Category Archives: Public Executions

1557: Thomas Losebie, Henrie Ramsey, Thomas Thirtell, Margaret Hide and Agnes Stanley

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“The Martyrdom of Thomas Losebie, Henrie Ramsey, Thomas Thirtell, Margaret Hide and Agnes Stanley at Smithfield on 12th April, 1557”, woodcut illustration from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

The five ordinary Londoners pictured above had been snitched out by neighbors for shirking the Catholic Mass under Queen Mary — the offense that Protestants would call recusancy when the mitre was on the other bishop.

They had the sturdiness one would attribute to men and women of the common clay, and also the theological unsophistication; our martyrology caveats of their interrogation that “some of them attributed the title and honour of a sacrament to the holy estate of matrimony” — the standard Anglican and also Lutheran position was that there were only two sacraments, baptism and eucharist — but this “undoubtedly was done rather of simple ignorance, than of any wilful opinion.” That’s the kind of interpretive generosity you’re entitled to when you go to the stake for the faith.

(Foxe has some miniutes from their interrogation; scroll down to page 410 of this pdf of Foxe’s Volume 12, from here.)

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1821: Patriarch Gregory V, in his vestments

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The Ottoman Empire besmirched this date in 1821* by launching the Constantinople Massacre of Orthodox Greeks, prominently including the summary hanging of Patriarch Gregory V in his full clerical vestments — on Easter Sunday.


Gregory V approaching martyrdom, by Nikiforos Lytras.

On edge from the outbreak just days earlier of the rebellion that would become the Greek War of Independence, Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II came down on the Greeks within his empire like a ton of bricks. He demanded a religious fatwa licensing a general massacre, a demand that the Sheikh ul-Islam courageously refused. (It cost him his own life to do so.)

Trapped frightfully in the middle of this was the Patriarch, 75 years old and no revolutionary but with a delicate job to safeguard his flock. Fatwa or no — and Gregory’s own private mission to his Muslim counterpart had helped to block that dreadful order — his people stood at Mahmud’s mercy. With news of rebel advances reaching the Porte during Holy Week, Mahmud had the prelate seized during Easter liturgy, escorted outside, and hanged at the gate of the Patriarchate.


St. Peter’s Gate where Gregory suffered has never since been opened. (cc) image from Alessandro57.

On the same day, dozens of other Greek priests, merchants, and officials were summarily executed around Constantinople; one report described of that day that “[a]ll the Archbishops and Bishops who were in the Church on account of the celebration of Easter, were either executed or thrown into prison. The congregation fled out of the Church to the neighbouring houses of the priest, but many were murdered by the enraged populace.” This assault signaled the start of months of terrors ranging from official persecutions, harassment by Janissaries, pogroms, and frequent public executions of prominent Greek Christians that continued into the summer.

* It was April 10 by the Julian (O.S.) date that was still in use in the Orthodox world; by the Gregorian (N.S.) calendar, it’s April 22. We think the reasons to override our general preference for Gregorian dates in this era of history are self-explanatory, especially since the Patriarch has been canonized with a feast date of April 10.

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1892: Louis Anastay, “I wish to mount the scaffold”

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Louis Anastay was guillotined on this date in 1892.

The young army lieutenant, catching word of a windfall coming to a wealthy benefactress of his named baroness Dellard, assailed and left for dead both the lady and her servant in December 1891. (The servant survived; Dellard did not.) As the accused described it to a courtroom all aghast:

Yes, I entered; — I chatted with her; — and then I struck, –. Ah! you do not know what it is to have struck your fellow creature with a knife. I have always Madame Dellard before my eyes. I have committed a crime; — not only as an officer have I committed faults, but I have committed a crime against society; — I demand to expiate it; — I accept the responsibility; — I wish to mount the scaffold.

Sensational enough in its time that “the scum of Parisians” were jostling for sightlines to the guillotine for full two days before the blade fell, Anastay rates a passing reference in the anarchist Ravachol‘s secret courtroom address among several criminals notorious for their cupidity. (“We will no longer see men like Pranzini, Prado, Berland, Anastay and others who kill in order to have [gold].”)

According to medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris, Anastay invited his brother to attend his beheading and attempt to interact with his severed head as part of the age-old quest to prove that life subsists a few moments after decapitation. There’s no indication that any such experiment actually took place, however.

As a strange coda of compounded tragedy, that very brother, Leon Anastay by name, was himself murdered in a lovers’ quarrel in 1907.

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1756: John Symmonds, “Spanish Jack”

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On this date in 1756,* robber John Symmonds (Symonds, Simmons) aka “Spanish Jack” hanged at Maidstone.

One “Gonzalez” by birth in Alicante, Spain, our man obtained his Anglo-Saxon name by dint of service aboard English privateers during the multifaceted 1740s world war.

Maritime service and a piratical nickname might suggest that he earned his hemp as a buccaneer. Not so: Spanish Jack segued into the lucrative and dangerous smuggling trade, and thence to ordinary landlubber thefts in his adoptive realm.

So well had he adapted to this underworld that in 1751 he turned Crown’s evidence and hung three fellow footpads to save his own life, pocketing a £10 reward into the bargain. His Old Bailey evidence in this case gives some idea of his practices:

we consented to stop the first man we met that had any thing about him; there was one Jonathan Stevens with us, he is not apprehended yet. We had been in Stepney-fields; about nine we stopped the prosecutor at the end of Church-lane; I asked him what it was o’clock; he said he could not tell. I stopped him and said, you must give me what you have about you. He made a little sort of a resistance; I took him and shov’d him against a wall; the other four came up. I held him whilst they took what he had about him; I never saw the stock buckle; Holmes said nothing to us of that. Mandeville took from him a guinea and 4 s. 6 d. and some halfpence; we made the best of our way when we had done to the Blue Anchor in the Back lane; there we had some slip and changed a guinea, and divided every man a share.

But sauce for the goose would be sauce for the gander within a very few years, as the Newgate Calendar notes.

The many robberies he had committed in London and its adjacencies having rendered him so notorious that he thought himself in great danger of being apprehended, he determined to go into the country. Having travelled to Rochester, he formed an acquaintance with a fellow named Smith, who was publicly known to live by felonious practices.

Symmonds and Smith went to a public-house in Rochester, and while they were drinking some punch found an opportunity of concealing a silver tankard, which they carried off unperceived. On the following day they were apprehended, and committed to Maidstone Jail — Symmonds to be tried for stealing the tankard, and Smith to appear as evidence for the Crown.

* The Newgate Calendar’s “18th of April” is mistaken; it was the 8th. See CapitalPunishmentUK.org.

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1733: Samuel Partridge, very stupid and unconcern’d

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From the New England Weekly Journal, July 23, 1733 — a three-month-old news item (part of a roundup of dated minor dispatches) that had to cross the Atlantic from the mother country.

Ipswich, April 7.

Last Saturday Samuel Partridge was executed here, for robbing Mr. Barwell of Brockley in this City, of 31l, 10s., a Horse, and other Things, in Company with another Person not yet taken. He said he was born at Debden in Suffolk, that he was about 22 years of Age, and was brought up in Husbandry; he appeared to be very illiterate, for he could neither read nor write, and was entirely ignorant of the first Principles of Christianity. He denied the Fact for which he suffered, and said he was perswaded to own the Robbery by a Soldier that was in Halsted Bridewell with him, he telling him, that if he confessed the Fact he would come off very well; and that he advised him to say, that he had made use of a Bolt instead of a Pistol, and that he had hid it in a certain Place, where it was found according to his Direction. At the Place of Execution he seemed very stupid and unconcern’d; only, as directed, he called on God for Mercy when he was turned off.

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2005: Six surprised Somalis

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Six Somali migrant workers were publicly beheaded in Jeddah on this date in 2005 for robbing taxi drivers. The muggings, though violent, were not fatal to the drivers, so the punishment was quite harsh even by the harsh standards of KSA.

According to an Amnesty International researcher, the doomed men had not been “informed in advance that their five-year prison sentences, which they had served — and also been lashed — by May 2004, had apparently been changed later to death sentences by a secret procedure.” They were unaware until the morning of their execution that they had even been condemned to death.

Their names were Ali Sheikh Yusuf, Abdel-Fatar Ali Hassan, Abdullah Adam Abdullah, Hussein Haroon Mohamed, Abdul-Nur Mohamed Wali and Abdullah Hassan Abdu.

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1759: Mary Edmondson

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A sad selection from the Newgate Calendar:

MARY EDMONDSON

Strongly protesting her Innocence, she was executed on Kennington Common, 2nd of April, 1759, for the Murder of her Aunt

This unhappy girl was the daughter of a farmer near Leeds, in Yorkshire, and was sent to reside with her aunt, Mrs Walker, of Rotherhithe, who was a widow lady. With this aunt she lived two years, comporting herself in the most decent manner, and regularly attending the duties of religion.

A lady, named Toucher, having spent the evening with Mrs Walker, Mary Edmondson lighted her across the street on her way home, and soon after her return a woman who cried oysters through the street observed that the door was open and heard the girl cry out “Help! Murder! They have killed my aunt!” Edmondson now ran to the house of Mrs Odell, wringing her hands and bewailing the misfortune, and, the neighbours being by this time alarmed, some gentlemen went from a public-house, where they had spent the evening, determined to inquire into the affair. They found Mrs Walker, with her throat cut, lying on her right side, and her head near a table, which was covered with linen. One of the gentlemen, named Holloway, said: “This is very strange; I know not what to make of it: let us examine the girl.”

Her account of the matter was that four men had entered at the back door, one of whom put his arms round her aunt’s neck, and another, who was a tall man, dressed in black, swore that he would kill her if she spoke a single word.

Mr Holloway, observing that the girl’s arm was cut, asked her how it had happened; to which she replied that one of the men, in attempting to get out, had jammed it with the door. But Holloway, judging from all appearances that no men had been in the house, said he did not believe her, but supposed she was the murderer of her aunt.

On this charge she fell into a fit and, being removed to a neighbour’s house, was bled by a surgeon, and continued there till the following day, when the coroner’s inquest sat on the body, and brought in a verdict of wilful murder; whereupon she was committed to prison, on the coroner’s warrant.

Mrs Walker’s executors, anxious to discover the truth, caused the house to be diligently searched, and found that a variety of things, which Mary Edmondson had said were stolen, were not missing; nor could they discover that anything was lost. Mrs Walker’s watch and some other articles which she said had been carried off by the murderers were found under the floor of the necessary-house.

Being committed to the New Jail, Southwark, she remained there till the next assizes for Surrey, when she was tried at Kingston, and convicted on evidence which, though acknowledged to be circumstantial, was such as, in the general opinion, admitted little doubt of her guilt.

She made a defence indeed; but there was not enough of probability in it to have any weight.

Being condemned on Saturday, to be executed on the Monday following, she was lodged in the prison at Kingston, whence she wrote to her parents, most solemnly avowing her innocence. She likewise begged that the minister of the parish would preach a sermon on the occasion of her death. She asserted her innocence on the Sunday, when she was visited by a clergyman and several other people; yet was her behaviour devout, and apparently sincere.

Being taken out of prison on the Monday morning, she got into a post-chaise with the keeper, and, arriving at the Peacock, in Kennington Lane, about nine o’clock, there drank a glass of wine; and then, being put into a cart, was conveyed to the place of execution, where she behaved devoutly, and made the following address to the surrounding multitude: —

It is now too late to trifle either with God or man. I solemnly declare that I am innocent of the crime laid to my charge. I am very easy in my mind, as I suffer with as much pleasure as if I was going to sleep. I freely forgive my prosecutors, and earnestly beg your prayers for my departing soul.

After execution her body was conveyed to St Thomas’s Hospital, Southwark, and there dissected, agreeably to the laws respecting murderers.

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1987: Lawrence Anini, The Law

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Nigerian bandit Lawrence Anini was executed on this date in 1987.

Strongman of a well-armed gang whose robberies and hijackings terrorized Benin Cty, Anini in 1986 fell out with his erstwhile police protectors, resulting in a bloody war of assassinations that claimed nine policemen’s lives and god knows how many gangsters. It also made Anini Nigeria’s public enemy number one.

He was wheelchair-bound throughout his high-profile trial, owing to having a leg amputated after it was badly shot up in the course of his December 1986 arrest. This fact earned the man once chillingly nicknamed “The Law” no sympathy at all, although he did also implicate a number of corrupt cops, drawing several convictions.

He was shot along with a number of his confederates on March 29, 1987.

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1572: Annecke Lange, Gesche Herbst, and Annecke Rotschroeder

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On this date in 1572, Annecke Lange, Gesche Herbst, and Annecke Rotschroeder were all condemned and burned at Neustadt am Rübenberge, as witches and poisoners.

Although commoners, they were the luckless casualties of misbegotten marital politics in the Holy Roman Empire, and in the words of Tara Nummedal in Anna Zieglerin and the Lion’s Blood: Alchemy and End Times in Reformation Germany, “the entire incident laid bare simultaneously the fear of poison and sorcery and the reluctance to advance witch accusations against women of elite status in the princely courts of central Europe.”

The particular princely court of interest for us is that of Eric(h) II, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, a Lutheran convert who married a House of Wettin princess called Sidonie of Saxony. It was one of those love-matches by which the bluebloods slip the bonds of arranged dynastic alliances and often, of historical irrelevancy. ‘Tis a likely antechamber to the volumes of Executed Today.

Sidonie was a decade Eric’s senior, leading one wise grandee to predict, “All sorts of things will happen inside this marriage after the kissing month ends.”

Just so. Eric reverted to Catholicism and the childless couple became bitterly estranged — not only over religion, but money, and the want of a child. (Eventually Eric would die without an heir, and pass his realm to a cousin.) So intense would the couple’s antipathy become that they began to suspect one another of seeking an abrupt annulment by the hand of the poisoner.

That hypothesis became self-confirming when Eric fell ill in 1564, and Eric (this is Nummedal again) “initiated an investigation, accusing four women in Neustadt am Rübenberge, close to Hannover, of both trying to poison him and using sorcery to disrupt his marriage, keep him away ‘from his land and people,’ and make Sidonie barren.”

Three of these four women broke under torture and admitted not only poisoning but witchcraft; they were burned in 1568. But the fourth woman, Gesche Role, had the fortitude to withstand her interrogators and was released.

It’s by way of Gesche Role that we arrive at our day’s principals — for in some fresh turn of the diplomatic jockeying between the estranged power couple, Eric renewed his accusation and re-arrested the poor woman upon fresh claims of fiendery. This time she succumbed and confessed — adding, as is the style, a series of charges against five other acquaintances: our three victims, Annecke Lange, Gesche Herbst, and Annecke Rotschroeder; plus, Annecke’s husband Hans Lange, who died under torture; and, a woman named Margarethe Ölse or Ölsin, whose fate was stayed by dint of her pregnancy. Hans Lange had actually been a barber and surgeon who had been in ducal employment, affording some material connection to the “victim’s” plate, but of course all confessions were secured in the usual violent manner.

On the 28th of March, our three victims were condemned at Neustadt and immediately sent to the stake. Several others in the widening witch inquiry shared a like fate later that same year; the overall number of Neustadt “witches” executed from the various procedures initiated by Eric is not known, but might run up towards 60.

The reader will mark that all these souls were merely humble folk destroyed as flies to wanton boys. Witch fires were usually quenched once their flames licked titled estates, and so it was in this case, as the 1572 Hexenprozesse “also implicated a cluster of noblewomen (Anna von Rheden, Katharina Dux, and Margaretha Knigge), and it was not long before Duke Erich’s estranged wife, Sidonie, herself was accused of directing the poison plot against her husband, purportedly because of his relationship with his mistress, Katharina von Weldam. This escalation of the trial as it reached into the nobility proved to be too much, apparently, even for Duke Erich II, who halted the trial before the noblewomen were sentenced,” and after a pause the Holy Roman Emperor reconvened a hearing at which all concerned were exonerated.

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1689: Gabriel Milan, Danish West Indies governor

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Gabriel Milan, the governor of the Danish West Indies, was beheaded on Copenhagen’s Nytorv Square on this date in 1689.

Born to an emigre family of former Marranos that had resumed open Judaism, Milan (English Wikipedia entry | Danish) was a cavalryman turned merchantman married to the daughter of one of Europe’s most prominent Jewish scholars.

Well-connected in the court of Prince George of Denmark, Milan in 1684 was tapped to govern the struggling nascent sugar colony of the Danish West Indies — the islands of Saint Thomas, Saint John, and Saint Croix that have comprised the U.S. Virgin Islands since Denmark sold the money pits off in 1917.

There he proved to be a pettifogging despot who was noxious to the island’s planters and conspicuous about exploiting his office to fatten his own coffers. His incompetent predecessor, who was only supposed to be sent back to the mother country, Milan instead clapped in a dungeon. Even his brutal treatment of slaves — using impalement for an execution! — shocked peers accustomed to a different spectrum of cruelty.

“I wish for my part that your Excellency could have been here a single day and heard what thundering there has been in the commission, with howling, shouting, and screaming, one against the other,” the official reporter noted. “God be thanked it is over.”

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