Category Archives: Crime

1729: James Cluff, on appeal

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From the Newgate Calendar:

This unhappy young man was born in Clare-market, and lived as a waiter at several public-houses, in all of which he maintained an extraordinary character for diligence, obligingness, and integrity.

Mr. Payne, master of the Green Lattice, in Holborn, hired Cluff [or Clough -ed.] as a servant, and during his residence there, he fell in love with Mary Green, his fellow-servant; but she being courted by another man, constantly rejected his addresses, which frequently agitated his mind in the most violent degree.

Green’s other lover coming to see her, sat in the same box with her, and was received by her in an affectionate manner; but this did not seem to be much regarded by Cluff, who was then engaged in attending the customers: but when the lover was gone, Mr. Payne, perceiving that something had discomposed Cluff’s mind, asked him the reason of it; but could not prevail on him to tell the cause.

While Mr. Payne and his wife were at dinner in the parlour, and the girl was eating her dinner in one of the boxes, Mrs. Payne heard a noise, as if two persons were struggling, and going into the tap-room, Cluff said, “Come hither, madam.” On this she advanced, and saw the prisoner holding the deceased by the shoulders, who was sitting on the floor, and speechless, while the blood streamed from her in large quantities.

Mrs. Payne called out, “What have you been doing, James?” He said, “Nothing.” He was asked if he had seen her hurt herself? He said, No; but that he had seen her bring a knife from the cellar where she had been to draw some beer for her dinner. Mr. Payne now entered the tap-room, and then went into then cellar to discover if there was any blood there; but finding none, he accused Cluff on suspicion of having committed the murder; and instantly sent for a surgeon. When the surgeon arrived, he found that a knife had been stabbed into the upper part of the thigh, and entered the body of the girl, in such a manner that she could not survive the stroke more than a minute. [i.e., it gashed her femoral artery -ed.]

A bloody knife was found in the room, and Cluff was committed to Newgate for the murder. On his trial, the surgeon deposed that the knife fitted the wound that had been made, and that he believed the woman had not killed herself: but the jury acquitted the prisoner, from what they deemed insufficiency of evidence.

A discharge of the accused party would now have followed of course; but William Green, the brother and heir of the deceased, immediately lodged an appeal in consequence of which Cluff was brought to trial at the next sessions but one, when his case was argued with the utmost ingenuity by the counsel for and against him, but this second jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to die.

Holy double jeopardy! Though rarely used, it was indeed formerly an option for a victim or a victim’s heir to lodge a private appeal against the purported malefactor, even one who had already been acquitted — indeed, even against one who had been convicted and then pardoned.

The distinction between a “public” and a “private” prosecution was usually more theoretical than real, since — at least until Sir John Fielding began organizing professional police in the late 18th century — even normal Crown trials often depended mostly on the exertions of the victim or friends to bring a man to book with sufficient evidence to punish him.* But in a close case, like Cluff’s, the rarely-used private appeal option could occasionally offer what amounted to a second bite at the apple.** (See Whores and Highwaymen: Crime and Justice in the Eighteenth-century Metropolis)

Perhaps tracing to the ancient weregild system of atoning crimes via direct redress by offenders to their victims, private prosecutions were completely immune from interference by a sovereign pardon. (However, they could be dropped any time the prosecuting party wished — which also made them leverage for extracting cash settlements.)

Back to the Newgate Calendar:

“I earnestly press’d upon him to glorify God by a plain Confession of his Crime, and urg’d to him the most material Circumstances, in Consideration whereof scarce any Body doubts but he committed the Fact. He could not pretend that his Master, or Mistress, who gave him the Character of a good Servant, had any Prejudice, or Ill-will to him, upon which Account they might be easy, whether he lived or died. He neither reflected on them, nor none of the Witnesses, as if they had any View in Prosecuting him, but that Justice might be executed. I urg’d him with the Surgeon’s Opinion, that it was improbable, if not impossible, for the Maid to give herself such a Wound; that she had no Knife in the Cellar; that in the first Trial, three Persons had sworn that he was Rude and Barbarous to the Deceased upon many Occasions, and upon that Account she made grievous Complaints to her Mother, and others … he continued Peremptory in his Denial. At first, indeed, he seem’d to be in Confusion, at the many pressing Instances which were made to extort a Confession from him; but recollecting himself, he denied that he gave the mortal Wound, and said, that he knew nothing at all how she came by her Death … Many of his Friends and Acquaintances came daily to visit him, while he was under Sentence, and I wish they did not divert him too much from his Duty, and that some of them did not under-hand, buoy him up with false Hopes. He hop’d to be sav’d only by the Mercy of God, through the Merits of Jesus Christ, and that he forgave all the World any Injuries done him, as he expected Forgiveness from Almighty God.”

–James Guthrie, the Ordinary of Newgate

After conviction, his behaviour was the most devout and resigned that could be imagined; he exercised himself in every act of devotion, but solemnly declared his perfect innocence with respect to the murder. He was visited by his friends, who earnestly entreated him to make a sincere confession; especially as in his case it was not in the power of the king himself to grant him a pardon. In answer hereto, he freely confessed all his other crimes; but, saying he would not rush into eternity with a lie in his month, again steadily denied the perpetration of the crime of which he had been convicted. The clergyman who attended him urged him to the confession of his guilt, and even refused to administer the sacrament to him on the morning of his execution, on any other terms than those of acknowledging his crime, but nothing could shake his resolution; he still steadily persisted in his innocence.

On his way to the place of execution, he desired to stop at the door of his late master, which being granted, he called for a pint of wine, and having drank a glass of it, he addressed Mr. Payne in the following terms:

“Sir, you are not insensible that I am going to suffer an ignominious death, for a crime of which I declare I am not guilty, as I am to appear before my great Judge in a few moments to answer for all my past sins. I hope you and my good mistress will pray for my poor soul. God bless you, and all your family.”

At the place of execution he behaved in the most composed, devout, and resigned manner; and seemed to possess in the consciousness of innocence. There was a great concourse of spectators to witness his fatal end; to whom he spoke in the following manner: “Good people, I am going to die for a fact I never committed, I wish all mankind well; and as I have prayed for my prosecutors, I hope my sins will be forgiven through the merits of my ever blessed redeemer. I beg you to pray for my departing soul; and as to the fact now die for, I wish I was as free from, all other sins.”

He was hanged at Tyburn on the, 25th of July, 1729, exhibiting no signs of fear to his last moment.

The case of this man is very extraordinary. The evidence against him was at best but circumstantial; and this not supported with such strong corroborative proofs as have occasioned conviction in many other instances. No person was witness to his commission of the murder; nor was there any absolute proof that he did commit it; and from the steady perseverance with which he denied it, under the most awful circumstances, and at the very concluding scene of his life, charity would. tempt one to believe that he was innocent. Ought not this case to afford a lesson of caution to juries how they convict on circumstantial evidence? Is it not better that the guilty should escape, than the innocent be punished? All the decrees of mortals are liable to error; but the time will come when all mists shall be cleared from our sight; and we shall witness to the wisdom of those laws of Providence, which are now inscrutable to mortal eyes. Then shall we see that what appeared inexplicable to us was divinely right; and learn to admire that wisdom which, at present, so much exceeds our finite comprehension. In the mean time, we ought to adore that goodness we cannot comprehend, and rest satisfied with those dispensations, which are eternally and immutably just.

After Cluff’s hanging, his friends published a paper delivered them by the dead man “wherein [Cluff] makes a solemn Declaration that he was innocent of the Murder, and that several material Circumstances given in Evidence against him (which he particularly mentions) were untrue.” (London Journal, Aug. 2, 1729)

* Most notoriously, Jonathan Wild profiteered wildly from this system of privatized law enforcement by extracting a cut both from thieves whom he could threaten to shop for a reward, and from victims whose effects he could recover for a percentage.

** Though such proceedings would normally be handled, as Cluff’s was, by a jury trial, it was for private prosecutions that trial by combat still remained a possibility; one wonders if the accused servant considered taking his chances in the lists. This archaic legal artifact would not be abolished for ninety more years yet — after an 1818 case, Ashford v. Thornton, in which the burly accused in a private appeal successfully sued for the right to fight his wispy accuser in arms rather than in court. The magistrate gave an embarrassed ruling in the brawler’s favor (“however obnoxious I am myself to the trial by battle, it is the mode of trial which we, in our judicial character, are bound to award. We are delivering the law as it is, and not as we wish it to be”), leading the appellant to wisely back out of the case … and leading Parliament to ban private appeals and trial by combat in 1819.

When such an abolition was mooted as a means of soothing the American colonies in the early 1770s, however, conservative Lords decried the innovation as tending to “a system of ministerial despotism” that would remove a failsafe for crime victims — although Edmund Burke did allow that the ugly remnant of judicial combat “was superstitious and barbarous to the last degree.”

Have there been attempts even in 21st century Anglosphere courts to assert the right to trial by combat? Reader, there have.

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1722: Marie-Jeanne Roger, “la Grande-Jeanneton”

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On this date in 1722, Cartouche’s redoubtable lover “Big Jenny” was executed on Paris’s Place de Greve.

As befits a thief intrepid enough to grace the execution playing cards, the great French outlaw Cartouche boasted a veritable harem of mistresses whose offices were no less valuable for their contributions to Cartouche’s criminal enterprises: “‘La Catin,’ ‘La Bel-Air,’ ‘La Galette,’ ‘La Petite Poulailliere,’ ‘La Mion,’ ‘La Belle-Laitiere,’ ‘Margot-Monsieur,’ ‘La Religieuse,’ ‘La Bonne,’ ‘La Blanche,’ “Tape-dru,’ &c. &c. But far beyond them all stands out, in rich relief, the name of that most celebrated, most accomplished, most devoted of all the (titular) wives of Cartouche — Big Jenny!” (Source)

Under the guise of an innocent fruit-pedlar, Marie-Jeanne Roger, alias La Grande-Jeanneton “flitt[ed] about from place to place, spying, plotting, drinking, fighting, robbing, and being robbed — the terror and admiration (according to the spectator’s point of view) of every one that approached her.” And she and the robber prince had by accounts that might admittedly be colored by sentimental projection a passionate romance. (Parlement’s published condemnation traduces her as a “debauched woman, concubine” of a number of disreputable characters. Our doomed principal tartly replied that Paris would halve her vices if only greedy innkeepers were not so eager to play procurer.)

La Grande-Jeanneton‘s well-known dalliance with Cartouche made her a prime target after authorities started rolling up that brigand’s gang, and they were mean enough to deny her request to go to the scaffold with her man.

Her sex did not spare her the horrible torture of the Brodequin; posterity has not seen fit to blame her overmuch for succumbing to the leg-crusher to the extent of yielding 52 names, especially since she at least salvaged the opportunity to embarrass many distinguished merchants.

Depuis un an logeait, vers le Palais-Royal,
Une fille de bien qui se gouvernait mal.
Cartouche fréquentait cette tendre poulette;
Salope, s’il en fut, d’ailleurs assez bien faite.
Oeil fripon, petit nez retroussé, teint fleuri,
Friande d’un amant, bien plus que d’un mari,
Fourbe au dernier degré, mutine jusqu’à battre,
Son coeur fut captivé par ce jeune tendron,
Que chacun appelait ta Grande Jeanneton.

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1908: Grete Beier, who wanted the fairy tale

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Marie Margarethe (Grete) Beier, the daughter of the late Mayor of Brand-Erbisdorf, was beheaded on the fallbeil on this date in 1908 for murdering her fiance. While her crime was banal, the consequent spectacle lit up newswires all the globe ’round.


Despite the marquee half of this contradictory headline in the Adelaide, Australia Advertiser (Aug. 26, 1908), the execution occurred behind prison walls. About two hundred tickets were distributed to members of the public (all men), but thousands of applicants (which included many women) were denied them. These “ticket holders rushed in pell mell in their eagerness to get the best places. Men fell and fought wildly.”

Secretly carrying on with a lover named Johannes Merker, Beier (German Wikipedia link) was forced by her parents — a working-class couple made good — into pledging her troth to a respectable engineer named Heinrich Pressler.

With “the face of an angel and the heart of a fiend”* the charming Beier contrived a plan to truly have it all: on May 13, 1907, she visited her would-be husband and spiked his drink with potassium cyanide — then to be sure of her project, had him close his eyes and open his mouth on her flirty promise of a sweet surprise. Then she shoved his own revolver between his lips and fired, abandoning at the scene of her crime a forged will to her benefit, a forged suicide note lamenting a purported affair with a vengeful Italian woman, and forged love letters corroborating the latter, fictional, relationship.

She was some weeks on towards her way to getting away with it — the coroner did indeed take Herr Pressler for a suicide — before suspicions as to the dead man’s testament led police to set a watch on her and unravel the web. Grete Beier confessed, in an unsuccessful gambit to secure mercy.

She reportedly died bravely, albeit slightly appalled by the size of the audience that had been admitted to gawk at her disgraceful finale.


Detail view (click for the full image) of the courthouse yard at Freiburg being readied for Grete Beier’s beheading. Image via the invaluable Bois de Justice.

* Her feminine fiendishness was greatly exacerbated to contemporaries by stories that she had also aborted three bastard children.

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1799: Elizabeth Lavender, teenage Fairlight infanticide

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London Chronicle, Feb. 2-5, 1799

On Sunday se’nnight the body of a new-born male infant, with its throat cut, was discovered, concealed in a small tub, among some cordwood, in a cellar at Fairlight in the county of Sussex. The fact appearing to have been recently committed, and suspicion falling on a young woman, resident in an adjoining apartment, named Lavender, she was taken into custody and a surgeon sent for, who declared she had been very lately in travail; and the Coroner’s Jury having on view of the body, returned a verdict of wilful murder against the said Lavender, she was committed to Horsham gaol. The wretched girl hath scarcely attained her eighteenth year.

London Oracle and Daily Advertiser, July 19, 1799

LEWES. — At our Assizes, which commence here on Friday morning next, before Lord Chief Justice Buller,* we have the satisfaction to say, there are but seven prisoners for trial, viz.

Elizabeth Lavender, aged 19 years, charged with the wilful murder of her male bastard child at Fairlight.

James Medhurst, alias Miles, aged 24 years, for feloniously stealing one barrow hog, the property of Thomas Davis.

Daniel Noyell, aged 20 years; John Gardiner, 21 years; and John Twiney, 22 years, for divers felonies in the town of Brighton.

William Jackson, aged 23 years, for feloniously entering the dwelling-house of Henry Karn, of Tillington, in June last, and stealing therein to the amount of twelve shillings in money, a silver watch, some wearing apparel, and other articles, the property of the said Henry Karns.

William Hodson, otherwise Powell, aged 28 years, charged with having stolen on Westbourn Common, a black gelding, the property of William Churcher; also with having stolen and rode away from a lane, in the parish of New Fishbourn, a grey poney gelding, the property of John Hardham.

Should the business at nisi prius prove as light as that on the Crown side, we shall have a very short Assize.

London Sun, July 25, 1799

LEWES, July 22

…

At the Assizes for this County, which ended here on Saturday morning last, seven prisoners were tried, five of whom were capitally convicted, and received sentence of death, viz.

Elizabeth Lavender, for the wilful murder of her male bastard child, at Fairlight. — John Gardiner and John Twiney, for felonies in the town of Brighton. — William Jackson, for a felony in the dwelling house of Henry Karn, at Tillington. — And William Hodson, otherwise Powell, for horse-stealing.

The four men were reprieved before the Judges left the town; but the unhappy woman was left for execution, and is this day to suffer at Horsham, after which her body is to be dissected and anatomized.

True Briton, Aug. 2, 1799

LEWES, July 29

…

Last Monday Elizabeth Lavender was executed at Horsham, pursuant to her sentence at our late Assizes, for the murder of her male bastard child. Her behaviour at the gallows was such as became one in her unhappy situation. She trembled and wept much, but nevertheless seemed to listen to the Clergyman who attended her, and having expressed a hope that all other females would take warning by her untimely fate, she was turned off about half past twelve, and expired without any apparent agony.

* Buller is most (in)famous now for allegedly issuing the judicial standard permitting a man to beat his wife with a rod, provided it was no thicker than his thumb. It’s quite dubious whether he ever did so rule, and indeed whether any such rule has ever existed; nevertheless, Buller was lampooned in his own day as “Judge Thumb”.

More historically verifiable is his role on the judicial panel upholding the right of the slaveship Zong to throw all its cargo into the sea.

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1934: Not Walter Lett, To Kill a Mockingbird inspiration

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July 20, 1934 was the third and last of Walter Lett’s scheduled execution dates for raping a white woman in Monroeville, Alabama.

A thirty-something ex-convict, Lett’s protestations of innocence stood little chance against the word of a white woman named Naomi Lowery, herself a penniless drifter.

Lett was almost lynched but despite his certain condemnation there was something wrong about this case — something discomfiting even for Monroeville’s worthies. We have seen elsewhere in these pages that a rape accusation was a powerful weapon on the ambiguous fringes of the color line. Just three years before this story, nine black teens had been accused of a rape on an Alabama train, and the legal odyssey of these Scottsboro Boys would dominate headlines during the Depression.

“It may have been that [Lett] and Lowery were lovers, or that she was involved with another Negro man,” one author put it. “If a white woman became pregnant under those circumstances, it was not uncommon for her to claim rape, or accuse someone other than her lover.”

Records of this trial seem to have gone missing, but Lett’s claims had enough weight (and Lowery’s had little enough) to induce Monroeville’s elders to petition Gov. Benjamin Miller* against carrying out the electrocution. Miller reprieved Lett ahead of May 11 and June 20 execution dates: “I am of the opinion and conviction that there is much doubt as to the man being guilty,” Miller told the Montgomery Advertiser. Gov. Miller was so sure that Lett didn’t do it that before the man went to the chair on July 20, Miller decided instead to let him spend the rest of his life in prison for the thing he didn’t do.

We don’t have Walter Lett’s side of this story because the strain of his position drove him mad; when the sentence was commuted, he was transported from death row directly to a mental hospital, where he died of tuberculosis in 1937.

In his stead, we have a different voice: a Monroeville schoolgirl at the time of Lett’s trial named Harper Lee** would later channel the case’s undertones of racial injustice for her legendary (and, until recently, only) novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.

In one of the famously retiring Lee’s few public comments on the book, she cited the Lett case as her model for the book’s fictional, and manifestly unjust, rape trial.

Lee’s father, A.C. Lee was the editor-publisher of the Monroeville Journal at the time of l’affaire Lett. But as a young lawyer, before Harper’s birth, Lee himself had once defended in court two men who wound up being hanged. An idealized† version of this man is the clear foundation for the defense attorney Atticus Finch in Lee’s book.

Charles Shields, whose 2006 biography of Harper Lee is quoted above on the indeterminate reason for the rape allegation, writes that the author “had a free hand to retell this macabre episode in her father’s life, which he always referred to in vague terms, no doubt because of the pain it caused him. (He never accepted another criminal case.) This time, under his daughter’s sensitive hand, A. C. Lee, in the character of Atticus Finch, could be made to argue in defense of Walter Lett, and his virtues as a humane, fair minded man would be honored.”

* Miller was an anti-Ku Klux Klan politician, a fact of possible relevance to his actions.

** Harper Lee’s childhood friend was Truman Capote, future author of In Cold Blood. (Lee traveled to Kansas with Capote and helped him research the murder case in question.) Alabama’s legislature has recognized Monroeville as the state’s literary capital.

† According to Shields, the real A.C. Lee was more of a gentleman, establishment segregationist: more like the warts-and-all Atticus Finch of Lee’s Go Set a Watchman than the saintly character played by Gregory Peck. In 1952-53, A.C. Lee helped to force out the pastor of the local First Methodist church over controversial pro-integration remarks from the pulpit. Rev. Ray Whatley’s post-Monroeville assignment took him to Montgomery, where he was president of a chapter of the Alabama Council on Human Relations while the young Rev. Martin Luther King was vice-president. Whatley was forced out of his Montgomery congregation, too: called “a liar, a communist, and a few other things” (Whatley’s words) for supporting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. They tried to reassign him to tiny Linden, Alabama, but townspeople there immediately rejected him and many stopped paying church tithes until he was shipped onward to Mobile.

See When the Church Bell Rang Racist by Donald Collins, who notes that Whatley’s anathema had a chilling effect on other white Methodist clergy — now clearly given to understand that there would be “a great price to be paid if a minister chose to speak out for racial justice.”

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1762: Sarah Metyard and Sally Metyard, mother and daughter

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(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)

On this date in 1762, Sarah Metyard and her daughter, Sarah Morgan “Sally” Metyard, were hanged at Tyburn for the horrible murder of their apprentice girl.

Sarah, a milliner, and Sally, her assistant, had taken on several female apprentices. One of those, a thirteen-year-old workhouse orphan named Anne Naylor or Nailor, was cruelly treated by the Metyards, who beat her, confined her to the attic and fed her nothing but bread and water. Twice she escaped and asked for help and twice she was dragged back by her mistresses to be tortured all over again.

After the second escape attempt, according to the entry in the Newgate Calendar, the Metyards

…put [Anne] into a back room on the second storey, tied a cord round her waist, and her hands behind her, and fastened her to the door in such a manner that it was impossible for her either to sit or lie down. She was compelled to remain in this situation for three successive days; but they permitted her to go to bed at the usual hours at night. Having received no kind of nutriment for three days and two nights, her strength was so exhausted that, being unable to walk upstairs, she crept to the garret, where she lay on her hands and feet.

While she remained tied up on the second floor the other apprentices were ordered to work in an adjoining apartment, that they might be deterred from disobedience by being witnesses to the unhappy girl’s sufferings; but they were enjoined, on the penalty of being subjected to equal severity, against affording her any kind of relief.

On the fourth day she faltered in speech, and presently afterwards expired. The other girls, seeing the whole weight of her body supported by the strings which confined her to the door, were greatly alarmed, and called out: “Miss Sally! Miss Sally! Nanny does not move.” The daughter then came upstairs, saying: “If she does not move, I will make her move”; and then beat the deceased on the head with the heel of a shoe.

This is a sad epitome of what will appear at large in too many dreadful examples on the great day of account, when all those who have counteracted, or ill discharged their relative duties of parent and child, ruler and subject, pastor and people, or any other of the superior and inferior relations in this state of trial, will look aghast at each other, in frantic despair, charging the neglect of duty, of relaxed discipline, of disobedience, and evil example to each other’s account; when all that seduce and betray each other into sin, will fill up the dire and dreadful number.

Learn hence ye parents and children of every rank, the force and importance of that admonition, preparative to a general reformation of life and manners, the neglect of which is a sure presage of a general corruption and impending destruction.

–the Newgate Ordinary

Anne died a short time afterwards, and Sarah and Sally hid this fact and told everyone she had run away. They hid her body in a box in the garret for two months until the smell became too offensive, then dismembered the corpse and dumped it in a gully-hole in Chick Lane. Two watchmen found the remains on December 5, 1758.

The crime went undiscovered for years, and Sally eventually moved out of the house and in with a Mr. Rooker. Sarah, however, was afraid her daughter might tell someone what happened, and began stalking her and threatening her life. Her attempts to frighten Sally into silence backfired when Sally confronted her and alluded to the murder in front of Mr. Rooker.

Once Sarah was gone, Rooker demanded to know what they’d been talking about, and Sally spilled the beans. He went straight to the cops. (Or more precisely, to “the officers of the parish of Tottenham High Cross.”)

Sally backed up everything he told them.

Cate Ludlow and Graham Jackson record in their Grim Almanac of Georgian London,

the Metyards had to be separated in prison lest they attack each other, and would always blame the other if asked about the crimes. Unbeknownst to the gaolers, the mother had been starving herself (a fitting fate) in an attempt to cheat the gallows; a few days before the due date she fell into a fit and swooned away. She never spoke again. On 19 July 1762, before 9:00 a.m., the women were put into the cart. The ordinary had to fight to get them through the enormous crowds, and found the mother stretched out like a statue, not even seeming to breathe, though her chest twitched convulsively now and then. The daughter begged for prayers from the crowd (over the jeers and boos*), and looked about for Mr. Rooker. She added that ‘she died a martyr to her innocence.’

After they were hanged, their bodies were displayed before the public at the Surgeons’ Hall, then dissected.

* The populace reserved a special hatred for mistresses who abused their serving-girls.

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1707: John Whittingham

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On this date in 1707, John Whittingham was hanged as a burglar.

The Newgate Ordinary Paul Lorrain worked, as was his wont, on Whittingham’s soul, and as was his custom published an Ordinary’s Account celebrating Whittingham’s conversion. The thief, “before he was turned off, desired the Standers-by to take Warning by him, and pray for his departing Soul. His last Words were, Lord, have Mercy upon me! Lord, forgive me my Sins! Lord Jesus receive my Soul.”

But publishing these items was not merely the Ordinary’s custom — it was, especially in Lorrain’s hands, his very lucrative business.

The Ordinary’s Account of John Whittingham is a slender one; Lorrain spends 1,164 words on it, but most of these are formulaic description of the circumstances of Whittingham’s trial and conviction, followed by a padding-out with details of Lorrain’s own sermons. Only 679 words touch on Lorrain’s specific grappling with Whittingham’s own forgettable demons. (A bog-standard Newgate collection of “Sabbath-breaking, Idleness, Gaming, keeping bad Company, and having to do with Lewd Women.”)

Once Whittingham has been disposed of, however, we come to brass tacks for the Ordinary. Sure, Whittingham might have thought his hempen strangulation was the apotheosis of a life’s tragedy of sin and redemption. Actually it was just Lorrain’s daily bread and butter, in the literal sense of the term.

A lengthy footnote immediately following the execution remarks asserts Lorrain’s prime market position in the increasingly competitive execution broadsheet business:

Whereas some Persons do frequently take the Liberty of putting out of Sham-Papers, pretending to give an Account of the Malefactors (called the Lives and Conversations of the Persons Executed) in which Papers they are so defective and unjust, as sometimes to mistake even their Names and Crimes, and often misrepresent the State they plainly appear to be in under their Condemnation, and at the time of their Death. To prevent which great Abuses, These are to give Notice, That the only true Account of the Dying Criminals, is that which comes out the Day after their Execution in a single half Sheet, about 9 in the Morning, the Title whereof constantly be gins with these Words, The ORDINARY of NEWGATE his Account of the Behaviour, &c. In which Paper (always Printed on both sides the better to distinguish it from Counterfeits) are set down the Heads of the several Sermons Preach’d before the Condemned: And after their Confessions and Prayers, and Atestation thereto under the Ordinary’s Hand, that is, his Name at length; and at the bottom the Printer’s Name, Dryden Leach; which if the Readers would but observe, they would avoid those scandalous Cheats heretofore constantly impos’d upon them.

You got that?

And then, we have 1,213 words — significantly more than Lorrain spends on Whittingham himself — that underscore just why the Ordinary’s Account brand was worth such vigorous defense.

ADVERTISEMENTS.

In few Days will be Publish’d.

THE Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs for the Curious, occasionaly containing Divinity and Law, Philosophy Morral Natural and Experimental, Mathematicks in its several Branches, Physick Chymistry Surgery, Anotomy and Botany, Epitome of Books and News impartially done. Lives and Characters of Famous Persons as well Living as Dead, being the Life of Doctor Sherloch, Letters on several Subjects; History Poetry and Travels. For the Month of June. Sold by J. Morphew near Stationers-Hall Price, 6d. where may be had the 5 foregoing, Lives of Prince Lewis of Baden and my Lord Cutts, Mr. Jeremiah White late Chaplain to Oliver Cromwel, and D. Drake. Containing several other curious Miscellaneous Works in sundry Faculties.

THERE is now prepared and to be Sold only at Mr. Deighton’s, a Perfumer, at his Shop at the corner of Chancery-Lane in Fleet-street, the only famous Beautifying Water, for the clearing and making the Face fair, tho’ of the brownish Complexion, which by its use has been experimented to make the Skin smooth and white and also to take off all Pimples and Redness, from 2s. 6d. to 5s. a Bottle. Just Publish’d.

*** A new and exact Draught of the City of Thoulon, with all its Fortifications. The Basom for the King’s Ships of War, &c. Sold by John Philips next the Fleece Tavern in Cornhill and by B. Bragg, in Pater-Noster-Row. Where may be had a Haxagon, fortify’d with all sorts of Out-works, according to the modern Method of Fortification, useful for those who read the publick News.

A Presentative against Atheism and Infidelity. The Remains of Cardinal Du Perron, president Thumanus, Monsieur St Evremont, and other great Men. Both by Thomas Osborn in Gray’s Inn next to the Walks, and Samuel Butler near Bernard’s Inn, Holbourn.

This Day is Publish’d.

THE Diverting Muse, or the Universal Medley, Written by a Society of merry Gentlemen, for the Entertainment of the Town. The First Part. Consisting of the Husmours of a Coffee-house. Sollitary Enjoyment, or the Pleasure of Contemplation. An off-hand Epitaph upon the Weasel. A Lampoon upon two Sisters, famous Strumpets in the City The dying Husband and the joyful Wife. The Resolute Lady. The plain Dealer A Dialogue Song between a forward Youth and a young Lady The meaning Lover. London: Printed, and Sold by B. Bragg at the Raven in Pater-noster-row, 1707.
Newly Publish’d the 2d Edition of

*** The Life and Glorious History of his Grace John Duke and Earl of Malborough, Prince of the Empire, Capt. General of her Majesty’s Forces &c. containing an Account of the most Important Battles, Seiges, Negotiations &c. managed under his Auspicious Conduct; both in the Wars of Flanders and Ireland, with a large Account of the ever Memorable Battles of Hockstet and Schellenberg in Germany, also his March to the Moselle in 1705. his return to the Netherlands and forcing the French Lines near Tirlemont and his last Victory at Ramallies, with many Remarkable Passagos from his 1st advancement in the Court of King Charles the II. to this present time. Printed for John Chantry at the Sign of Lincolnsin-back Gate, Price bound one Sailling.

Jst published,

A Cry from the Desart: Or, Testimonials of the Things lately come to pass in the Cevennes, upon Oath and by other Pros. Translated from the Original. The 2d Edition. With a Preface by John Lacy, Esq ; price 8d. Sold by B. Bragge at the Raven Pter-noster-Rw; where way be had Prophetical Warnings of Marion, heretofore one of the Commanders of the Protestnes tha had taken Arms i the Cevennes, or Discourses uttered by him in London the Operation o the Spirit, and faithfully taken in Writing whilst they were spoken, price 1s. An Apology for the English Dissenters, by the Confessions of Foreign Protestant Churches, and particularly by Letters from that of Geneva, which may serve as an Answer to several Letters from the Pastors of the Church of Geneva, to the Archbishop of Canerbury, the Bishop of London, and the University f Oxford, with the Answers to them, price 6d. The Historical Catehisme: Or, an Explanation of the Old and New Testament, by way of Questions and Answers, after a more easie and familiar manner thn hitherto extant, very edifying and profitable for Children to learn, before they begin to Read the Bible. By a Reverend Divine of the Church of England.

Lately printed,

Bishop Hickman’s 14 Sermons. Ostervald’s Grounds and Principles of the Cheistian Religion, M Norris’ Theory of the World, in 2 Vols. Dr. Attetbury’s Vindication of p. Tils 14 Vo s. of Sermons against Popery. Sir ustrde Which Essays. Mr. Lewis’s Companion for the Afflictd, and the Church explained. An Essay against Idleness. A Postural Letter from a Minister to hs Parishioners, with the Christian daily Devotion. George Foxe’s last Will and Testament. Mr. Keth’s serious Call to the Quakers. Dr. Bray’s aptismal Covenant. All printed for W. Hawes, at the Bible and Rse in Ludgate-street, for whom will be speedily published, Dr. Bray’s Bibliotheca with large Additions.

THE second part of the Pulpt Fool, a Satyr; containing a distct Character of the most noted Clergy-men in the Queen’s Dominiors, Church-men and Dissenters Price 1 s. To this Satyr is annexd a paneyrick upon Archbishop Tenison, Bp. Burnet, Bp. , Dr. Sou, D. Stanhope, Dr. Lucas, Dr. Blackall, Dr. Moss, Mr. Norris, Mr. Hoadly, M. Flamstead, Mr. Graener, Mr. Stennet. Mr. Rosewl, Mr. Franks, Mr. Clark, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Calamy, Mr. Showers. Mr. Henery, Mr. Lews, Mr. Maudit, Mr Freks, Mr. Walker. Wh the Characters of near 200 Clergy-men more, eminent for prety d Learning. Printed for B. Bragge, in Patter-Nester-Row, of whom may be had, The first Part of the Pulpit Fool, a Satyr which (together with the 2d part) comprehends a general History, of tho Verse, but more especially of such as are Heterodox and ten, for Railing at protestant Dissenters.

Newly publish’d.

THE Devout Christians Companion consisting of Devotions for all Occasions. An Office for the Sick, and a Treatise for the H. Sacrament. Collected from the Works of Abp. Tiotson, Bp. Kenn, Bp. patrick, Bp. Beverge, Dr. Scots, Dr. Horneck, Dr. Stanhope &c. The 2d Edition price 2 s. 6 d. Likewise Caesar’s Commentaries of his Wars in Gaul and Civil war with popey, to which is added. Alus Hirtus, or Opius’s supplement of the Alexandriau, African, and Spanish War. With the Author’s Life. Adorned with pters from the designs of the Famous plado. Made English from the Original Latin, by Capt. Martain Blden. The 2d. Edition, 8vo. With Ntes, and a Comparison between the Antient and Modern Geography. Both printed for Charles Smith, at the Buck between the two Temple gates in Fleetstreet and Edmund Curl at the peacock without Templebar.

AT the Golden Acorn in White Fryars, Fronting Fleet-Street, London are lately come in above a 1000 Vols of Tracts, which was Collected by a Person of great eminency and worth and will be Sold at the Rates mention’d in the Post Boy, Note, these following Pamphlets may be had viz. Naked Gospel Naked Truth, Cobler of Gloster, killing no Murder, Absolum and Athitophel Religio Laiti Table o Love &c, with Acts of Parlament Proclamations Declarations &c. according to the method of William Millersale of London Stationer.

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1787: Jacob “Hannikel” Reinhard

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Robber Jakob Reinhard, better known as Hannikel, was hanged on this date in 1787 in Sulz am Neckar in Wurttemberg.

The captain of a brigand company stalking the Black Forest, Hannikel (English Wikipedia entry | German) kept one step ahead of pursuers for many years simply by exploiting the fragmented map of southern Germany: the next lord’s border was never more than a few strides away. Like his near-contemporary Schinderhannes, the bandit prince earned the affection due charismatic rogues for the usual reasons, viz., turning the wheel of fortune against the great and the good whom they made to stand and deliver.

Hannikel elevated his crew’s outlawry level from nuisance to anathema in 1786 by killing a guy in the course of a home invasion, which featured the less romantic part of the robber’s job: dripping burning resin on the lady of the house until she yielded up the concealed ducats. This incurred the wrath of the Duke of Wurttemberg, and the great bailiff (and early criminologist) Jacob Georg Schaeffer damned the borders and pursued the marauders all the way to Switzerland before he finally had them all rounded up.

Hannikel hanged along with three others of his gang; other members received lengthy prison sentences at hard labor.


1788 illustration of Hannikel imprisoned in the Schloss Sargans. Via this German-language summary (pdf) of Hannikel’s career.

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1936: Charlotte Bryant

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(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)

At around 8:00 a.m. on this day in 1936, Charlotte Bryant was hanged at Teeter Prison by Thomas Pierrepoint for poisoning her husband with arsenic the previous year.

“Dying of arsenical poisoning,” writes Stephen Wade in his book Notorious Murders of the Twentieth Century: Famous and Forgotten British Cases,

…has got to be one of the most agonizing exits from the world we can imagine… Its effects are horrific… The sensations experienced have been described as the sense of having a burning ball of hot metal in the gut; on top of that, the victim has vicious diarrhea, vomiting and spasms in the joints, dizziness and consequent depression.

Frederick Bryant was to die that way.

Charlotte was born and raised in Ireland. She and Frederick met there in 1922, where he was serving with the military police. Charlotte, who was only about nineteen at the time, had the reputation as a girl who would sleep with anyone. Frederick didn’t seem to mind her reputation, though, and they so they married and moved to a tiny, rural village in Dorset, and he sought work as a farm laborer.

Charlotte’s open promiscuity continued, and soon evolved into prostitution. Everyone in the neighborhood knew her for her gallantries. It was said that, when someone asked Frederick how he felt about this, he pointed out he was earning less than said £2 a week as a cowman and said, “Four pounds a week is better than thirty bob [shillings]. I don’t care a damn what she does.”

Charlotte ultimately bore five children, some of whom may have been Frederick’s.

This situation continued until 1933, when Charlotte met Leonard Edward Parsons, a man who was himself married, and fell in love. Not only did the easygoing Frederick accept this relationship, he actually invited Parsons to live with them. Parsons did, and things actually went quite well for some time. Parsons paid the Bryants room and board, which made Frederick happy. Parsons and Charlotte got to have sex all the time, which made them happy. Win-win.

But finally Frederick asked Parsons to move out.

Frederick Bryant became inexplicably ill in May 1935 after drinking tea Charlotte had prepared for him. He recovered within a few days and he and his doctor shrugged and passed it off as gastroenteritis. In August he got sick again with the same symptoms as before, and as before, he soon recovered.

In November, Leonard Parsons told Charlotte he was going to leave her and find another job somewhere else. She was devastated.

By the time the Christmas season rolled around, Frederick was sick again. This time his symptoms were serious and he writhed in agony, “saying there was something inside him like a red-hot poker that was driving him mad.” He was sent to Sherbourne Hospital for treatment, but died a few days before Christmas.

Frederick’s doctor, who had treated him through these mysterious bouts of gastric illness, was suspicious: the symptoms the dead man had complained of corresponded exactly to arsenic poisoning, and like everyone else in the area he knew Charlotte as something less than the good wife. The doctor refused to sign a death certificate and notified the police of his suspicions.

A very thorough investigation began. A chemistry expert from Scotland Yard was given

complete organs, including the stomach and contents, small and large intestines, urine in the bladder, vomit and excreta, complete lungs, portions of skin and hair, brain and nails. In addition, these were taken from the area around the body: samples of soil from above the coffin, below the coffin and from the adjacent ground, sawdust from the coffin, and a portion of the shroud.

Sure enough: the results showed that Frederick’s flesh and the environs of his corpse were positively dripping with arsensic. Altogether 4.09 grains were discovered. Anywhere between 2 and 4 grains comprises a fatal dose.

While the chemist was at work analyzing his myriad of evidence, the police were questioning Charlotte. She denied having harmed her husband and said she had not recently purchased arsenic or anything containing it. However, a friend of the couple had some interesting things to say: Charlotte had a tin of arsenic-laced Eureka brand weed killer and said “I must get rid of this … If nothing is found, they can’t put a rope round your neck!”

After a search, the police found a partially burned tin of Eureka weed killer. Dirt and ash samples from the rubbish heap where it had been discarded tested positive for elevated levels of arsenic.

But they still had to prove Charlotte bought that tin of weed killer.

The Scotland Yard analyst had a look at Charlotte’s coat and found arsenic dust in the right-hand pocket at a staggering 58,000 parts per million. (By comparison, the average amount of arsenic found in ordinary soil is about 18 parts per million.)

Records showed that someone had purchased Eureka weed killer from a local chemist’s shop at around the right date, signing their name on the poison register with only an X. Charlotte was illiterate and could not have signed her name, but would have used her mark instead. The chemist said he knew the woman who came in to buy the poison but claimed that in spite of this, he would be unable to identify her now. He was probably trying cover his own tracks: it was illegal for a chemist to sell arsenic to anyone they didn’t know.

Parsons was questioned about Frederick’s murder. He had an alibi and was cleared of suspicion, but the police decided they’d accumulated enough against Charlotte, and arrested her for murder.

At her trial in May 1936, her attorney stressed the circumstantial nature of the evidence and warned the jury not to take Charlotte’s promiscuity into account. After all, she was on trial for murder, not for sleeping around. No one had seen Charlotte poison any food or give poisoned food to her husband, and the chemist still couldn’t or wouldn’t identify her as the woman who bought the weed killer at his shop.

Nonetheless, the verdict was guilty. Desperate efforts were made on her behalf to get her a new trial; some people believed the chemistry expert’s evidence had been faulty. These efforts came to nothing. Charlotte wrote a letter to the King, begging for a royal pardon, but this was ignored. She died protesting her innocence.

A footnote to this sad and sordid story: Charlotte left a pitiful estate worth 5 shillings, 8½ pence and willed it all to her five children. (She’d learned to write her name in jail; her will was the first legal document she signed with her name rather than her mark.) Her children were trucked off to an orphanage. Mrs. Violet van der Elst, a noted anti-death penalty activist, heard of their plight and vowed to make sure they were cared for. (Van der Elst featured this case among numerous others in her 1937 tract On the Gallows.)

She also started a charitable fund for the children of executed convicts. The first donation to the fund, from van der Elst herself, was £50,000. As for the Bryant children, nothing further is known of them.

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1909: Garry Richard Barrett

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(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)

On this date in 1909, two-­time murderer Garry Barrett was executed at the Alberta Penitentiary, a federal prison in Canada. To quote the Edmonton Journal, he’d made the least of his second chance.

Barrett, an American born in Michigan, had been a farmer who lived with his wife and stepchildren in Saskatchewan. He had a fairly normal existence but was prone to bouts of severe depression. It was during one of these times, on October 16, 1907, that he flew into a rage, pointed a gun at his wife, and pulled the trigger.

The gun failed to go off.

Barrett’s stepson, Burnett, threw himself in front of his mother. Barrett pulled the trigger again. This time the gun did go off. Burnett was shot and ultimately died of his injuries.

There was little he could say for himself at his murder trial, given the evidence against him, and he was accordingly convicted and sentenced to death. However, the jury recommended mercy, and the authorities commuted his sentence to life in prison and sent him to the Alberta Penitentiary in Edmonton.

On April 15, 1909, less than a year later, Barrett was working in the prison carpentry shop when he suddenly picked up a hatchet and planted it in the skull of Deputy Warden Richard Stedman.

There seemed to be no motive for his actions, as Stedman was well­-liked and popular among the prison inmates. However, that day Barrett had asked to see a doctor and Stedman hadn’t gotten one for him.

One month and two days later, Barrett found himself again before a judge facing a murder charge. This time there would be no recommendation of mercy.

Rather than summon a professional hangman to execute the condemned man, the prison used one of its own guards. Barrett’s last words were, “Gentlemen, I am going to be hanged, but I killed the deputy warden in self­-defense. Had I not done so my flesh would now be the food for vultures.” He then began denouncing members of the Masonic Order, until his speech was cut short and the chaplain commenced with the Lord’s Prayer.

Barrett’s execution was badly botched, as the Edmonton Journal records:

It was a long, slow death. The noose wasn’t properly tied, and the knot slipped out of position when the trap was sprung. The hangman twice began to cut down the body, but both times the doctor stepped in because Barrett wasn’t yet dead. He was finally declared dead of strangulation 15 minutes later.

The guard/executioner then cut the rope into pieces and distributed it to his fellow guards as souvenirs.

Barrett’s body was claimed by his son, who buried it in Butte, Montana.

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