Category Archives: Hanged

1896: Ivan Kovalev, Russian meddler

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On this date in 1896, Russian refugee Ivan Kovalev was hanged for a Sacramento double murder.

Kovalev and nine other Russian convicts had in 1893 fled from the most remote and dreaded of Russia’s Far East penal colonies, Sakhalin Island.

They might have met Anton Chekhov when he visited in Sakhalin in 1890 to compose the investigative articles that would become his book Sakhalin Island, one of the great pieces of journalism of his time. “Utter hell,” the great playwright mused of that brutal and befogged colony. “I feel that if I were a convict, I would escape immediately, whatever the consequences.”

Kovalev and nine mates felt exactly the same and they did it in the form of a downright suicidal flight from Sakhalin’s abyss in an open launch ventured into the Pacific in hopes of reaching Japan. They were on the brink of succumbing to their privations when they were miraculously picked up by a San Francisco-based whaler, the Charles W. Morgan.**

The convicts claimed that they were escaped political prisoners, a demographic that enjoyed western sympathy; there’s every chance that they were actually violent criminals but their tale of woe in the bowels of tsardom was persuasive and times being what they were a background check with the nearest consulate was not an option. The Sakhalin escapees were allowed to stay in California.

On December 30, 1894, about sixteen months after they drew their last moldy Sakhalin rations, Kovalev with two accomplices† bashed the brains out of the aged grocer F.H.L. Weber and his wife with an axe so that they could rob his store. Chekhov? Make that Dostoyevsky.

It took several months to zero in on the perpetrator but once the conviction was secured, indignant Sacramentans applied in record numbers for passes to attend the hanging, such “a spirit of enmity and hatred toward this son of far-away Russia” having been aroused by the horrid circumstances of the butchery that “it is evident that a spirit of satisfaction is abroad in the community at the thought that … Ivan Kovalev will expiate that crime with his life.”

* The New York Public Library hosts a digital collection of photos of the Sakhalin penal colony, here. Others can be browsed at the Sakhalin Regional Museum site.

** The Charles W. Morgan had an 80-year service history; it’s been restored and can be visited in Mystic, Connecticut.


1971 U.S. postage stamp commemorating the Charles W. Morgan‘s preservation.

† The accomplices don’t figure in the execution story: one was mortally wounded in an unrelated subsequent robbery, prior to Kovalev’s arrest; the other wound up serving time for burglary.

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1951: Jean Lee, the last woman to hang in Australia

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(Thanks to Richard Clark of Capital Punishment U.K. for the guest post, a reprint of an article originally published on that site with some explanatory links added by Executed Today. CapitalPunishmentUK.org features a trove of research and feature articles on the death penalty in England and elsewhere. -ed.)

Jean Lee, an attractive 31-year-old redhead, made history as the last woman to hang in Australia when she went to the gallows in Pentridge prison in the Coburg suburb of Melbourne in Victoria state on the morning of Monday, February 19th, 1951. She and her two male companions were hanged for the murder of 73-year-old dwelling house landlord and bookmaker, William “Pop” Kent.

Jean Lee was apparently quite intelligent and a bit rebellious at school and had a succession of dead end jobs from which she soon left or was fired.

She married at 18 and lived with her husband for about nine years before leaving him and entrusting her daughter to her mother. She had a relationship with a petty criminal who got her into prostitution with American servicemen. He acted as her pimp whilst she worked to support them both.

She left him for another professional criminal, Robert David Clayton, with whom she fell deeply in love. As is so often the case, she became caught in a downward spiral. She was in love with a criminal who abused her and used her in his criminal activities.

These centered principally on what was known as the “badger game.” Lee, at the time, a voluptuous and attractive woman would pick up men and get them to a hotel room, their own home, or a car where she would appear to be about to have sex with them. Once they were semi-naked and vulnerable, Clayton would appear in the role of outraged husband and demand money from them. Usually the victims handed over their ready cash but kept quiet for fear of their wives finding out or of being ridiculed — so it was a fairly safe bet. If they were not forthcoming Clayton would beat them up. It was a scheme that had worked well, although at least two previous cases had been reported to the police.
On the evening of November 7th, 1949, Lee, Clayton and a third accomplice, Norman Andrews, whom Clayton had met in prison, saw William Kent in a Melbourne hotel lounge. Jean Lee had several drinks with Kent and soon succeeded in persuading the old man to take her back to his apartment where she tried to pick his pockets.

However, Mr. Kent, although inebriated and quite elderly, was of sterner stuff. He put up a fight with Lee which was ended when Clayton and Andrews entered his room. Mr. Kent was systematically kicked, beaten and tortured over the next hour in an attempt to get him to reveal where he kept his money. His hands had been tied behind his back and his thumbs tied together with bootlaces. He had been repeatedly stabbed with a small knife and was finally manually strangled.

The trio were soon arrested at their hotel and bloodstained clothing was found in Lee’s and Andrew’s rooms. At police headquarters, they were questioned in separate rooms where each initially denied their involvement and then started to blame the others.

They came to trial on March 20th, 1950 at Melbourne’s Criminal Court and the proceedings lasted six days. As each had tried to shift the blame on to the others in their statements to the police, the trial judge Mr. Justice Gavan Duffy explained the law of “common purpose” to the jury, i.e. that when three people take part in a violent robbery and murder they are all equally guilty, irrespective of which one had actually strangled Mr. Kent. The jury took less than three hours to find them all guilty and they were sentenced to death. Lee became hysterical whilst Clayton shouted abuse at the jury.

Their appeal was heard by the Court of Criminal Appeal and was upheld by a two to one majority decision on the 23rd of June 1950. The Appeal Court ruled that their statements to the police had been obtained improperly as the statement of one was used to extract confessions from the other two. They were thus granted a retrial. However, this was not to be as the High Court overturned the Appeal Court and reinstated the convictions and sentences.

There was considerable protest, led by left-wing and feminist groups, when Lee was sentenced to death. However, it seemed to primarily be against the execution of a woman by hanging, rather than the execution of women per se.

Lee would became the first woman to be hanged in Victoria since Emma Williams in November 1895. She had aged noticeably during her time in prison and suffered violent mood swings — now abusing her wardresses, next begging them for an alcoholic drink. She told one of her wardresses: “I just didn’t do it. I haven’t enough strength in my hands to choke anyone. Bobby was stupid but the old man was trying to yell for help. None of us meant to kill him.”

It was decided that Lee should be the first to hang at 8 am, the two men being executed two hours later.

She was heavily sedated as she shuffled under escort to a double cell near the gallows. Her weight was recorded as 7 stone 6 lbs, her height as 5′ 7″ and the drop was set at 8 feet exactly.

Sheriff William Daly was required to read the death warrant to her. She collapsed on seeing the hangman and his assistant — both wearing “massive steel rimmed goggles [with a] soft felt hat … to ensure that they were not recognised in the future”. A doctor examined her and found she was unconscious. However, the execution had to proceed so Daly continued to read out the details of her conviction and sentence although she would not have heard a word of it — if she had, she would have spotted a mistake (the date on which she had been sentenced).

Because of her state of collapse, the executioner pinioned her arms in front of rather than behind her back as was normal. His assistant then pinioned her legs with a strap whilst he put the white hood on her head, and they carried her from the cell the few yards to the gallows where she had to be placed on a chair on the trap. Her head drooped to her chest and the executioner had to pull it back in order to adjust the noose correctly.

The flap of the hood, which was to cover her face, had been left open. At a signal from the sheriff, the executioner dropped the flap to obscure her face, stood back from the trap and pulled the lever. The trap fell and both she and the chair plummeted through. The chair had been secured to the gallows by a cord and although it fell with her, the two parted company at the end of the drop leaving her suspended normally. Her weight was recorded as 7 stone 6 lbs, her height as 5’ 7” and the drop was set at 8 feet exactly. The knot was positioned under her left ear and death was said to be “instantaneous”. At 8.05 am the prison doctor found no heartbeat. The death certificate was signed at 8.20.

Two hours later Clayton and Andrews, both mildly sedated, shared her fate.

Capital punishment ended in Australia with Victoria’s next execution, that of Ronald Ryan on the same gallows at Pentridge prison on the 3rd of February 1967.

A recent book, Jean Lee: The last woman hanged in Australia by Paul Wilson, Don Trebl and Robyn Lincoln casts doubt on the justice of her conviction and execution based upon the police interrogation methods and her part in the murders.

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1917: The only triple hanging in Montana

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Anaconda Standard, Jan. 11, 1917:

The story of the crime was that seven negroes boarded an eastbound freight train on the Great Northern railway at Nihil on Oct. 5 with the intention of beating their way. They found the car they boarded, a gondola loaded with lumber, already occupied by three white men. The deceased [Michael Freeman] and two companions, Earl Fretwell and Claud C. Campbell. The negroes first went through the white men, obtaining a small sum of money and some trinkets, and then directed them to get off the train, which was going at the rate of 30 miles an hour. The men begged to be allowed to remain on the train until it stopped or slowed down. Fretwell started to comply, being urged by blows, and was struck on the head with a revolver and fell from the car. Campbell jumped from the train, followed by a fusillade of shots. Freeman was shot from behind, the bullet entering his back, and his body thrown from the train, being found alongside the track the next morning.

National Public Radio, July 2, 2014 (associated audio story):

“I was curiosity with a ‘C.’ I just started to pepper him with questions — ‘Oh, Grandpa, what was it like? Did they lose their heads? Did their eyes bug out? Did everybody cheer? Did everybody cry?'” Zachary says.

“And he raised a hand, which told me to shut up. And he said three words: ‘It was awful.'”

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1673: Kaelkompte and Keketamape, Albany milestones

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On this date in 1673, Indians named Kaelkompte and Keketamape were sentenced to hanging and gibbeting for the murder of an English soldier near Albany, New York. (The date this sentence was executed, if it was not immediate, has been lost to history.)

This place had been known as Beverwijck up until a few years prior, when the English gave it its new and still-current christening* after taking it away New Netherland during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The transition of its legal organs was a more gradual process — with a long survival of Dutch practices upon which the English were gradually overlaid.

The case at hand was a milestone in that jurisprudence: it appears to be the first documented jury trial (pdf) in Albany — a practice imported from England and reflective of the growing sway of the new boss.

Jury trials did not from that point become universal practice, however, and their use in this instance might have connected to the unusual nature of the prosecution.

Lying at the most northerly navigable point of the Hudson River, at the frontier of the powerful Mohawk and dependent upon they and other friendly indigenes to facilitate its fur trading, Albany kept a practiced blind eye when it came to Indian crimes. The 1665 murder of a Dutchman, the last previous documented homicide between the peoples, appears to have gone completely unpunished: in practice, intercultural grievances were settled privately, if at all.

But English law at least aspired to a more totalizing view and when one of the King’s subjects was murdered by natives who were not members of the powerful Iroquois confederation, it found its ideal test case — as we see in Courts Minutes of Albany, Rennselaerswyck and Schenectady, 1668-1673 (landing page | specific pdf volume). The ability of Albany to impose not only hanging but a potentially provocative gibbeting in this instance essentially confirmed the precedence of colonial jurisdiction over the smaller Hudson tribes. (The Iroquois were quite a different question and maintained expansive rights against the European encroach even into the post-colonial era.)

Kaelkompte, a northern Indian, from Narachtack castle, appearing in irons before the court, was asked whether he had any objection against any of the 12 jurymen standing before him?

Answered, that none of them had done him any harm.

Thereupon 12 jurors were sworn, as shown by the list, to do justice between the king and the prisoner.

As to the first point of the preliminary examination, as to conspiracy, etc., Kaelkompte answers that Keketamape asked him in the woods whether Stuart had any goods? To which he replied that some time ago he had seen three blankets and some coats there. Also, that Keketamape, sitting with him near the fire in the woods, said to him: “I shall kill Stuart.”

Whereupon Kaelkompte, saying that he did not quite understand, asked him: “W hat did you say? You wish to kill Stuart? If you kill him, you will kill yourself.”

Nota Bene. Here followed the further circumstances of the case. From the proceedings and the further documents it appears that Keketamape confessed that he was guilty of the murder.

Dirck Wessels, Meyndert Hermansz, Johannes Wendel, Willem Nottingam and Jan Jacobsz declare under oath that some time ago, being with the prisoners, listening to their caviling, [they heard] Keketamape say to Kaelkompe: “You killed Stuart and you say that I did it all.” Kaelkompe replied to this: “You did too.”

Kaelkompte acknowledges that he said it, but [declares] that it was longer ago than they say.

Indictment read to Keketamape and Kaelkompte

Keketamape admits that he had a hand in the murder and that he is guilty of having killed Stuart.

Kaelkompte admits that he consented by using these words: “There he is now. First kill him!” But he denies that he is guilty of the killing and says that he is not a bit afraid. He admits further, upon conviction by the interpreters, that he helped to kill Stuart by [the words of] his mouth.

The jury, having carefully weighed and considered the case according to the evidence, informations and confessions, conclude and decide that Keketamape and Kaelkompte are guilty of the murder of the person of Mr Stuart.

Sentence

Therefore, their honors sitting as this Special Court of Oyer and Terminer, having duly taken into account and considered the proceedings and also the verdict of the twelve jurymen that according to the documents placed into their hands the said Kaelkompte and Keketamape are guilty of the murder of the aforesaid Jan Stuart, condemn them both, as they condemn them hereby in the name of his Royal Majesty of Great Britain, under the government of the Right Honorable Colonel Francis Lovelace, to be brought together to the place of execution to be hanged by the neck until they are dead, dead, dead, and thereafter to hang in chains. Actum in Fort Albany, the 15th of February 1672/73.

By order of the honorable Court of Oyer and Terminer
Ludovicus Cobes, Secretary

One of the jurors in this trial, Willem Teller, might have been the same man at issue in a case five years later when “a certain squaw was shot dead at the house of Teller, burgher of this city.” The court found it an accident and ordered him to pay the Mahican nation fifty florins: laying aside any question of proportionality, this later case also demonstrates English courts successfully asserting their rights over violence between peoples that formerly would have been settled in private.

* The name “Albany” honored the Duke of Albany, the man who would eventually be King James II … until he was deposed by a Dutchman.

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1995: Franklin Thomas, David Thomas, and Douglas Hamlet, the last in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

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Early on Monday, February 13 in 1995, the eastern Caribbean nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines carried out a surprise triple hanging.

Brothers Franklin and David Thomas, and Douglas Hamlet, all condemned for murders, went to SVG’s gallows with no more than a weekend’s notice.

Both executions, effected during the brief mid-1990s death penalty spasm in the region, were troubling. In the case of the Thomases, this speedy execution appeared designed to balk the men of their right of appeal to the British Privy Council (SVG is a Commonwealth country). Hamlet, for his part, was noosed by a single questionable eyewitness whose testimony he always disputed. Human rights organizations were “appalled” by the circumstances of the executions, including their near-secrecy.

As of this post’s writing, these are the most recent hangings in SVG’s history.

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1751: William Parsons, Grub Street fodder

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We return for this post to a hanging we have previously attended, an uncommonly interesting February 11, 1751 dectuple execution at Tyburn.

Hulking pugilist turned Hogarth allegory James Field was one featured attraction in this batch; the other was the Eton-educated, dissolute son of a baronet, one William Parsons.


This is considerably higher society than a baronet, but we don’t need much excuse hereabouts for a Barry Lyndon tribute.

In the broadest strokes he was the sort of parasitic failson whom the more common stock have long loved to detest, his dissipation having seen him first disinherited, then sent abroad with the Royal Navy (he washed out), then rescuing his situation with a favorable marriage and an army appointment before “the extravagant manner in which he lived, and the loss of large sums of money in gambling, compelled him to throw up his commission, and to return … to his country, a beggar and a vagabond.”

Sentenced by a lenient court to the hard New World frontier of Maryland, Parsons leveraged his family’s good name to escape almost immediately from the drudgery of indentured servitude and risked a return to the mother country where he took to the roads to espouse the classic profession of the embarrassed gentleman, and made men stand and deliver.

It sufficed in the end to recognize him returned from transportation to secure his condemnation, at which Parsons excites the loathing of contemporaries and posterity alike by making bold to beg mercy of his judge “in regard to the family to which I belong, who never had a blot in their escutcheon.” Escutcheon this.

In the scheme of things, his career of self-destruction makes the man nothing but a minor malefactor. However, at least for a season his precipitation — because nine Britons in ten would have looked with envy on his situation even as a disinherited ensign or for that matter as a man with the pull to self-parole from penal transportation — made for the sort of morality play ideally suited to the mass print culture burgeoning in the gallows’ shade.

As we have previously noted in an Irish context, the scrabbling biographers of the latest doomed criminal themselves forever arrived at loggerheads, their rival pamphlets chasing preeminence in authority and rapidity before yesterday’s outrage could be displaced in the public memory by tomorrow’s.

The institutional voice of this racket was of course the Ordinary of Newgate, who by this point had for decades been gobbling up publishing residuals thanks to his didactic and ever more embroidered Ordinary’s Accounts. His entry for February 11, 1751 is a fine exemplar of the genre, running to 19 pages of which the last two are taken up with revenue-pumping advertisements.* With apologies to James Field, the Parsons narrative entirely overawes that of his nine fellow-sufferers, with six full pages devoted to lovingly reminiscing this one man’s tragedy.

Among those lines, we find our divine has relaxed his focus on the salvation of his patients long enough to throw an elbow in the direction of the independent hustlers who will be contesting the marketplace against the Ordinary’s own forthcoming Parsons biography.

N. B. If a certain independent Teacher, or any one else intends to print a Life of Parsons write by himself, take Care left he has imposed upon your Credulity, as he has done to all that had any Thing to do with him.

The “teacher” referenced here is probably Grub Street hack Christopher Smart, who had abandoned a praelectorship at Pembroke College for the charms of movable type … but it’s likely the Ordinary merely selected this allusion because his happened to be the flashiest brand at that moment among the scabrous-broadsheet set, like a present-day critic might metonymize media with the name of Rupert Murdoch.** Richard Ward has argued in his Print Culture, Crime and Justice in 18th-Century London that this moment occurs amid an “explosion in printed crime reporting in London in the years 1748-55 … created in large part by [publishers’] efforts to generate and sustain public interest in crime.”

The Rev. John Taylor would indeed like any self-respecting scribe collect a second purse on his prose by recycling his Ordinary’s Account version (prepended with the trial transcript) into a distinct standalone publication — “The Trial and Remarkable Life of William Parsons” &c., which Taylor authenticates on the title plate with the notation, “Publish’d by the Minister who attended him while under Sentence of Death, and at the Place of Execution”.

We have nothing like an exhaustive catalogue of the print ephemera swarming Old Blighty in those days, but at least one rival publisher attempted to “impose upon the Credulity” of Parsons gawkers. Francis Stamper’s† “Memoirs of the Life and Adventures of William Parsons, Esq.” claims to have been “Written by Himself [i.e., Parsons], and Corrected (with Additions) at his own Request by a Gentleman.” It runs upwards of 60 picaresque pages.

In a like vein is “A Genuine, Impartial, and Authentick Account of the Life of William Parsons, Esq.” &c. promulgated by Thomas Parker, a regular haunt of the Old Bailey crime blotter; however, close readers might notice that Parker is also one of the publishers of the Ordinary’s Accounts‡ and for that reason his edition is presumably more commercially congenial to that clergyman. Parker promises besides the expected biography a trove of correspondence to and from Parsons in the dungeons — we might well suspect whose hand has procured it — a good deal of which is taken up in Parsons imposing pleas for intercession upon a friendly earl, on his prosecutor, and upon his family to pull whatever strings they might.

* One of those ads hyped publication of “A COMPLEAT HISTORY OF JAMES MACLEAN, The GENTLEMAN HIGHWAYMAN”; that man had just hanged four months previous. This volume went abroad under the imprimatur of Charles Corbett, who shared with Thomas Parker the contract to publish the Ordinary’s Accounts.

** A satirical poem called “Old Woman’s Dunciad”, itself a travesty of Pope’s “Dunciad”, was in those weeks burning up the London bestseller lists. Smart is targeted for satire in the poem but was also suspected to be the author. In fact, it was the work of another knight of the low literature called William Kenrick — but both Kenrick and Smart intentionally muddied the authorship lurking behind the pen name “Mary Midnight”, which both men employed. (For context on the dizzying 1750-1751 publishing scene, see Christopher Smart: Clown of God.)

† Stamper was a collaborator of William Kenrick’s (see preceding footnote).

‡ Look for it on the first page of the Ordinary’s Account: “Printed for, and sold by T. PARKER, in Jewin-street, and C. CORBETT, over-against St. Dunstan’s Church, in Fleet-street, the only authorised Printers of the Dying Speeches.” This notice is to be found repeatedly in Ordinary’s Accounts of the period; moreover, Corbett and Parker sometimes advertise their potboilers in those same accounts, in language that makes explicit their alliance with the Ordinary. For example, we have this from the March 23, 1752 Account:

In a Few Days will be Published, The Only Genuine and Authentic NARRATIVE OF THE PROCEEDINGS Of the Late Capt. LOWREY, Both before and after he became Commander of the Ship MOLLY: As the same was delivered by himself, in Manuscript, into the Hands of the Rev. Mr. TAYLOR, Ordinary of NEWGATE, some short Time before his Execution.

Printed only for T. PARKER, in JEWIN-STREET, AND C. CORBETT, in FLEET-STREET.

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1866: Dr. John Hughes, Cleveland bigamist

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From America’s State Trials, vol. II, whose “Narrative” excerpted here continues in the form of trial transcripts explicating the particulars of this sad and banal stalker-murder situation. (As a juridical matter, Hughes’s fate hinged on finely measuring his degree of premeditation and intent — and drunkenness — at the moment that he shot his 17-year-old other wife; however, once the decision was in, even Hughes called “the verdict of the jury, just; the sentence of the law, inevitable … I know that I deserve death.”)

THE TRIAL OF DR. JOHN W. HUGHES FOR THE MURDER OF TAMZEN PARSONS, CLEVELAND, OHIO, 1865

THE NARRATIVE.

Dr. Hughes To His Friends
(one of several poems Hughes wrote as he awaited hanging -ed.)

Of trifles the world is composed,
Like minutes that grow into years;
So friendship, in pity reposed,
Allays our most troublesome fears.

Away from all comforts at home,
From all the desires of my heart,
Not building on pleasures to come,
With feelings of hope I must part.

A moment of phrenzy, unthought,
A second of madness defined —
What change in the creature is wrought.
The soul in such horror entwined!

To review the dear scenes of the past,
Is but a renewal of strife
To a mind so constant o’ercast
In weighing the issues of life.

Grateful thanks is all I can give
For mercies which others deny.
Oh! that I were destined to live
To recompense you bye and bye.

Your efforts are sadly in vain;
The plea was a day or two late.
Remonstrance its malice to rain
Had hopelessly finished my fate.

Yet your prayers shall be to my death
Like the hidden treasure of leaven,
My spirit to raise by their breath
To waft it to Jesus in heaven.

I pray, and I never forget
To ask of my best friend above,
For blessings on those in whose debt
I am bound by their pitying love.

On the ninth of August, 1865, John W. Hughes, physician and surgeon, of Cleveland, Ohio, committed a murder in the small neighboring village of Bedford, which, from the nature of the case, the character of the parties to the tragedy, and the antecedents of the deed, forced him upon the attention of the people of Cleveland and of the whole of the State of Ohio. The public was shocked on the following morning by the publication in the newspapers that Miss Tamzen Parsons, a young lady of seventeen years of age, had been shot down in the streets of Bedford by this man, who had been her lover, and who, under cover of a forged decree of divorce from his wife, had married her in Pittsburgh, in December, 1864, and suffered in the Pennsylvania penitentiary, the penalty attaching to the crime of bigamy.

Dr. Hughes was born in the Isle of Man, educated at a Scotch University, and emigrated with his wife to the United States in 1862. After practicing his profession of a physician for a few months in Chicago and Cleveland, he enlisted in an Ohio regiment as a private, but was very soon promoted to the position of Assistant Surgeon of the 48th United States Infantry. After serving for about a year he resigned on account of the illness of a son in November, 1864. He now began the practice of medicine in Cleveland, but making the acquaintance of Tamzen Parsons, he induced her to go with him to Pittsburgh, after showing her a paper which he persuaded her was a decree of divorce from his wife. For this he was convicted and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment in a Pennsylvania penitentiary, but was pardoned after serving five months. Returning to Cleveland, he resumed the practice of medicine and after having sent his wife and child back to the Isle of Man on a visit, he endeavored to win again the affections of Tamzen, who refused to have anything more to do with him. One night in July after drinking deeply, he went to the house of her father in the village of Bedford at night and, by his noise, aroused the old gentlemen, who tried to eject him. Hughes refused to leave the house, and objected with sufficient force to give ground for a charge of assault and battery, which was brought on the following day, Tamzen herself appearing and making the affidavit against him, an act which enraged him. Personal differences, however, were at length adjusted and legal proceedings stayed, the Doctor solemnly promising that he would thenceforth have nothing to do with the Parsons family.

But, alas! a drunken revel with a companion, Oscar Russell, on the night of the eighth of August, ended in their driving to Bedford and drinking at all the road houses on the way. Hughes, Russell and their driver, Carr, issued from a hotel in Bedford, and drove to the house of Mr. Parsons. Dr. Hughes entered the house and learned that Tamzen and her mother had gone blackberrying. They drove on, but soon met the women, and the Doctor sought a private conference with Tamzen. A neighbor, however, came along in a wagon and took her home, while the men drove to the grocery, where they held a drunken revel for two hours. Hughes learning that all the Parsons family had gone to Bedford for safety and to arrest him, started to the village and, seeing Tamzen coming out of the house, he ran after her, calling on her to stop. She flew up the walk, saying, “No, I will not stop,” and rushed through the gate, endeavoring to reach the front door. But before that asylum was reached, the pursuer laid hands on her, and shouting, “You won’t stop, will you?” fired his revolver. The ball glanced off her head, she screamed, but the piteous cry was instantly hushed by a second and fatal discharge of the deadly weapon.

The noise attracted a number of persons, who pursued Hughes, who jumped into the carriage with Russell and Carr, and, menacing the crowd with his revolver, succeeded in getting a good start of his pursuers. But he was captured in a few hours and landed in jail.

Indicted by the Grand Jury for murder, after a trial lasting eighteen days, he was convicted, though his counsel tried very hard to prove that he was insane at the time he committed the act. On February 9th, 1866, he was hanged in the yard of the Cleveland jail.

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1804: Ann Hurle, forger

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(Thanks to Richard Clark of Capital Punishment U.K. for the guest post, a reprint of an article originally published on that site with some explanatory links added by Executed Today. CapitalPunishmentUK.org features a trove of research and feature articles on the death penalty in England and elsewhere. -ed.)

Ann Hurle was one of twelve people to be hanged for forgery in 1804. The law took a very severe view of this offence at the time and few forgers were reprieved.

Ann was an educated young woman of twenty-two, living in London, who had devised quite an elaborate plan to defraud the Bank of England of £500, which was a very large sum in those days and would now be the equivalent of over a quarter of a million pounds. The crime was perpetrated on Saturday the 10th of December 1803 when she met Stock Broker, George Francillon, at the Bank Coffee House and persuaded him to obtain a power of attorney for her to enable her to sell some Bank of England 3% stock belonging to one Benjamin Allin, an elderly gentleman from Greenwich. Mr. Francillon had known Ann for some six months and therefore was not overly suspicious. She told him that she had lived in Mr. Allin’s house as a child, where her aunt was the housekeeper, and that he had given her this stock in return for the aunt’s service to the household and the kindnesses she had shown him. Mr. Francillon obtained the power of attorney for Ann on the Saturday, and she told him that she was then going to take it Greenwich to get it signed by Mr. Allin.

Ann returned on Monday morning with the document purportedly signed and witnessed by Thomas Noulden and Peter Verney, who both ran small businesses in Greenwich. Ann met Mr. Francillon at the Bank of England where he took the document to the Reduced Office for verification. Ann meanwhile went off to sell the stocks. Mr. Thomas Bateman, the Clerk in charge of powers of attorney, asked to see George Francillon with Ann and informed them that Benjamin Allin’s signature on the power differed from that on the specimen held by the bank. Ann told Mr. Bateman that she knew Mr. Allin and that as he was nearly ninety years old, in poor health and nowadays wrote very little, it was not surprising that his signature differed. She also offered to take out another power of attorney and obtain a new signature on it. Mr. Bateman did not feel that this was necessary but wrote a letter to one of the witnesses to the document.

During the conversation in Mr. Bateman’s office, Ann mentioned that she had recently married and asked by Mr. Bateman why she had not taken out the power in her married name, she told him that she feared her marriage to one James Innes was not a good one. She suggested that he had stolen her money and then boarded a ship at Bristol and that he was already married to another.

Ann left the bank and returned on the following Tuesday. In the meantime, Mr. Francillon had become suspicious when he checked the document. He put their main meeting off to the following day while he did some further research, including going to see Benjamin Allin. As arranged, Mr. Francillon met Ann on the Wednesday morning at the Bank of England. He had previously had a meeting with Mr. Newcomb the principal clerk in the Reduced Office and explained his suspicions. He and Mr. Newcomb had a meeting with the Governors. Ann came to the Bank with a young man and must have realised from the delays in seeing her that all was not well and left. She was arrested the following day in Bermondsey and taken to the Mansion House for questioning. The young man turned out to be James Innes, who was also questioned. She was charged with the forgery and he with being an accessory to the crime, although it seems that his case was dropped as there is no record of a trial for him. The case was obviously unusual and of some public interest as it was reported in The Times of Wednesday, the 21st of December 1803. Ann was committed for trial at the next Sessions of the Old Bailey in London.

These Sessions opened on the 11th of January 1804, before the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, Sir Archibald Knight. Ann was charged with four offences. The first was “feloniously, falsely, making, forging, and counterfeiting, on the 12th of December, a certain instrument, or letter of attorney, with the name Benjamin Allin thereunto subscribed, purporting to have been signed, sealed, and delivered, by one Benjamin Allin, of Greenwich, in the county of Kent, gentleman, a proprietor of certain annuities and stock transferable at the Bank of England, called Three per Cent. Reduced Annuities, to sell, assign, transfer, and convey, the sum of five hundred pounds of the said transferable annuities, the property of the said Benjamin Allin, to her, the said Ann Hurle , with intent to defraud the Governor and Company of the Bank of England.” The second count was, “For uttering and publishing as true a like forged deed, knowing it to be forged, with the like intention.” There were two further counts on the indictment against her, being the same offences against Benjamin Allin. Mr. Garrow led for the prosecution and Mr. Knapp for the defence.

George Francillon and Benjamin Allin were the principal prosecution witnesses. Mr. Francillon related the above story to the court and Mr. Allin examined the power of attorney document and declared that the signature was not his and that he had never signed such a document. Thomas Bateman, Peter Verney and Thomas Noulden also testified against her. Ann’s aunt, Jane, told the court that Ann had not visited Mr. Allin’s house recently and neither had Messrs. Verney and Noulden, the two purported witnesses to his signature on the document.

The witnesses’ testimonies were cross examined at this time but Ann offered no actual defence, leaving this to her counsel. She was thus convicted and remanded to Tuesday, the 17th of January 1804 for sentence. Four men and three women were bought before the court to received their death sentences that Tuesday, with the Recorder of London making particular reference to the gravity of Ann’s crime and the fact that she preyed upon “an infirm and imbecile old man”. He opined that only death was sufficient punishment for such a crime. He then proceeded to pass sentence on each prisoner. When Ann’s turn came, she was asked in the normal way if their was any reason why sentence of death should not be pronounced against her and replied that she thought she was “with child” (pregnant). She did not make this claim with any apparent confidence so no further enquiry into its validity was made. Sarah Fisher, another of the condemned women, also claimed to be pregnant but did so much more forcibly, thus requiring the court to empanel a Jury of Matrons, who examined her and declared that she wasn’t. It is feasible that both women could have been in the early stages of pregnancy, although neither was “quick with child”. Only if the prisoner was obviously pregnant was her execution respited until after she had given birth. In most cases she was reprieved altogether and her punishment commuted to transportation. “Pleading the belly” as it was called was a frequently used tactic at this time by women desperate to avoid the noose.

The Recorder of London reviewed the cases of those condemned to death and made a recommendation in each one. He then presented his recommendations in person to the Privy Council, which was chaired by King George III. In Ann’s case, there could be no recommendation for a reprieve. She was therefore scheduled for execution, along with Methuselah Spalding who had been convicted of sodomy at the previous Sessions held on the 30th of November 1803. It is interesting to note that Spalding was the only one of five condemned men at that Sessions not to be reprieved and that Ann was the only one out of the six men and three women at the January 1804 Sessions not to get a reprieve. Non-murderers normally had a period of two to three weeks before execution at this time and Ann’s execution was set for Wednesday, the 8th of February.

For reasons that are unclear, the normal “New Drop” style gallows at Newgate was not to be used for these two hangings. A simple gallows was erected at the top of the Old Bailey, near to St. Sepulchre’s Church.

On the morning of execution, Ann and Spalding were brought from their cells and pinioned in the Press Room. They were then taken out into the yard and loaded into a horse drawn cart covered in a black cloth which emerged from the prison at about 8.10 a.m. for the short ride to the gallows. The cart was backed under the beam and the two prisoners were allowed to pray with Ordinary and make their last statements. Ann was dressed in a mourning gown and wore a white cap. She made no address to the multitude who had come to see her die but prayed fervently with the Ordinary for five minutes or so. William Brunskill, the hangman for London & Middlesex, placed the rope around her neck and when she had finished praying, pulled the white cap down over her face. The cart was now drawn away leaving them both suspended. It was recorded that Ann let out a scream as the cart moved and that she struggled hard for two to three minutes before becoming still, her hands were observed to move repeatedly towards her throat and her un-pinioned legs kicked and padded the air. No doubt the eyes of the crowd were riveted on her poor writhing form. After hanging for the customary hour, they were taken down and returned inside Newgate from where they could be claimed by relatives for burial.

An angry letter appeared in The Times newspaper the following week castigating the authorities for the execution on the grounds of cruelty compared with the New Drop and the difficulty in seeing the prisoners and thus taking a moral lesson from their demise. It was alleged in the letter that the reason for the change of gallows was that the Newgate staff were too lazy to assemble the New Drop gallows. Whether this was true or whether the drop mechanism had become defective we will never know, but it was returned to service for the next execution, that of Providence Hansard for the same crime on the 5th of July 1805.

It seems surprising looking back two centuries that Ann, acting alone, would have devised such an ambitious plan to obtain this large sum of money. However, no evidence was offered at her trial to show that anyone else was involved, other than perhaps James Innes on the periphery of the crime. It must have taken quite some time to think through and make the necessary contacts, such as George Francillon, who would be able to obtain the power of attorney for her. It is hard to believe she was not aware of the risk of failure and the deadly consequences that would follow it. In the period 1800 – 1829, an amazing 218 people were to die for forgery in England and Wales. Another two women were to follow Ann to the gallows outside Newgate over the next two years, Providence Hansard mentioned earlier and Mary Parnell on the 13th of November 1805. Forgery ceased to be a capital crime in 1832 and the last execution for it took place on the 31st of December 1829, when Thomas Maynard was hanged at Newgate. Over two centuries attitudes have altered; had a modern day Ann committed the crime in the 21st century, she would have got somewhere between four and five years in prison and have been released on licence half way through this sentence.

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1892: A day in the death penalty around Kentucky

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The Bluegrass State had what one paper jokingly called a “hanging match” with hangings in the towns of Stanton, West Irvine, and Henderson on this date in 1892 — as we see from this economical entry from the Chicago Daily Inter Ocean of Feb. 6, 1892:

Although not the most historically consequential hangings, uxoricide was good enough to earn Mr. Bush (he’s also called “Simpson Bush” in some accounts) a murder ballad.

… They say he tried to drown her, but in that did not succeed
But with the fatal pistol he carried out the deed
The babe was in its mother’s arms, Up to them he did creep
The demon pulled the trigger and killed her while asleep.

[He stepped] up to her bedside, [and] shot her through the head
The infant drank its mother’s blood, while the woman lay there dead
They say that he was jealous when he done this cruel crime
He shall stand before his Maker and answer another time …

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1715: Ann Wright, branded

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On this date in 1715, a longtime petty thief named Ann Wright — or was it Martha Wright? or Ann Hutchins? or Elizabeth Jolly? — hanged at Tyburn.

In the absence of modern trappings like a standing police force, criminal dossiers, and systematic record-keeping — innovations that lay decades into the future — small-time criminals could float at the margins for the duration of many years and many offenses by relying on the forgetfulness of the legal apparatus: with nothing but a casual alias, one might hope to appear over and over again as a new offender.

Here we see Ordinary of Newgate Paul Lorrain deploy his own investigative acumen to trace for us one woman’s career, a very much more penetrating biography of an Early Modern commoner than we can usually access. We can see from his account of offenses — for how many crimes must Lorrain be omitting in this register? — that he was greatly aided by Wright’s own body which bore the mark of our Old Offender’s repeated brandings. That included scars earned during the brief period from 1699 to 1707 when brands could be applied to an offender’s cheeks, a fate which apparently befell Ann Wright on no fewer than five occasions.*

By the time he came to Wright’s terminal adventure, Rev. Lorrain had held the post of ministering to convicts for fifteen years and could probably boast as expert an acquaintance with London’s criminal underworld as any square; whether he knew Ann Wright on sight or knew her by reputation, he knew her.

Ann Wright, condemn’d for breaking the Lock of Eliz. Barrot’s Chamber-Door, with an intent to rob her, on the 30th of October last. She was about 38 Years of age, and liv’d in the Parish of St. Dunstan, Stepney. She would hardly confess her self guilty of the Crime for which she was justly Condemn’d; neither did she readily acknowledge, that she had done several other Facts of the like heinous nature, and was an old Offender: But when I laid before her, and charg’d her with diverse Burglaries and Robberies, which I knew she had committed, then she could not deny her being Guilty of them.

Here I shall give the Reader a Particular of some of those wicked Facts of hers, and the several Punishments she receiv’d for them, the Time when, and the various Names she went by.

1st, She was (under the Name of Martha Wright) Burnt in the Cheek at the Old-Baily, on the 10th of July, 1702, for entring the House of Mr. James Gee, and taking thence 4 Muslin-Neckcloths, 2 Holland-Aprons, a Hol-Smock, a Cloth-coat, Wastcoat and Breeches, with diverse other Goods, on the 2d of the said Month of July.

2dly, She was (under the Name of Ann Rebel alias Ann Hutchins, which latter, as she said, was her Maiden-Name) also Burnt in the Chek at the Old-Baily, on the 11th of September, 1702, for Robbing the House of Mr. Joseph Lineum, on the 7th of August before, and taking thence 6 Hempen-Aprons, 6 Dowlas-Shirts, 6 Smocks, &c.

3dly, She was again (under the same Name of Ann Hutchins) Burnt in the Cheek, at the Old-Baily, on the 9th of July, 1703, for stealing 5 ounces of China-Silk from Mr. John Sheppard, and other Silks from Mr. Nathanael Wichel, on the 19th of May before.

4thly, She was in like manner (under the Name of Ann Hutchins) Burnt in the Cheek, at the Old-Baily, on the 2d of June, 1704, for stealing 4 Buck-Skins from Mr. Tho. Boddington, on the 4th of May preceding.

5thly, She was (under the Name of Elizabeth Jolly alias Hodges, which latter she said was her Husband’s Name) again Burnt in the Cheek, at the Old-Baily, on the 17th of January, 1704/1705, for stealing 16 yards of Silk, a Stuff-Gown and Petticoat, 12 ells of Holland, 26 yards of Lace, and diverse other Goods of Mr. Edward Kenworthy’s, on the 14th of June, 1704.

6thly, She was (under the Name of Eliza. Wright) on the 6th of July, try’d at the Old-Baily, and order’d to be whipt, for stealing a Silver-Spoon and a Cambrick-Handkerchief, from Mr. Anthony Moreing, on the 17th of June before.

7thly, She was (under the Name of Ann Hicken) Burnt in the Hand, at the Old-Baily, on the 26th of February, 1707/1708, for stealing 10 ounces of Silver Orrice-Lace, and 12 ounces of Gold-Lace, from Mrs. Margaret Tiplady, on the 3d Day of the same Month.

8thly, She was again (under the Name of Ann Hutchins) Burnt in the Hand at the Old-Baily, on the 9th of July, 1708, for Robbing Mrs. Mary Collier’s House, and taking from thence 1 pound 15 ounces of Raw-Silk, on the 26th of the preceding June.

9thly, She did (under the Name of Ann Hodges alias Hodgkins) receive Sentence of Death, at the Old-Baily, on the 6th of May, 1709, for Breaking the House of Mr. John Marsh, and taking from thence a Psalm-book, two Cloth-Coats, a Diaper Table-cloth, 10 Napkins, and several other things, on the 11th of April before; for which having obtain’d a Reprieve, and afterwards a Pardon, which she pleaded in Court at the Old-Baily, on the 8th of December, 1710, (at which time she was order’d to the Bridewell of Clerkenwell for 2 Years) she no sooner had her Liberty (which she got by breaking out of that House of Correction) but she return’d to her former wicked Way of Robbing. So that,

10thly, She was again (under the Name of Ann Hutchens) Burnt in the Hand at the Old-Baily, on the 12th of April, 1711, for stealing 4 Holland-Smocks that hung up a drying in the Yard of Mr. William Baker, on the 28th of March preceding.

11thly, She was (under the Name of Ann Hodges) Burnt in the Hand at the Old-Baily, on the 28th of February, 1711/1712, for Stealing a Coat, Wastcoat, and Breeches, Linnen, Gold-Rings, and other Goods, of Mrs. Susannah Butterwick, on the 12th of the same Month.

12thly, and Lastly, (to mention no more of these sad Particulars) She was again (under the Name of Ann Hodges, alias Jenkins, alias Jeatzin) Burnt in the Hand, at the Old-Baily, on the 2d of May, 1712, for a Felony, in stealing Pewter and other Goods out of the House of Mr. John Simmonds, on the 5th of the ‘foregoing March.

All these her notorious Facts, of which I had taken a particular Account, I laid before her, together with some others she had been try’d for, but acquitted of, for want of positive Evidence to convict her, tho’ there was no great reason to doubt her being guilty of ’em: And moreover, I put her in mind of her having frequently broke out of the Workhouse, to which she had several times been sent, for her Correction and Amendment; the former whereof she would not receive, nor bring her self to the practice of the latter, but plainly shew’d her ill Disposition and wicked Desire of returning (as she did so fast as she could) to her sinful Course of Life; of which I exhorted and press’d her to make a free Confession, and repent. Whereupon she acknowledg’d her Guilt in these Matters, saying, (in general) That she had done many ill things, but her discovering them in particular (were she able fully to do that) would be now of no use to the World. Having some just Suspicion that she had been concern’d in Facts committed in Surrey, and try’d for them in that County, I put the Question to her, which she answer’d in the Negative, thinking (I suppose) that those Facts could not so easily be known to me, being done not only at a distance, and in a County where I have nothing to do, but also under Names which she thought fit at times to take and shift, as suited best her Occasions of disguising her self, and concealing Who and What she was. I found her all along very stupid, and insensible both of her sad Condition, and the Cause of it. When I examin’d her in private, she was very sullen, spoke but few (and those angry) Words, and shed fewer Tears: What her inward Thoughts were, I can’t tell; but she gave little sign of true Repentance. As I observ’d her in that harden’d Temper, so I told her, That she behav’d her self just as I had seen others do, who were guilty of Murder, whom (above all other Sinners) the Devil does what he can to hinder from repenting; and therefore I must needs plainly say this to her, That I was afraid she had been concern’d in some Bl[oo]dy Fact or other; for she seem’d to me to be more than a common Sinner. To this she answer’d, That she never committed any Murder in her Life. No? said I to her; Did you never kill a Bastard-Child, to hide your Shame when you were in Service? (for I knew she had been a Servant in some Families in and about London.) At this Question she startled, and after a Pause (not without some discomposure) said, She was very clear of that Crime. However I gave her to understand I greatly suspected she was not, for she had been a very wicked, lewd, and debauch’d Woman; and so I offer’d her some ghostly Advice herein. Then I further ask’d her, Whether she knew any thing of the Murder of Esq. Hanson and Mr. Carlton, who (some Years ago) were found murder’d, viz. the first near the Vinegar-house beyond Moorfields, and the other between Rosemary-branch and Cambray-house, in Islington Parish. To which she reply’d, That she had indeed heard of those Murders, but was not in the least concern’d in ’em, nor knew who had committed them. This is all I could get from her, who (as I observ’d with great Concern) instead of making a right use of the long Time and good Instruction she had under this Condemnation, seem’d (all the while) to have nothing so much at Heart as getting a Reprieve, and avoiding this Death; tho’ I endeavour’d to make her sensible, there was no manner of ground for her Hope of Life in this World; and, that if she were wise she would (as ’twas infinitely better she should) seriously consider her sad and miserable Condition by reason of her Sins, and so by all the Acts of Repentance she was capable of exerting, prepare herself for her great Change that was approaching and inevitable. And this important Consideration I urg’d to her, to the very last.

At the Place of Execution (whither both she and George Hynes were this Day carried from Newgate in a Cart, and where I attended them for the last time) she seem’d to be much dejected and sorrowful; and no Wonder, for she had great Cause to be so. Hynes likewise cry’d bitterly, lamenting and bewailing his past sinful Life. Here I gave them proper Admonitions; and after I had pray’d, and sung some Penitential Psalms with them, and made ’em rehearse the Apostles Creed, I advis’d, that they would (and accordingly they did) desire the Spectators to pray for them, and take Warning by their Fall; To keep the Sabbath-day, serve God, and live honestly. Then I withdrew from them, recommending their Souls to God, and leaving them to their private Devotions, for which they had some Time allotted. After this the Cart drew away, and they were turn’d off, crying all the while to God for Mercy, Pardon, and Salvation.

* We’ve previously seen that London authorities didn’t mind applying the brand several times to a habitual offender.

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