And loud they sang, and loud they sang,
For they sang to wake the dead.

“Oho!” they cried, “The world is wide,
But fettered limbs go lame!
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
Is a gentlemanly game,
But he does not win who plays with Sin
In the secret House of Shame.”
No things of air these antics were
That frolicked with such glee:
To men whose lives were held in gyves,
And whose feet might not go free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
Most terrible to see.
Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
Some wheeled in smirking pairs:
With the mincing step of demirep
Some sidled up the stairs:
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
Each helped us at our prayers.

The morning wind began to moan,
But still the night went on:
Through its giant loom the web of gloom
Crept till each thread was spun:
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
Of the Justice of the Sun.

The moaning wind went wandering round
The weeping prison-wall:
Till like a wheel of turning-steel
We felt the minutes crawl:
O moaning wind! what had we done
To have such a seneschal?

At last I saw the shadowed bars
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
God’s dreadful dawn was red.

At six o’clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had entered in to kill.

He did not pass in purple pomp,
Nor ride a moon-white steed.
Three yards of cord and a sliding board
Are all the gallows’ need:
So with rope of shame the Herald came
To do the secret deed.

We were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness grope:
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.

For Man’s grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide!

We waited for the stroke of eight:
Each tongue was thick with thirst:
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
That makes a man accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
For the best man and the worst.

We had no other thing to do,
Save to wait for the sign to come:
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
Quiet we sat and dumb:
But each man’s heart beat thick and quick
Like a madman on a drum!

With sudden shock the prison-clock
Smote on the shivering air,
And from all the gaol rose up a wail
Of impotent despair,
Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
From a leper in his lair.

And as one sees most fearful things
In the crystal of a dream,
We saw the greasy hempen rope
Hooked to the blackened beam,
And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare
Strangled into a scream.

And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who live more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.

IV.

There is no chapel on the day
On which they hang a man:
The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick,
Or his face is far to wan,
Or there is that written in his eyes
Which none should look upon.

So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
And then they rang the bell,
And the Warders with their jingling keys
Opened each listening cell,
And down the iron stair we tramped,
Each from his separate Hell.

Out into God’s sweet air we went,
But not in wonted way,
For this man’s face was white with fear,
And that man’s face was grey,
And I never saw sad men who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky,
And at every careless cloud that passed
In happy freedom by.

But their were those amongst us all
Who walked with downcast head,
And knew that, had each go his due,
They should have died instead:
He had but killed a thing that lived
Whilst they had killed the dead.

For he who sins a second time
Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And draws it from its spotted shroud,
And makes it bleed again,
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood
And makes it bleed in vain!

Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
With crooked arrows starred,
Silently we went round and round
The slippery asphalte yard;
Silently we went round and round,
And no man spoke a word.

Silently we went round and round,
And through each hollow mind
The memory of dreadful things
Rushed like a dreadful wind,
An Horror stalked before each man,
And terror crept behind.

The Warders strutted up and down,
And kept their herd of brutes,
Their uniforms were spick and span,
And they wore their Sunday suits,
But we knew the work they had been at
By the quicklime on their boots.

For where a grave had opened wide,
There was no grave at all:
Only a stretch of mud and sand
By the hideous prison-wall,
And a little heap of burning lime,
That the man should have his pall.

For he has a pall, this wretched man,
Such as few men can claim:
Deep down below a prison-yard,
Naked for greater shame,
He lies, with fetters on each foot,
Wrapt in a sheet of flame!

And all the while the burning lime
Eats flesh and bone away,
It eats the brittle bone by night,
And the soft flesh by the day,
It eats the flesh and bones by turns,
But it eats the heart alway.

For three long years they will not sow
Or root or seedling there:
For three long years the unblessed spot
Will sterile be and bare,
And look upon the wondering sky
With unreproachful stare.

They think a murderer’s heart would taint
Each simple seed they sow.
It is not true! God’s kindly earth
Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red,
The white rose whiter blow.

Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
Christ brings his will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight?

But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man’s despair.

So never will wine-red rose or white,
Petal by petal, fall
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
By the hideous prison-wall,
To tell the men who tramp the yard
That God’s Son died for all.

Yet though the hideous prison-wall
Still hems him round and round,
And a spirit man not walk by night
That is with fetters bound,
And a spirit may not weep that lies
In such unholy ground,

He is at peace–this wretched man–
At peace, or will be soon:
There is no thing to make him mad,
Nor does Terror walk at noon,
For the lampless Earth in which he lies
Has neither Sun nor Moon.

They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
They did not even toll
A requiem that might have brought
Rest to his startled soul,
But hurriedly they took him out,
And hid him in a hole.

They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
And gave him to the flies;
They mocked the swollen purple throat
And the stark and staring eyes:
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
In which their convict lies.

The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonored grave:
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.

Yet all is well; he has but passed
To Life’s appointed bourne:
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourner will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.

V.

I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in goal
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother’s life,
And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.

This too I know–and wise it were
If each could know the same–
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.

With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!

The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair

For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity’s machine.

The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed and cries to Time.

But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
Like asp with adder fight,
We have little care of prison fare,
For what chills and kills outright
Is that every stone one lifts by day
Becomes one’s heart by night.

With midnight always in one’s heart,
And twilight in one’s cell,
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
Each in his separate Hell,
And the silence is more awful far
Than the sound of a brazen bell.

And never a human voice comes near
To speak a gentle word:
And the eye that watches through the door
Is pitiless and hard:
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
With soul and body marred.

And thus we rust Life’s iron chain
Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:
But God’s eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone.

And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean leper’s house
With the scent of costliest nard.

Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?

And he of the swollen purple throat.
And the stark and staring eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took
The Thief to Paradise;
And a broken and a contrite heart
The Lord will not despise.

The man in red who reads the Law
Gave him three weeks of life,
Three little weeks in which to heal
His soul of his soul’s strife,
And cleanse from every blot of blood
The hand that held the knife.

And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
And only tears can heal:
And the crimson stain that was of Cain
Became Christ’s snow-white seal.

VI.

In Reading gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In burning winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.

And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.

And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

“Each man kills the thing he loves” … words that must have originated in a fathomless depth in the soul of our renowned poet, who signed the poem only with his cell number and died penniless in 1900.

Part of the Themed Set: The Ballad.

On this day..

1840: Francois Benjamin Courvoisier, for the murder of Lord Russell

Posted on 6 July, 2009 by Headsman

On this date in 1840, a valet was hanged at Newgate Prison for the murder of his aristocratic employer, Lord William Russell.

This celebrity murder of a former Member of Parliament, septuagenarian patriarch of one of England’s august noble houses, by a member of his household activated all the crime-panic circuits still familiar a couple centuries later.

That of class, of course: the perpetual frisson of animosity between the respectable and those they held in economic servitude, bursting bloodily onto the front pages.

That of foreignness, since Courvoisier was Swiss.

And that ever-popular fear of youth amok, when the 23-year-old claimed inspiration from William Harrison Ainsworth‘s then-popular potboiler about the beloved underclass robber Jack Sheppard.*

Speedy Trial

The valet was quickly on trial for his life; the total time elapsed from Russell’s death to Courvoisier’s own was two months to the day.

But a less hasty schedule might have permitted better investigation, as Courvoisier was well on his way to acquittal with his lawyer’s deft rebuttal of the crown’s entirely circumstantial case.

When police discovered the decisively damning evidence of Russell’s stolen effects midway through the trial, the Swiss man made himself an milepost in the evolution of professional ethics at the bar. Summoning his lawyers, Courvoisier informed them that he was indeed guilty but that he had no intention of pleading guilty to a hanging crime and expected his defense to continue.

Attorney Charles Phillips reluctantly complied, implicating fellow-servant Sarah Mancer as the potentially guilty party. When it became publicly known after the trial that Phillips had become aware of his client’s guilt, he was publicly vilified for the vigor of his representation, e.g., contesting “with violent language the witnesses for the prosecution, whose evidence he [knew to be] true,” and a lively debate among legal types on professional propriety in such an instance ensued.**

Read All About It

None of this availed Benjamin Courvoisier aught. His celebrity was brief, but intense — he even signed an autograph for the sheriff, dating it “the day of my execution,” as he was being pinioned for hanging. Broadsides like these below (links to selections from Harvard Library’s extensive publication of execution broadsides) sold a reported 1.65 million copies. (Source)

Among the published broadsides are several popular ballads relating to the case — one written to lament the murder, before the apprehension of a suspect; others for the condemned’s execution. One certainly wouldn’t call these great literature, but they’re representative examples of broadside balladry, nearly de rigueuer for scandal-mongering Victorian crime coverage and therefore very relevant for these pages.

COURVOISIER’S LAMENT
(Written by Himself.)

You Christians all of every nation,
A warning take by my sad fate–
For the dreadful crimes that I’ve committed,
I, alas! repent too late.
Only think what I must suffer,
And the death which I must undergo–
I cannot rest by day or night,
My heart’s so full of grief and woe.

My parents they were poor — but honest —
And brought me up in virtuous ways;
And never, ’till this sad occurrence,
Did I embitter their fond days.
But now, alas! quite broken-hearted,
My friends and family must be,
To think that I soon must quit
This world for a long Eternity.

My Master was a Nobleman–
Lord William Russell was his name;
Beloved he was by all who knew him,
And well he did deserve the same.
Oh! how could I so basely murder
One that was so good and kind?
I hope the Lord above will pardon
Me, that I may mercy find.

Alas! my days they are all numbered.
When I must give up my last breath;
For the horrid crimes that I’ve committed,
Die an ignominious death.
Oh! while I’ve life, let me entreat you
All, take warning by my fate!
Shew the ways of evil-doers,
Or you’ll repent when ’tis too late.

Attend unto my true confession–
A lesson it may be to you;
Give not your mind too much to pleasure,
Act upright — be just and true.
Let not the sight of gold e’er tempt you
To act dishonest to your friend:
For that alone caused me to murder,
And brought me to this untimely end.

Let not the world blame those two Females
Who, fellow-servants were with me;
For of the murder and the robbery,
None whatever knew but me.
No other crimes have I committed,
Save one single robbery;
Tho’ it was said that Etiza Grimwood
Basely murdered was by me.

Charles Dickens attended this hanging, mining the scene for Barnaby Rudge.

William Thackeray came too — he was becoming publicly engaged as a man troubled by capital punishment, and it was the first execution he had witnessed. (Actually, he turned away at the decisive moment.) Thackeray published an article about the experience in Fraser’s magazine, reflecting doubt at the salutary value of public executions and empathy with the young man’s scrambled mental state as he was raced from condemnation to the gallows in a mere fortnight.

At first, his statements are false, contradictory, lying. He has not repented then. His last declaration seems to be honest, as far as the relation of the crime goes. But, read the rest of his statement — the account of his personal history, and the crimes which he committed in his young days; them “how the evil thought came to him to put his hand to the work.” It is evidently the writing of a mad, distracted man. The horrid gallows is perpetually before him; he is wild with dread and remorse. Clergymen are with him ceaselessly; religious tracts are forced into his hands: night and day they ply him with the heinousness of his crime, and exhortations to repentance. Read through that last paper of his. By heaven, it is pitiful to read it. See the Scripture phrases brought in now and anon; the peculiar terms of tract-phraseology (I do not wish to speak of these often meritorious publications with disrespect). One knows too well how such language is learned-imitated from the priest at the bedside, eagerly seized and appropriated, and confounded by the poor prisoner.”

* Courvoisier’s Jack Sheppard reference triggered thunderous indictments of this text in the popular press — “a publication calculated to familiarise the mind with cruelties,” howled the London Examiner “and to serve as the cut-throat’s manual” and caused the stage adaptation to be censored (pdf).

Though Ainsworth had decades of writing ahead of him, it’s been argued that his reputation never fully recovered from this case, and that’s why he’s not in the canon. What he lacks in posthumous celebration he garnered in contemporary buzz; Ainsworth’s “Newgate novels” valorizing highwaymen helped to feed an enduring popular craze for hanging broadsides and “penny dreadfuls” and to mainstream a (commercialized) version of thieves’ cant. See The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868.

** See The Bar & The Old Bailey, 1750-1850. In a more unctuous vein, the bishop of London submitted a petition to the House of Lords demanding repeal of the right of defendants’ lawyers to make closing statements.

Part of the Themed Set: The Ballad.

On this day..

1600: Jean Livingston, Lady Waristoun

Posted on 5 July, 2009 by Headsman

At 4 o’clock in the morning this day — as a favor to her powerful father to limit the public spectacle — Jean Livingston lost her head for arranging the murder of her husband just three days before.

Provoked by one beating too many, Lady Waristoun (or Lady Warriston) got a servant to murder him in his bed on the night of July 1.

Robert Weir blew town — he wouldn’t be apprehended until 1604, whereupon he suffered one of the very few instances of execution on the breaking-wheel to occur in the British Isles — but the Lady and her nurse Janet Murdo were “caught red-handed”, an actual juridical concept in Scottish law which means what it says on the tin.

They were condemned to death by burning, which dad’s pull was able to mitigate for his daughter (but not the nurse), so

scho wes tare to the Girth Crosse upon the 5 day of Julii, and her heid struk fra her bodie at the Cannagait fit; quha diet verie patiently. Her nurische wes brunt at the same tyme, at 4 houres in the morneing, the 5 of Julii.

In the exceedingly brief time — about a day and a half — between sentence and execution, Lady Waristoun was reported to have undergone a wonderous transformation. The not-uninterested report* of her confessor offers these mournful final words, a stark contrast to her defiant state just after condemnation.

The occasion of my coming here is to show that I am, and have been, a great sinner, and hath offended the Lord’s Majesty; especially, of the cruel murdering of mine own husband, which, albeit I did not with mine own hands, for I never laid mine hands upon him all the time that he was murdering, yet I was the deviser of it, and so the committer. But my God hath been always merciful to me, and hath given me repentance for my sins; and I hope for mercy and grace at his Majesty’s hands, for his dear son Jesus Christ’s sake. And the Lord hath brought me hither to be an example to you, that you may not fall into the like sin as I have done. And I pray God, for his mercy, to keep all his faithful people from falling into the like inconvenient as I have done! And therefore I desire you all to pray to God for me, that he would be merciful to me!

Then, she had her head lopped off by the maiden while at the same hour Janet Murdo, much less wept for, was burnt alive at Castlehill.

This sudden and sensational fall of an elite, and allegedly beautiful, woman obviously made quite a splash, with printed accounts feeding almost inevitably into the Scots ballad tradition.

My mother was an ill woman,
In fifteen years she married me ;
I hadna wit to guide a man,
Alas! ill counsel guided me.

O Warriston, O Warriston,
I wish that ye may sink for sin;
I was but bare fifteen years auld,
When first I enter’d your yates within.

I hadna been a month married,
Till my gude Lord went to the sea;
I bare a bairn ere he came hame,
And set it on the nourice knee.

But it fell ance upon a day,
That my gude lord return’d from sea;
Then I did dress in the best array,
As blythe as ony bird on tree.

I took my young son in my arms,
Likewise my nourice me forebye;
And I went down to yon shore side,
My gude lord’s vessel I might spy.

My lord he stood upon the deck,
I wyte he hail’d me courteouslie;
“Ye are thrice welcome, my lady gay,
Wha’se aught that bairn on your knee?”

She turn’d her right and round about,
Says, “Why take ye sic dreads o’ me?
Alas! I was too young married,
To love another man but thee.”

“Now hold your tongue, my lady gay,
Nae mair falsehoods ye’ll tell to me;
This bonny bairn is not mine,
You’ve loved another while I was on sea.”

In discontent then hame she went,
And aye the tear did blin’ her e’e;
Says, “Of this wretch I’ll be revenged,
For these harsh words he’s said to me.”

She’s counsell’d wi’ her father’s steward,
What way she cou’d revenged be;
Bad was the counsel then he gave, —
It was to gar her gude lord dee.

The nourice took the deed in hand,
I wat she was well paid her fee;
She kiest the knot, and the loop she ran,
Which soon did gar this young lord dee.

His brother lay in a room hard by,
Alas! that night he slept too soun’;
But then he waken’d wi’ a cry,
I fear my brother’s putten down.

O get me coal and candle-light,
And get me some gude companie;
But before the light was brought,
Warriston he was gart dee.

They’ve ta’en the lady and fause nouriee,
In prison strang they hae them boun’;
The nouriee she was hard o’ heart,
But the bonny lady fell in swoon.

In it came her brother dear,
And aye a sorry man was he;
“I wou’d gie a’ the lands I heir,
O bonny Jean, .to borrow thee.”

“O borrow me, brother, borrow me–
O borrow’d shall I never be;
For I gart kill my ain gude lord,
And life is nae pleasure to me.”

In it came her mother dear,
I wyte a sorry woman was she;
“I wou’d gie my white monie and gowd,
O bonny Jean, to borrow thee.”

“Borrow me, mother, borrow me,–
O borrow’d shall I never be;
For I gart kill my ain gude lord,
And life’s now nae pleasure to me.”

Then in it came her father dear,
I wyte a sorry man was he;
Says, “Ohon! alas! my bonny Jean,
If I had you at hame wi’ me.

“Seven daughters I ha’e left at hame,
As fair women as fair can be;
But I would gie them ane by ane,
O bonny Jean, to borrow thee.”

“O borrow me, father, borrow me,–
O borrow’d shall I never be;
I that is worthy o’ the death,
It is but right that I shou’d dee.”

Than out it speaks the king himsell,
And aye as he steps in the fleer,
Says, “I grant you your life, lady,
Because you are of tender year.”

“A boon, a boon, my liege the king,
The boon I ask, ye’ll grant to me.”
“Ask on, ask on, my bonny Jean,
Whate’er ye ask, it’s granted be.”

Cause take me out at night, at night,
Lat not the sun upon me shine;
And take me to yon heading hill,
Strike aff this dowie head o’ mine.

Ye’ll take me out at night, at night,
When there are nane to gaze and see;
And ha’e me to yon heading hill,
And ye’ll gar head me speedilie.

They’ve ta’en her out at nine at night,
Loot not the sun upon her shine;
And had her to yon heading hill,
And headed her baith neat and fine.

Then out it speaks the king himsell,
I wyte a sorry man was he;
“I’ve travell’d east, I’ve travell’d west,
And sailed far beyond the sea,
But I never saw a woman’s face
I was sae sorry to see dee.

“But Warriston was sair to blame,
For slighting o’ his lady so;
He had the wyte o’ his ain death,
And his bonny lady’s overthrow.”

* Snappily titled, “A Worthy and Notable Memorial of the Great Work of Mercy which God wrought in the Conversion of Jean Livingstone Lady Warristoun, who was apprehended for the Vile and Horrible Murder of her own Husband, John Kincaid, committed on Tuesday, July 1, 1600, for which she was execute on Saturday following; Containing an Account of her Obstinacy, Earnest Repentance, and her Turning to God; of the Odd Speeches she used during her Imprisonment; of her Great and Marvellous Constancy; and of her Behaviour and Manner of Death: Observed by One who was both a Seer and Hearer of what was spoken.”

Part of the Themed Set: The Ballad.

On this day..

Themed Set: The Ballad

Posted on 5 July, 2009 by Headsman

The ballad and the scaffold go together like Jack and Ketch.

Narrative popular poetry, the ballad lyricizes precisely the sort of public spectacle and collective drama that brings the crowds to Tyburn. And with identifiable sub-genres like the murder ballad and the outlaw ballad, it only stands to reason that there’d be hanging ballads too.

It’s such a perfect marriage that balladeers hardly feel constrained to wait on flesh-and-blood hangings for inspiration but readily memorialize (frequently in the first-person voice of the doomed) a fictional, idealized crime where all the pathos and tragedy can be arranged just so.

Of course, it’s also the artist’s prerogative to just fictionalize real-life source material.

“Sam Hall,” for instance, was adapted in the mid-19th century from a ballad about the 1707 hanging of Jack Hall — finding in common between these two very different times “the social need to believe that it was possible to face death with such insouciance.”

If not all such rise to the literary level of, say, “The Ballad of the Hanged Man,” ballads’ demonstrable popular appeal has made them the metrical vehicle of choice for the crime du jour. Naturally, when the ballad opera conquered the stage, its first subject was the gallows-bound criminal underworld.

Whether commemorating doomed revolutionaries or doomed criminals, the ballad remains a part of our collective memory-shaping to give we who remain behind purchase on the timelessness of those launched into eternity.

Join Executed Today as we explore a few ballad-worthy events in the rich history of the death penalty.

On this day..

1187: Raynald of Chatillon, by Saladin

Posted on 4 July, 2009 by Headsman

On this date in 1187, Saladin dealt the Crusader Kingdom a crippling blow at the Battle of Hattin — and a fatal beheading to douchebag French knight ~~Raymond~~Raynald of Chatillon after the fray.

Saladin personally administered the chop.

That’s a weight off his shoulders.

Conduct so ill comporting with Saladin‘s reputation for chivalry had been earned by Raynald’s own bad behavior.

Crusaders with a view to realpolitik saw that the Kingdom of Jerusalem had to coexist with its Muslim neighbors. Raynald (or Reynald, or Renaud) just preferred killing them.

His raids against Saladin’s caravans when the Crusader state was supposed to be at peace with the Ayyubids precipitated the war that would claim his own head — and, within three months of this date, Jerusalem itself.

The Muslim commander vowed going in to slaughter the notoriously vicious Raynald if he captured him. Here he is making good the threat in the Ridley Scott epic Kingdom of Heaven:

According to the account (sourced to Wikipedia, such as it is) of Saladin house historian Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani, an eyewitness to the event,

Saladin invited the king [Guy] to sit beside him, and when Arnat [Raynald] entered in his turn, he seated him next to his king and reminded him of his misdeeds. “How many times have you sworn an oath and violated it? How many times have you signed agreements you have never respected?” Raynald answered through a translator: “Kings have always acted thus. I did nothing more.” During this time King Guy was gasping with thirst, his head dangling as though drunk, his face betraying great fright. Saladin spoke reassuring words to him, had cold water brought, and offered it to him. The king drank, then handed what remained to Raynald, who slaked his thirst in turn. The sultan then said to Guy: “You did not ask permission before giving him water. I am therefore not obliged to grant him mercy.” After pronouncing these words, the sultan smiled, mounted his horse, and rode off, leaving the captives in terror. He supervised the return of the troops, and then came back to his tent. He ordered Raynald brought there, then advanced before him, sword in hand, and struck him between the neck and the shoulder-blade. When Raynald fell, he cut off his head and dragged the body by its feet to the king, who began to tremble. Seeing him thus upset, Saladin said to him in a reassuring tone: “This man was killed only because of his maleficence and perfidy.”

The Egyptian classic El Naser Salah el Dine, whose composition and subject matter reflect its production at the acme of Nasser-led Pan-Arabism, noticeably soft-pedals this scene, with Raynald as an over-the-top boor who challenges his captor to a duel and is slain in a fair fight. (Skip to about 35:25 in the clip below to see it, but the whole thing is well worth the watching.)

On this day..

1931: Ernesto Opisso

Posted on 3 July, 2009 by Headsman

On this date in 1931, a carpenter became the first Gibraltar native hanged by the British on that strategic peninsula.

Ernesto Opisso was convicted, in his second trial (the first jury hung), of murdering Marie Bassano, the true crime sensation of the day. Strangely, the elderly woman had been killed in her apartment but neither robbed nor sexually assaulted; Opisso was placed in the vicinity by a witness despite his denials, and a “maybe they got into a fight” theory sufficed to outfit him for the halter.

(Courtroom color: Opisso’s lawyer, evidently something of a functional alcoholic, got around a no-drinking-in-court rule by dipping bread in liquor. “Not drinking, m’Lord,” he replied when the judge’s suspicions were aroused. “Eating.”)

Popular dissatisfaction with the questionable verdict against a local was widespread; because nobody on Gibraltar itself would carry out the execution, a hangman had to be imported from Britain.

The London Times reported of the scene on the eve of the hanging, once all prospect of reprieve had been refused,

Scenes of wild disorder were witnessed to-night when crowds surged through the streets demonstrating against the execution fixed for to-morrow morning of a carpenter, Ernesto Opisso, who has been sentenced to be hanged for the murder of an elderly woman. It will be the first execution in Gibraltar since 1896. A reprieve was refused by the Governor in Council. The crowds thronged the streets demanding a reprieve and forced cafes and places of amusement to close. No taxis were to be had, as the drivers are on strike.

So ugly was the situation that troops turned out and are patrolling the streets armed with hockey sticks.

It was Gibraltar’s first execution of any kind since 1896 — and remains to date its last peacetime execution. (Two Spanish citizens were hanged for wartime offenses in 1944.)

On this day..

1706: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, the Kongolese Saint Anthony

Posted on 2 July, 2009 by Headsman

On July 2, 1706, Kimpa Vita, a Congolese noblewoman also known by her baptismal name Dona Beatriz, was burned as a witch in Evululu.

This remarkable woman claimed to be a medium for the spirit of Saint Anthony of Padua, a popular saint in the Catholicized Kingdom of Kongo, and attracted a mass movement in the midst of civil war and social breakdown in the proud Kongo state.

Executed Today is pleased to mark this occasion with an interview with Boston University Prof. John K. Thornton, author of The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706.

This is a very unfamiliar story to most, as you point out in The Kongolese Saint Anthony. So let’s begin with some orientation — the Kingdom of Kongo is in the midst of a ruinous civil war. Why?

The civil war in Kongo was basically a dynastic affair, that is, a battle between branches of the royal family for control over the throne. Kongo had a very highly centralized political structure, the king and his council had a lot of power not only over who held high office, but also who got what income, because a lot of income derived from holding office. So controlling the kingship and its related patronage was very important.

This story is very complicated, I try to lay it out as simply as possible in Chapter II of my book. To make matters short, by D Beatiz’ day it had two branches duking it out — the Kimpanzu and the Kinlaza, with Pedro IV, conveniently descended from both these families, as a sort of conciliatory figure.

And it’s a highly Catholic country. How did that come to be?

Pretty remarkable story.

Actually I think it’s the only real missionary victory that the Catholic church had in the early modern period. By that I mean that they spread the faith to a completely independent country and not just by conquest.

Officially, it was a series of miracles that both Catholic priests and Kongo elites witnessed in 1491 that led Nzinga a Nkuwu, the king of Kongo to become a Christian and be baptized on May 3, 1491 (my birthday is May 3, 1949 which I have taken to be a sort of sign that I should be studying Kongo).

However, it was Nzinga a Nkuwu’s son Afonso (ruled 1509-1542) that really established the church. Afonso provided for the funding of the church, created schools for teaching literacy and Christian religion for the nobility, had children educated in Portugal and returned to the country, and working with his own educated people and Portuguese priests also figured out how to blend the two traditions into a religion that was acceptable in the country. It’s no wonder the Church called him the “Apostle of Congo”.

The kings who followed elaborated and extended what Afonso started, especially by creating a network of schools all over the country. By and large Rome and Portugal collaborated and blessed the project, so the Pope allowed Afonso’s son Henrique to be the first Sub-Saharan African bishop in 1518, and assigned him to extend the church in Kongo (Henrique died in 1531). In 1596 the Pope made Kongo’s capital city the seat of the Bishop of Congo and Angola.

The Church grew again in the late sixteenth century when a series of kings named Alvaro (I and II, father and son, in particular) went a lot farther than Afonso had in Europeanizing Kongo. They gave the nobles titles of nobility in European fashion (Counts, Dukes and Marquis), the brought in relics from Europe (bones of martyrs, for example), established an embassy in Rome, renamed the capital city as Sao Salvador, and so on. The Kongolese ambassador to Rome, Antonio Manuel, who died in 1608 and is honored in a wing in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, left personal papers when he died now found in the Vatican archives. They show the sort of culture a person educated entirely in Kongo could show, in addition to a fascinating array of Kongolese administrative documents — the only ones we have. He also studied Carmelite mysticism, and had correspondence from many different people all over Europe. He was clearly at home among elite Europeans and was regarded by those who met him as a cultured individual in a period when extra-Europeans were not always seen that way.

The Jesuits established a college in Kongo in 1624 and it provided advanced education along European lines until it was close just about the time that Beatriz was active. Kongo had a library, in fact, though no trace of it exists any more, found on the second floor of the Jesuit college.

So in short, the answer is that the political elite of the country decided in the sixteenth century to make their country a Catholic one, and they took vigorous steps to make it happen.

They put teachers out all through the country, visiting priests from Europe constantly met these teachers in the rural areas, they were usually literate and possessed a good deal of knowledge of European culture, some had even lived in Europe. These schoolmasters were the soul of the church; they instructed the people (using a catechism in their own language after 1624), prepared them for the sacraments and led weekly prayers at places of worship, usually large wooden crosses erected at key points all around the country.

So there’s a religious penetration that on the face of it might seem to be a religion of colonization, of foreign domination. But that’s clearly not the way most Kongolese thought about it.

It was never a religion of conquest, and for that reason, the Kongos managed to make it their own without feeling they were abandoning or being forced to give up something. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries foreign visitors often commented on how proud the Kongos were, of their country, their language, their food and the like, thinking that they were the best people in the world. “Congo arrogance” was a common epithet that the Portuguese who built the colony of Angola on Kongo’s southern border used to describe them.

And it’s still very true today. I go to Angola quite a bit and have been to Mbanza Kongo twice. You can feel and hear that pride even now. During the colonial period (roughly 1885 to 1975 in that area) the Portuguese tried very hard to replace indigenous languages with Portuguese and to erase African culture in a systematic way, especially after 1926. But the Kongos simply refused to be erased: they continued their language secretly, kept their special foods and taught their children that they were still the best. It worked.

Today in Angola, you see in so many places that Portuguese is the language of daily life — even street kids shout at each other in Portuguese in Luanda and the land east all the way to Malange. But in Mbanza Kongo and elsewhere in the north, the language of daily life is Kikongo, the ancient language of the country. Their pride has been a problem for Kongo, too. In 1992 a lot of them were massacred in Luanda, partially for political reasons that are very complicated, but also I think because other Angolans resent this pride. But enough on that.

Anyway, the Kongolese were proud to be not just Christians but Catholics. The Portuguese tried to invade Kongo from Angola several times, first in 1622, then again in 1657, and finally in 1670. Each time they were decisively defeated. On the other hand, the Kongos were also unable to invade Angola, as they were repelled there also, first in 1580 and again in 1665 (when the famous Battle of Mbwila was fought on the border between the two domains of Angola and Kongo).

This led to great hostility between Kongo and Portugal and especially its governors of Angola. Portuguese were massacred in the wake of the 1622 invasion and after the Battle of Mbwila in 1665, and by the 1670s they had been effectively forced to leave the country, trading their only with Africa servants called pombeiros who represented their interests. (Priests were an exception).

Yet this history didn’t impact on the way Kongos saw themselves as Catholics. King Garcia II (1641-1661) famously wrote a letter in which he proudly stated that they obeyed the Pope, vicar of Christ on earth, even though the Portuguese, whom they hated, had introduced them to the religion. Indeed, the only thing that we see in the correspondence of Kongolese kings that they do say good about Portugal was that it introduced them to the religion.

The idea of a Catholic Kongo was reinforced when Kongo made an alliance with the Dutch. This took place in 1622 in the aftermath of the failed Portuguese invasion. Pedro II, the king, sent a letter to the Dutch States General proposing an alliance in which the Dutch would send a fleet to attack Angola by sea, and Kongo would send an army by land. The first attempt to do this in 1624 failed, in part because the Portuguese went out of their way to conciliate Kongo, but the second attempt, in 1641, succeeded and for a time the Kongo-Dutch alliance (joined by the formidable Queen Njinga of Ndongo-Matamba who was also at war with Portugal) nearly drove the Portuguese out of Angola.

The Dutch hoped to use this opportunity to also convert Kongo to the Calvinism of the Dutch Reformed Church and they even had special literature designed to convert Catholics who spoke Portuguese to Calvinism. But Garcia II would have none of it, and had the books burned (it was the seventeenth century after all), and forced the ministers to leave. He wrote a letter to the Dutch Estates General protesting the attempt and in it he made the statement I summarized in the paragraph above.

Kongo tried to make contact with Dutch speaking Catholic countries in the aftermath of the third failed Portuguese invasion in 1670. It seemed like a good compromise though the Dutch never did come back to Angola to fight, and the Catholic parts weren’t part of the Dutch program.

So, that’s background — now, who is Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita?

She was the daughter of a noble Kongo family from the region right around Kibangu, a flat-topped mountain that lays some distance east of the capital of Mbanza Kongo (on a clear day you can see that mountain from Mbanza Kongo).

She seems to have had spiritual gifts even as a youth, and had dreams of playing with angels and visions and the like. Not surprisingly, she turned to religious pursuits, becoming a nganga Marinda, a spiritual person whose role the Catholic missionaries did not like, but was widely accepted in the Kongo as legitimate. She was probably too spiritual and independent to be married, since she had two failed marriages by the time she began her prophecy.

Her movement combines both a religious renewal and a national restoration. Should one think of her as a religious person whose cause happened to have political implications, or someone who’s very intentionally trying to alter the balance of power? Is it even right to separate the secular and the religious dimensions?

I think Beatriz was trying to end war as much as anything else. This was at the height of the slave trade: thousands of people were being exported annually to Brazil, to the Spanish Indies, to Suriname, and some even to South Carolina.

The slave trade was one of the byproducts of war (along with death and destruction), and because slavery was lucrative, it helped to continue the wars in a vicious cycle. As Beatriz understood it, the solution was to end the civil war and restore the kingdom. None of the pretenders to the throne seemed able to do that.

She thought that he had sent Saint Anthony do to that, and he had come to earth and chose to be incarnate in her. It harmonized with Kongos’ belief that they were God’s chosen people (he had created Kongo himself, sending his angels to create the rest of the world), and he would intervene to set things right.

And who exactly are her followers?

Beatriz had followers from all ranks and walks of life. Pedro IV had her burned, but his own wife Hipolyta became a devotee. Pedro was intrigued by her message himself. A number of the top contenders also were either tempted or became her followers. The most notable of her followers was Pedro Constantinho da Silva, one of Pedro’s generals who saw allying with her as a chance to become king. Along with the political guys was a great mass of peasants, who really hoped for a better time and thought that Beatriz’ movement could restore the kingdom.

It was the politics of her movement that got her in trouble. Once Beatriz threw herself in with Pedro Constantinho she was doomed because the other contenders became her enemies. It was Pedro IV who managed to capture her, and he had her burned as a heretic and witch. Before she went over to Pedro Constantinho, Pedro IV had been very interested in her mission and protected her.

Dona Beatriz? Kimpa Vita?
What’s In A Name?

Kongos in those days usually had at least two names.

The first one was a zina dia santu (Saint’s name), given as a Portuguese name though often pronounced as in Kikongo and always incorporating “Dom” or “Dona” as part of the name. So someone named Joao would be called Ndozau, and someone named Miguel would be Ndomigel.

Their second name was a Kikongo name, like Mpanzu, Nkuwu, Vita, Nzinga and so on. As far as I can tell people got both names from their parents when they were born, and they probably started using the zina dia santu even before baptism. If people had two Kikongo second names, the second one was the father’s first name, sort of like the Scandanavian system where a Johan’s child is named Johansson.

Beatiz’ second names mean “scheme” or “plan” (Kimpa), and “war” (Vita). It might be because she was born in a war and this was added, or it might just be her father’s first Kikongo name. King Antonio I had Vita as an element in his name; some people use this as evidence she was descended from this king who was killed in the Battle of Mbwila in 1665. I think such a fact would have been noted at the time and I doubt it.

Nowadays, people in Angola and DRC tend to look down on the zina dia santu, which they view (wrongly, I believe) as a remnant of the colonial past. Many Angolans believe that somehow the Portuguese organized all that Christian stuff in Kongo and the local people resisted or rejected it.

I think the reason for this is twofold: first, because that’s what the Portuguese claimed during the colonial period, that they really more or less created the Kingdom of Kongo, which is totally untrue. A second reason is because most Angolans with any nationalist feeling don’t like to be identified with Portugal and so look to a non-Portuguese past. Hence, D Beatriz is rather militantly known as “Kimpa Vita” in Angola and one does not often hear her Christian name, though of course people know it.

-J.K.T.

Dona Beatriz rejects or alters a number of religious practices we might think of as essentially Catholic, like the iconography of the cross, but she’s not doing it in the name of rejecting Catholicism — she’s doing it in the name of Saint Anthony of Padua. Was there simply a pent-up need for renegotiating the way the faith worked for Kongolese? If so, did it happen in some other way after she was executed?

I think she was concerned that Christianity was too European, and one of the things she chided the missionaries about was that they did not represent any black saints.

She had direct revelation from God on her side, she died every Friday and spent each weekend in Heaven conferring with the Heavenly Father about the affairs of Kongo and so what she got there was pretty much undeniable. From these sessions in Heaven she learned the stories about Jesus being born in Nsundi, baptized in Sao Salvador and Mary being a slave of a Kongo marquis. There was probably a lot more richness to these stories that our accounts tell us.

Kongos were pretty sure, I think, that God was an African and their pride also gradually placed stories in Africa, so in this way Beatriz was confirming what people believed or wanted to believe. After her death, we find a lot of art objects, particularly crucifixes, in which Jesus is shown as an African (his features are African) and is wearing a cloth with a specifically Kongo design. Cecile Froment has recently competed a wonderful Ph.D. thesis at Harvard on this art which I think will really demonstrate how much the Church in Kongo incorporated Kongo concepts. I don’t know if Beatriz’ movement inspired this art directly, but her movement and the art together represent what many people were thinking.

An aside here. From Afonso’s time onward, there was a desire to make an independent Kongo church under its own bishop and with its own clergy. They had the educational resources to support this, so they felt they should. Alvaro II entertained ideas that he could control such a church, that the king was “vicar of his kingdom” and could appoint clergy at will. This wasn’t canonical and the church didn’t support it, even going to far as to try some of those who advised him on this through the Inquisition. But even when Kongo got its own bishop in 1596, the kings of Portugal managed to get control of appointment and put Portuguese in there.

This was the cause of endless conflicts between the kings and the bishops, particularly because of the hostility between Portugal and Kongo over Angola. Finally, a compromise was worked out. While the bishop ended up residing in Angola, and he refused to ordain many Kongolese, the priestly needs of Kongo were to be met by missionaries, who weren’t really there to spread the faith (it had already spread) but to perform the sacraments that an ordained priest could. Because Portugal didn’t want Kongolese clergy, and Kongo didn’t want Portuguese clergy, the compromise was to chose Italian clergy who were from neutral states (mostly Florence, but others as well). These priests came from the Capuchin order, a strongly Counter-Reformationist order that wanted to purge Kongo’s Catholicism of its local elements in the name of purifying the faith. That didn’t go so well, and the struggle over just how Kongo the church could be was waged along these lines.

Beatriz came into this struggle on the Kongo side. While not denying the Capuchins their place as priests, she contended with them over the theological questions. She lost this round, mostly for political reasons and not theological ones. Maybe the African Jesus of Froment’s thesis was the theological victory of Beatriz or at least her followers.

She occupies the ruined former capital. What’s the significance here? Had she remained unmolested, what trajectory might her movement have been on?

I think that messianic religious leaders like her in a politically charged environment don’t have much chance unless they are very astute or their supporters are strong. Of course occupying the capital was vital. It had been abandoned in 1678 and was in ruins, yet it was the very symbol of Kongo. The kings were all buried there, the cathedral was there. Holding the city was in effect restoring the kingdom and presumably ending the civil war.

She could only have remained in power if she had stayed with Pedro Constantinho and if his forces had been enough to protect her and to fend off the inevitable attacks that the other two primary contenders, Joao II of Bula and Pedro IV of Kibangu, would mount. Pedro ended up beating both of these two, first Pedro Constantinho in 1709 and then Joao. So with Pedro Constantinho as patron she could not have survived.

She also made the political mistake, which we can only put down to overconfidence or naivete, of going back home to her parents who lived in Pedro IV’s domain to have her baby. Having the baby also upset her, and made her feel guilty since as a saint she should not have done this.

But let’s be a bit speculative and say that Pedro IV didn’t capture her, or he decided to follow her and put distance between himself and the Catholic clergy who were obviously opposed to her. What might have happened? Perhaps he would have re-founded the church in Kongo with a new relationship to Rome, and decided to have Kimpa Vita and some sort of apostolic succession from her ordain priests and bishops. These would clearly have been drawn from the schoolmasters who ran the church in Kongo anyway. A good number of them did become Antonioans and they would have created a new church. It would have had some of its own new traditions, like the stories that Beatriz told about Jesus’ birth in Nsundi and baptism in Mbanza Kongo, or the descent of kings and the like. These might have been written since the chruch was literate and perhaps formed a new scripture. And perhaps they might have found, in time a way to reconcile this with Rome, but maybe not. It would have been an independent church as we see all over Africa now.

What exactly leads to her execution? Cui bono?

Her execution was done following her capture as described above. She was tried in a civil not an ecclesiastic court under Kongo and not church law. Kongo law prescribed punishment for witchcraft and heresy and those were the charges against her.

We don’t know what happened in her trial since the record has not survived (my dream is to find it, since there probably was one once, and who knows, it might have been sent to the Inquisition in Portugal or Angola). But all we know is what the Italian priests, Bernardo da Gallo and Lorenzo da Lucca told us, and they were not invited to the trial (fine by them; they didn’t want to be too closely associated with the results). They questioned her about her beliefs, and da Gallo’s account of that inquiry is our basis for knowing what she believed. But they could do no more on that end than hear the result. They were happy for it since that’s what they wanted too.

Her movement isn’t destroyed by her execution. What happens over the next 2 1/2 years before the Battle of Sao Salvador? And what happens after that battle: What was Dona Beatriz’ immediate legacy? Was she remembered, was her name invoked? What became of her followers?

We know the movement remained very strong in Mbanza Kongo after her death, and that Antonian prayers were shouted out by the defenders of the city in 1709. But there is not documentary mention of them further after that. But don’t read too much into this, since the documentary record becomes very, very quiet after 1710 or so — we just don’t have any details about it from any source. In fact, until I discovered a kinglist written in 1758 (I think by a Kongo) we weren’t sure how long the reigns of the kings were for the next fifty years or even what order they ruled in. It is possible that the movement survived even there.

We also know that the movement had very strong bases in the southwest part of Kongo, in lands belonging the the Kimpanzu faction that had been headed by Suzanna de Nobrega. This faction was not involved in the war in 1709 and thus would not have suffered the inevitable persecution that took place in Mbanza Kongo.

But Manuel II, the king who followed Pedro IV after his death in 1718, came from that faction and region. He had abandoned the Antonians to join Pedro, and perhaps he also suppressed the movement back home. We have a couple of letter from him, written early in his reign and dealing with ecclesiastical matters, but the question of Antonians doesn’t come up in them.

After my book was published, Simon Bockie, a librarian at Berkeley and an excellent ethnographer of Kongo (he’s a Kongo himself) wrote a critical review. He claimed that I had not made use of abundant oral traditions that he had heard in his youth about Kimpa Vita in writing my book and thus I had written an account based on only the testimony of her enemies.*

I had searched published sources in French, Portuguese and Kikongo for traditions that I could relate to Beatriz when I did my research, and I did make as much use of these as I could when I wrote. But at the time I had not been able to do research in Mbanza Kongo and so had to let that aspect go. When my wife, Linda Heywood and I went to Mbanza Kongo in 2002, we specifically asked about traditions concerning Kimpa Vita (as she is usually called today) and were taken to a man who claimed to be the local expert on her. He asked us if we wanted to hear the tradition in French, Portuguese or Kikongo (Mbanza Kongo is very near the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and probably half the population is trilingual). We said Kikongo, which he proclaimed to be the right answer. He then went into a half-hour or maybe forty-five-minute discourse on the question. He had some interesting things to say. First, I noticed that he gave dates in his account, but he stated them in French. Likewise, he mentioned the names of the missionaries and the Christian names of Kongo kings in French also. I thought this was strange and concluded that he had received a “fed back” tradition, meaning that he had combined what he might have known from oral sources, such as his parents or elders, with written sources that drew on the movement which was described in French at least as early as 1953.

I might have easily concluded that both his traditions and those Bockie heard as a youth were simply feed back stories made to surround an event known only from modern historical reconstruction. You can hear such a tradition and have no idea that it is of modern creation, since you might not know its sources and even the one telling you might have heard rather than read it. Personal elaboration around a few set facts is a common point of oral tradition, and thus explaining things one receives from tradition or even from books can be expanded this way.

But having said that I was very intrigued by other elements in the story which were purely Kikongo. The most important was the very significant role played in the story I heard in Mbanza Kongo by Beatriz’s mother (ngudi andi Kimpa Vita), to the point where much of the inspiration of the movement was in fact from the mother, and moreoever, the mother continued the movement after her daugher’s death.

The traditionalist went on to link modern religious movements through the descent of this mother. Was it possible that the movement did live on? I can’t say. I do know that several independent churches claim Kimpa Vita as their founder, or claim to be heirs to her message, most notably some branches of the Kimbanguist church (founded in the 1920s by a prophet named Simon Kibangu) and the Bundu dia Kongo, a rapidly growing church founded by Mwanda Nsemi in the 1960s. It could be true, or it could be simply propaganda of these movements, also fed back into tradition.

Was it unusual that this movement was led/instigated by a woman? Or would that not have been consequential to her followers and opponents?

The movement was led by Saint Anthony; D Beatriz was only his earthly form. Why he chose a woman is harder to say.

Did it make a difference that he did? Probably. Beatriz realized that the woman/man thing was a problem. When Pedro’s soldiers arrested her they challenged her, asking how Saint Anthony, who was a man, could have a baby. Her only answer was that she didn’t know, only that it had come from Heaven. She certainly was attentive to women; for example, she could make the barren bear children, and women were among her close followers.

I don’t think, though, that we should read too much into the sex issue. There were also a number of very powerful women in Kongo at her time: Queen Ana Afonso de Leao all but ruled the southeast, and Queen Suzanna de Nobrega ruled the southwest. Although Joao II ruled Lemba, everyone knew that his sister, Elena was the real ruler of that territory. There were provisions in Kongo law allowing women who reached a certain political level to have male concubines and treat them more or less as men treated female concubines.

Finally I confess that I didn’t do as much as I wanted to or could about the question of women and females in Kongo life when I wrote the book, and sacrificed some analytical asides in the interests of narrative. I tried to remedy this ever so slightly in an dense and technical article I published in the Journal of African History, called “Elite women in the Kingdom of Kongo”, not for the faint-hearted, that addressed the question of female power. I had also addressed female power in the life of Queen Njinga, who ruled in the Kimbundu speaking area south of Kongo, in another article some twenty years ago, and I hope to write more about women in the future.

Has there been a reclamation or rediscovery of her in the postcolonial period? How does Dona Beatriz/Kimpa Vita read in Angola now?

As long ago as 1996 there was an official decision to erect a statue to her somewhere in the country. There is an image of her, drawn by Bernardo da Gallo from life, on the cover of my book, so it wouldn’t be hard to do. This would be the “book” D Beatriz Kimpa Vita, with the full apparatus of scholarship, as opposed to the “tradition” Kimpa Vita, supported by the oral traditions and independent churches. It will be interesting to see how these two versions, my book, and Kongo pride run into each other.

* Canadian Journal of African Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3 (1998), pp. 645-647, in which Bockie writes,

As a child growing up in the Lower Congo listening to tales from our oral history, I heard many times about the exploits of Kimpa Vita, who was still remembered after 250 years as a major cultural heroine … It was something of a shock to find that Thornton has chosen to present his account almost exclusively through the eyes of her enemies and killers … there remains no convincing Kongo voice or presence in this book.

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1947: The avatar of Doctor Wonder

Posted on 1 July, 2009 by Headsman

On this date in 1947, according to the modern mystical sect of Daheshism, the eponymous founder Dahesh was shot as a spy at the Iran-Azerbaijan frontier — only to reappear perfectly alive in his native Lebanon.

Not that Dr. Wonder.

This Dr. Wonder:

Now, every theology looks like mummery to an outsider practically by definition, and far be it from Executed Today to impugn anyone’s spiritual truth. But: you might want to strap yourself in for Dahesh.

Born Salim Moussa Achi, “le docteur Dahesh” — “a Franco-Arabic amalgam that translates as ‘Dr. Wonder'” — made his unusual name in Beirut in the 1930’s and 1940’s “for his mesmeric gaze, the sway he held over some highly placed Lebanese (especially women), and his propensity for performing Houdini-like ‘wonders’ — including transmuting strips of paper into banknotes, appearing and disappearing at will, removing his head before retiring, and summoning spirits.”

Expelled from Lebanon, he is supposed to have walked across Syria and Turkey to Azerbaijan,* been caught without papers in that dangerous neighborhood, and shortly thereafter executed as a suspected spy.

Next thing you know, he’s back in Beirut, ready to fulfill his destiny of dying in New York in 1984 as a collector of forgettable 19th century art. And also performing “thousands” of miracles revealing him to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, which we know for a fact because he never claimed to be Jesus.

Something like that. Finer points elided.

Daheshism today evidently claims a few thousand followers — including the wealthy Zahid family — and no centralized church-like entity. Its most prominent public billboard is New York’s Dahesh Museum, which houses the late Doc Wonder’s collection of the official French Academy art overthrown by impressionism.

And the miracle on this date in 1947?

Sure, you (o ye of little faith!) might think that he slipped back into Beirut and seized on the shooting of some poor undocumented schmo who happened to resemble him.

But actually, the trick was to swap places with one of your six celestial avatars, a race of real good sports about suffering martyrdom since that’s also what the “crucified” Jesus did.**

* The sourcing is mixed on whether “Azerbaijan” here should be considered the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic then a constituent of the USSR, or its neighboring Iranian region, also called Azerbaijan.

** In this, Daheshism echoes very longstanding mystical approaches to spirit/body dualism; some early Gnostic Christians seem to have believed that Christ was not flesh in the literal human sense, and therefore his apparent death was otherwise. The Koran also supports the notion that Christ did not die bodily.

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1962: Georges Kageorgis, assassin

Posted on 30 June, 2009 by Headsman

On this date in 1962, Georges Kageorgis* was shot at Usumbura (now Bujumbura) for assassinating the charismatic national figure seemingly destined to lead the country into its postcolonial age.

“It was a bit like what could have happened in South Africa if Nelson Mandela was murdered before assuming the presidency in 1994,” said one pol later.

A prince, a pro-independence nationalist, a Tutsi who had married a Hutu and spurned a tribal leadership position lest he cast too sectarian a profile, Louis Rwagasore became prime minister in the fall of 1961 on the strength of his party‘s comprehensive electoral victory.

Rwagasore admired Patrice Lumumba. He was destined to share Lumumba’s fate.

Two weeks after his election, “the one truly popular national figure” was gunned down by Kageorgis, a Greek mercenary drawing pay from Belgian settlers who reckoned a better situation (French link) for themselves with Hutu governance. A revolution of (Belgian- and Catholic-backed) Hutu in Rwanda had had a “neo-colonial” character, according to Rene Lemarchand … and it had heightened ethnic tensions in Burundi.

With the murdered prince went ethnic cohesion; the bloody Kamenge riots of January 1962 presaged worse to come as leadership in the Rwagasore-less party collapsed. Ethnic conflict sharpened through the 1960’s, with a Tutsi-dominated dictatorship ultimately gaining control of the country and setting the stage for intermittent massacres (two classed as genocides) that haunt Burundi to this day and form part of the context for the Rwandan genocide.

Rwagasore Day — October 13, the anniversary of the prince’s assassination — is still observed in Burundi. Kageorgis’s execution date is notable for other reasons: it was the last day before Belgian authority in Ruanda-Urundi officially ended.

* This Greek newspaper gives the killer’s name as Ioannis Karagiorgis.

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Feast Day of Saint Peter and Saint Paul

Posted on 29 June, 2009 by Headsman

June 29 is the shared feast day (in both the Latin and Greek rites) of the two biggest wheels in first century Christianity, Saint Peter and Saint Paul.

Tradition holds that both men were martyred in Rome during the persecutions of Emperor Nero after Rome burned: Paul beheaded, Peter crucified upside-down at his own request not to die in the manner of his lord.* Some traditions have both being put to death on the same day; others do not.

Concrete dates** are going to be hard to come by, of course, and the purported historical doings of New Testament Christians are inextricably conjoined to theological ox-goring.

But it is their lives and not their deaths that make them memorable, and to judge by the conquest of the faith they propounded, their feast day honors are richly deserved. Some scholars with no fear for their soul will tell you that Paul in particular can be rated a more consequential historical person than the Nazarene himself, having formulated the doctrine and conducted the ministry needed to turn a dead-end Jewish sect or inchoate reform movement into a surging universal religion that would play to Praetorians.

[flv:http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/1610/jc7.flv 440 330]

More from this program — and other resources on early Christianity — at this Frontline page.

While linked on this day, Peter and Paul appear in the Bible as sometime rivals. One might well speculate at the dynamics between them: Peter, after all, got his commission straight from the Savior himself; the upstart Saul of Tarsus, late of the Jewish establishment, arrived fired with the zeal of the converted and went from persecuting Christians to appropriating their doctrine, even calling Peter out publicly.

However they sublimated that awkwardness, their respective offices as Apostle to the Jews (Peter) and Apostle to the Gentiles (Paul) allude to an oft-explored problem whose resolution would prove decisive for the nascent faith: did Christianity require adherence to the strict Mosaic law?

The stakes: would anyone outside of already-existing Jews actually want to convert?

Paul looks like the firebrand, boldly and tirelessly enacting his revolutionary faith-alone revelation (so central to the Protestant Reformation 15 centuries later) on the pacified highways and sea lanes of the Pax Romana; Peter seems the compromiser (or a vacillator), instinctively granting precedence to the Jewish tradition but being carried along by events towards Paul.

Peter is seen in the Bible acceding to Paul’s opposition to making Greeks eat kosher and circumcise, and even persuading the most august Judaizer and leader of the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem, Saint James.

Amongst these illustrious names, we may perceive or imagine — “through a glass darkly”, as it were — what must have been a blossoming multitude of contending beliefs and practices.

Paul made Christian doctrine amenable† to the practices that would make it a phenomenal evangelical success (and separate it from the faith of Abraham), but on that same winners-write-history basis one is entitled to wonder whether the authority of Peter and James have been appropriated ex post facto by the Biblical writers of the Pauline party. If so, you wouldn’t say his reputation has suffered for it: the pope still claims to speak as “the unworthy heir of St. Peter” … and in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Whatever the faithful and the merely interested may speculate about their historicity, their names are on the founding charter of Christianity.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day … (St. Paul, 2 Timothy 4:7-8)

A very few of the very many books about Peter and Paul and their times

* See the apocryphal Acts of Peter.

** Italian archaeologist Margherita Guarducci, however, argued that Peter’s death could be assigned to a precise date: October 13, 64. We can pose against this skepticism that Peter ever went to Rome at all, a sometime Protestant hobby-horse supposed to undermine the primacy of the Holy See.

† But not so decisively that he wasn’t soon at loggerheads with the Jerusalem Jewish Christians again.

Update: Just as this post was getting set to publish, the Vatican announced the discovery of what it claims may be the oldest image of St. Paul, a 4th century fresco uncovered in a Roman catacomb.

Executed Today

Historical executions, day by day.

Author Archives: Headsman

1896: Charles Thomas Wooldridge, of The Ballad of Reading Gaol

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1840: Francois Benjamin Courvoisier, for the murder of Lord Russell

Speedy Trial

Read All About It

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1600: Jean Livingston, Lady Waristoun

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Themed Set: The Ballad

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1187: Raynald of Chatillon, by Saladin

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1931: Ernesto Opisso

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1706: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, the Kongolese Saint Anthony

Dona Beatriz? Kimpa Vita?
What’s In A Name?

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1947: The avatar of Doctor Wonder

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1962: Georges Kageorgis, assassin

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Feast Day of Saint Peter and Saint Paul

A very few of the very many books about Peter and Paul and their times

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Speedy Trial

Read All About It

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Dona Beatriz? Kimpa Vita?What’s In A Name?

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A very few of the very many books about Peter and Paul and their times

On this day..

Dona Beatriz? Kimpa Vita?
What’s In A Name?