Tag Archives: april 10

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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1945: Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman

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On this date in 1945, during the last weeks of World War II, Dutch print artist Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman was shot by the Gestapo in the forest near Bakkeveen for his resistance activities.

Werkman’s 1938 self-portrait (source)

Werkman English Wikipedia entry | Dutch) grew up and worked in the city of Groningen and participated in an artists’ collective there called De Ploeg (The Plough) but he was

Werkman ran printing and publishing shops in Groningen that commanded most of his attention; he traveled abroad only once, in 1929. Nevertheless, he experimented through the 1920s and 1930s with creative use, largely self-taught, of typography and printing (he tried his hand at verse, too).

For a time he circulated his own English-titled magazine The Next Call, which he exchanged for work by other artists and designers to keep abreast of the era’s artistic ferment. He was noted for his druksels — “a word impossible to translate, a suffix joined to the word for typographic impression which adds to it a sense of modesty as well as affectionate irony. Perhaps it can best be rendered by ‘printlet’ rather than by ‘booklet’,” in the words of this British Library explainer.

These druksels could be quite independent of any text, or they could complement and enrich words to which they related. The technique used to make them — by means of letter types or other pieces from the type case stamped on to the paper by hand, of impressions of colour from stencils or their addition with the ink-roller held evenly or at varying angles — needed much time in preliminary design work, in proof impressions, and finally in the most careful and laborious execution. The most complex druksels might have needed up to fifty different handlings in and out of the press and allowed no more than one or at the most two or three copies to be made … they are considered works of art in their own right and have become very expensive collectors’ items.

With the German occupation, his became work and art in resistance. He rolled the presses for an underground publishing house called De Blauwe Schuit, but got arrested in a sweep of suspected subversives on March 13, 1945. Four weeks later, he was one of ten prisoners shot just three days ahead of Groningen’s liberation; “there had not even been a semblance of charges or trial,” continues the British Library bio, and “the pretence for his arrest had been the incomprehensible, decadent nature, as his captors saw it, of his art, his obvious Jewish sympathies and the suspected unauthorized use of paper.”


From left to right: Composition with letters ‘X’, Paul Robeson Sings, and one of his wartime renderings of various Hasidic Legends. Behold more works by Mr. Werkman at Wikimedia or Artnet. The best place to see his output in the flesh is surely Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, which acquired an ample Werkman collection in the late 1930s thanks to the fortuitous notice of its curator.

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2018: Zahid Iqbal

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Via UrduPoint.com. A different report give the spur to the murder not as a “minor dispute” but a “robbery bid”.

FAISALABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News — 10th Apr, 2018): A condemned prisoner was executed in Central Jail Faisalabad on Tuesday. According to Prisons Department, Zahid Iqbal had murdered three persons Rehana, Anayat Ali and Haris over a minor dispute in 2005 and the session court had awarded him death sentence on three counts.

The apex court also upheld the decision of the trial court whereas the President also turned down his mercy appeal. After the rejection of mercy petition, death warrants were issued against the condemned prisoner Zahid Iqbal and the court fixed April 10 for implementation on his execution. Later, the body was handed over to his heirs after completing necessary formalities.

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1863: The servile murderers of Isaac Strowd and John Lockhart

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Scant appetite as North Carolinians showed for the Civil War, the alarm when two eminent white men of Orange County were murdered by their slaves within days of each other (and just days after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 stoked such alarm that, according to Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South, several eminent white citizens sent personal appeals to governor Zebulon Vance to fast-track their condign judicial punishment lest lynch mobs handle them in more summary fashion.

Although the press clippings excerpted here imply five hangings, the Espy File registry records only four, omitting the man convicted not of murder but of accessory before the fact.

Thursday, February 26, 1863 N. C. ARGUS (Wadesborough, Anson County, NC)
-Hillsboro Recorder, 18th – Murder: On Thursday morning last, Mr. Isaac STROWD, living southwest of this place, near the Chatham lines, was killed by some negroes working with him who afterwards carried him about half a mile and buried him in an old field. His body was not found until Sunday morning. We understand one of the negroes has confessed that he killed him, but says that it was by accident. The negroes, four in number, two men and two women, were brought to this place on Monday, and lodged in jail.

Thursday, March 5, 1863 N. C. ARGUS (Wadesborough, Anson County, NC)
-Hillsboro Recorder – Another murder – Mr. John LOCKHART, a respectable citizen residing in the northeastern section of this county, was murdered on Tuesday of last week by three negroes in his employ – one belonging to him and two hired. The negroes have been lodged in jail in this place, to await their trial.

Thursday, March 26, 1863 N.C. ARGUS (Wadesborough, Anson County, NC)
-Hillsborough Recorder – Judge GILLIAM’S first Court was a Court of Oyer and Terminer held in this place. The first case brought on was the trial of America, Daniel and Solomon, three slaves, for the murder of Mr. John LOCKHART. America and Daniel were convicted of the murder. Solomon was an accessory before the fact … The next arraignment was Lucian and Allen, for the murder of Mr. Isaac STROWD … On Saturday night about 12 o’clock the Jury returned a verdict of guilty as to both. On Monday, the five criminals were brought to court for sentence. The judgment of the Court was that they be hung on Friday, the 10th day of April next.

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1725: James Dunbar, with paternal advice

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A (lengthy) gallows broadsheet via James Kelly’s Gallows Speeches From Eighteenth-Century Ireland. Almost all the [bracketed] content is exactly as Kelly has rendered it, interpolating wherever possible damage to the document that obscures small bits of text.

The Last Speech, Confession and Dying Words of Mr. J. Dunbar

who was Try’d and Condemn’d, for High Treason against his Majesty King George; at the Assizes, of Oyer, Terminer, or Goal Delivery, holden, at Carrickfergus, for and in the County of Antrim, the 17th Day of Ma. 1725. And was Executed Saturday, April 10th for the same together with his last Advice to his Children prov’d by Scripture Texts, &c. As it was taken from his own Mouth in the Goal, and desir’d to be Printed.

Courteous Readers,

Into whose Hands those my Dying Words shall come; they may not be look’d upon as a Form, because it is Customary, for unfortunate Persons under my Fate so to do; No, but with a sincere Heart to clear my Conscience, as I am a Dying Man. First to my Creator & Redeemer, by whom and thro’ his great Mercy I hope to merit Salvation.

I JAMES DUNBAR, was born in the Town land of Grogan, in the Parish of Drummal, near Ronaldstown, in the County of Antrim of honest Parents; My Father was a Farmer, Liv’d in the fear of God, attended the Meetings constantly with his Family, doing to the best of his Knowledge as became a Man in his Station; brought up all under his care in the fear and service of God. To this Day I well remember when I was about Eleven years of Age, I had amongst others learned a great Word to swear by my Conscience, and in his hearing, he finding it became practice took an opportunity to Chastize me for it, but with that pleasant Fatherly Correction, that he perfectly sham’d me out of it, the same was so imprinted in my mind, be in what Company soever, I never was any way addicted to that Sin of Swearing to this Day. He taught me the Catechism and Psalm Book; brought me up to the Age of Sixteen, then I stray’d away from him and Listed in the Service, where in Flanders and Ireland I served seven years under King William, in which time I receiv’d three Wounds, during my whole Travels my mind was always bent upon the Genuine part, casting Molds of several sorts, each exceeding the other.

Upon my return I settled, Marry’d a Wife, and got things necessary about me: But in process of time, hearing such a Character of New England, what great Advantage was to be made by those that could carry some Money with them, I resolv’d for that place: In order thereunto I made Sale of all I had, & proceeding forward at Newtown-Stuart chang’d my Mind, which I now dearly repent. Settles again there about three Years. At Leisure times to recreate my self with an Innocent Pleasure I took delight in Fishing; but once too often, for by an unhappy fall, there was a Knife with the point Towards me, stuck into and gave me a Wound six Inches deep, the same I lay by sixteen Weeks. Even upon my Recovery, came three Idle Fellows, knowing me to be an Ingenious Artist, desired me to make them a Crown Molud in Steel for the use of Coyning, I told them in Horn, Brass, Pewter, Silver or Gold I could; but because I had never try’d in Steel I should spoil it, they not fearing told me that I should have twelve pence per Day if I did, not being of Steel as I said, I did notwithstanding they paid me twelve Shillings. Sometime after they came to me again to do the same the which I dextrously Perform’d to a truith, and [for] the same receiv’d forty Shillings; Some of the same 3 [men] have been Executed on that Head since: As for In[stance] David Denniston at Omey the last Assizes. For my [own] part my Genious so far exceeded other Men that I have [no] occasion for help but for Company sake; I ca[n make] Molds and could Perform all that Art requir’d; [but because] the Laws of the Land are so strict I must own an[d confess] myself Guilty of what is laid to my Charge, a[nd I am] willing to resign my Vital Breath and Soul to hi[m, my God,] for the same, in whom I trust thro his great Me[rcy, with] sincere Repentance I have made my Peace, and s[eek out] the ingdom of Heaven, forsaking this Life for [that of the etern]nal. I Die in Charity with all People, freely fo[rgiving] those that was the cause of this my untimely Dea[th and any] others that ever wrong’d me in Thought Word [or Deed] and for all those that I have wrong’d Directly or [Indirectly] I ask Pardon and Forgiveness. First of my Grea[t and Glo]rious GOD, the which I hope to obtain for all [my off]ences; next of them, hoping they will do the s[ame, I] do expect to be forgiven at the latter Day.

My dear Friends and Countrey-Men, and all [people that] hears of my Unhappy Fall to take Warning in t[his; let it] be an Example to all; especially Young People, w[hatever walk] of Life it is the[y] go on in, and to their utmost En[deavour] shun all lewd Company. Besure [sic] first choose the [compa]ny, than their Liquor, and then not to Debauch […] with it, so as to be bereft of Sense; it is the f[irst step to] Destruction. Next to shun all lewd Women, […] Total Overthrow, and nothing but the Works [of the Devil] proceeds from them. Thirdly be not Covetous of […]stance. And fourthly, If the LORD is pleased to [endow us] with a Talent to be more Ingenious than any other [to put] it to that Use that the great Giver of all Design[s ordains.] I leave behind me one Son and three Daughters [; Grant] them Grace to lead their Life and Conversation u[ntroubled be]fore God and Man. I hope there is no Person w[ill put] either upon my Wife or them after my Decease. T[o] all that knew me in my Settlement in the County of Derry; and all others, that knew me else where, what a Value and Esteem all People had for me, for my Ingenuous Performances in that Trade of Horning. How I lived in my Family is well known for many years together, performing the Duty as becometh a Professor or Christian to do, I could inlarge: But let no Man boast in his own Strength least he Fall, they are well kept whom the LORD keeps.

I have laid down some Scripture Proofs to shew the Error of Man, and the Scourage [sic] that attend it, which I hope may prove of some Use after my Decease, as follows

Jeremias [sic] 17:17 17 18. Heal me O Lord and I shall be heal’d, save me and I shall be saved for thou art my praise.

V. 17. Be not a terrour unto me thou art my hope in the Day of evil. V. 18. Let them be confounded that presecute [sic] me, but let not me be confounded. Let them be dismayed bring upon them the day of evil and destroy them with double Destruction.

I will look unto thee O Lord for Deliverance from all my Troubles: For there is no Power like unto thy Power, who delivered thy People from all the Power of Egypt, and with a strong Hand brought them through the Red Sea.

Mat 9.10[-13]. And it came to pass as Jesus sat at Meat in the house behold many Publicans and Sinners came and Sat down with him and his Disciples; And when the Pharisees saw it they said unto his Disciples, Why eateth your Master with Publicans and Sinners. But when Jesus heard that he said unto them, They that be well need not a Physician, but they that are sick. Now go ye and learn what that meanet, I will have Mercy and not Sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous, but Sinners to Repentance.

[Some] Advice from a Father to his Children, when he was near to his Death.

[My] Son James Dunbar, I Charge thee in the Name of [the L]ord thy God, that thou keep thy self from the Unlaw[ful, Lewd] Women strong Drink, and Sabbath breaking for [they d]raw away thy Heart from the Lord thy God, & [follow the w]ay of his Commandments.

[Proverbs 5:]3. For the Lips of a strange Woman drop as a Hon[eycomb an]d her Mouth is smoother than Oil. V. 4. But her [end is bitter] as Wormwood, sharp as a two edged sword. V. 5. [Her feet go] down to Death, her steps take hold on Hell. V. 6. [Lest thou sh]ouldest ponder the path of Life, her ways are move[able th]ou canst not know them. V. 7. Hear me therefore, [o sons], and depart not from the Words of my Mouth re[move thy way] far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house.

[Keep thy]self from all Woman kind, except thy own [wife (if] you live to have one) for that Unlawful Use of [them an]d strong Drink hath been the Ruin of me, and [others], and so it will be of thee and thine, if ever thou [follow that pr]actice.

[Hear m]e my dear Children, hear the Instruction of your [dying Fa]ther, from the Word of God, receive them and [take them dee]p in your Hears [sic], for they will be an Ornament […] to your Hands, and Chains of Gold about your [wais]t as They will render you Beautiful and Accept[able to Go]d and good Men. When you are in Trouble, God [hears y]our Cries when ye pray unto him, and will deliv[er you ou]t of all your Distresses, if you be not in the wrong; [These a]re the Troubles that Afflict the Just but the [good be]ereth them out of them all. My dear children, [let your e]yes be fixed on the Lord your God in all your [actions;] if you offend in one you are guilty of all; there[fore keep e]qual Regard and Respect to them all, and when [you have d]one all that you can, say you are Unprofitable […].

[But] be not Lifted up, nor High in your own Eyes, but fear least ye be Tempted to Sin and God be provoked to cast you down again, as he has justly done to me. Therefore I beseech you for your Saviour’s sake, beware of vain Glory and high Mindedness but Contrarywise of be Humble and Meek and Lowly, and God will lift you up, but if he do not be Content he is well worth the trusting for he is not Unrighteous to forget your Work and Labour of Love for when he seeth you Diligent and Sincere in your Christian Course he will help you with his Blessing in the Work of your Hands and he will encourage you and strengthen your Hearts with the gracious of his Spirit, but if it be his Will to keep you Low and Mean in the World be Content and do not fret nor repine at the Dispensations of God, for that is the way to keep you Low and Mean still, but contrarywise be thankfull, and say with Paul I have learned in whatsoever State or Condition I am therewith to be content. [Philippians 4:11 -ed] For if you be content and have but a Morsel of dry Bread or Herbs you have a good Feast. For Contentment is great gain, Likewise I beseech you my dear children set your Hearts to seek the Lord with all your might.

Thess. 5:16,17. Rejoice evermore Pray without ceasing. V. 18. in every thing give thanks, for this is the Will of God in Christ Jesu,concerning you. V. 19 Quench not the Spirit. V. 20. Dispise not Prophesying. V. 21. Prove all things hold fast that which is good V. 22. Abstain from all appearance of evil, V. 23. And the very God of Peace sanctifie you wholly, and I pray God your whole Soul and Body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ &c.

Consider my Chidlren, these words, Pray without Ceasing. It is not that you should always be upon your Knees at Prayer, but that you shall be always in a Praying Flame of Spirit. But more particularly, dear Children see that ye neglect not to Pray in secret every Morning, and at Night, for that is the Duty of all others. That you may pour foth [sic] your Hearts to God, in the most familiar way without Bashfulness or Confusion, and expect most of the Presence of the Holy Ghost.

Eph. 6 16, [sic: he means Ephesians 6:18] Praying always with all prayer and Supplication in the Spirit and watching thereunto with all Perseverance and Supplication for all Saints.

And now my dear Children, I might have Recommended you to many more Places of Scripture, but I rather Recommend you to the search of the whole Old and New Testment, [sic] which is able to make you Wise unto Salvation.

I humbly beg leave of thee, O Father, of Heaven and Earth, to return thee my hearty thanks, for inspiring an Spirit of Remorse & Pity, into the Hearts and Minds of those Learned Gentlemen the Clergy of the Presbytery of the Town of Belfast &c. Who was pleas’d to remember me in their publick Service, joyn’d with their Congregations, on Sunday last. Humbly rendering their Prayers to thee O GOD to have Mercy on me, a poor lost Soul, without thy help; hoping thou was pleas’d to hear the same, and that I may find the Sweetness, Joy and Comfort of it, at this my Sudden Departure; altho’ I was no ways deserving of such a Compassionate Christian Favour, being a fallen Member and Transgressor of the same; That they will be pleased to receive this as in obedience of thanks Paid to them as true Professors obedient to God’s Holy Word, and Teachers of the same; and all those that joyn’d with them in that Charitable Act.

Also those Worthy Gentlemen of the Church of England, who hath since offered up their Prayers for me.

My time is spent my Glass is run, sweet Saviour open thy Arms of Mercy, for unto thee I come. O Lord, shut not thy Gate against me stretch forth thy Almighty Hand, and take me to thy self and let not SATAN have Power over me; now I launch into Eternity in full Hopes of Assurance to be with thee in thy Heavenly Kingdom, there to remain with thee and thy holy Angels, World without end.

I Die in the Presbyterian Communion, and upwards of Fifty Years of Age.

Have Mercy on me O LORD sweet JESUS I COME. I COME, Mercy I crave at this my last Minute, Grant it for thy dear Son’s sake Amen.

JAMES DUNBAR.

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1879: John Phair

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On this date in 1879, a circuitous four-year journey to the gibbet — quite Odyssean by 1870s standards — concluded when John P. Phair was hanged in St. Albans, Vt., still protesting his innocence.

Phair was convicted on circumstantial evidence of the murder of his former companion, Ann Freese: that circumstance was his pawning the late widow’s watch in Boston.

Though police had the exact serial number of the timepiece, Phair staunchly insisted that the man who sold it was not he — damning the Jewish pawnbrokers who identified him as the seller:

Their business is that of pawnbroking — a life of fraud. Their race bears the curse of God, because they crucified his Son eighteen centuries ago … They don’t regard an oath administered in the Christian form.

That salty quote is courtesy of the case file in the excellent historical crime blog Murder by Gaslight, which tracks the strange subsequent progress of John Phair to the gallows in 1877.

On that occasion, two years nearly to the day before his eventual execution, Phair had been due to die — but his supporters had also roused considerable skepticism on the justice of the sentence. For instance, the murderer had apparently covered his tracks by torching the place, and Freese’s remains were discovered badly burnt after the fire was put out. But this fire was detected at 7 a.m., three hours after the departure of the train Phair would have taken to Boston. And Phair produced a quasi-alibi in the form a train passenger who tentatively corroborated Phair’s claim to have merely switched trains in Boston without stopping long enough to fence a watch. So …

Is John P. Phair Guilty?
Boston Evening Journal, April 4, 1877

Wherever the judicial system proposes to situate the threshold for conviction and condemnation, some subset of messy real-life cases will always smudge the brightest of lines. Phair’s contemporaries simply could not satisfy themselves that they really had the right man. But neither were they convinced of Phair’s repeated denials. In the absence of moral certainty, legal process takes the reins. A dramatic eleventh-hour reprieve from the governor saved Phair in 1877. But as Murder by Gaslight notes:

The problem for Phair now was that by Vermont law he could not ask for a new trial if more than two years had passed since the original verdict. The governor granted him another reprieve until the first Friday of April, 1879 while the legislature debated changing the law.

Phair won this battle — the legislature empowered judges to refer such a case to the Supreme Court — but lost the war. In February 1879, Vermont’s high court considered, and then quickly rejected, Phair’s appeal. Past this point, exertions for the condemned man became the longest of shots, but this is not to say that they did not continue. The man’s exhaustive last-ditch efforts, some by his own hand and some mounted by his friends, have a whiff of the familiar present-day spectacle to them. (The Cleveland Plain Dealer sarcastically titled its after-action report “Hanged At Last”)

Phair won a six-day reprieve from a scheduled April 4 execution; on the eve of the hanging, two judges were taking Phair’s last appeal for a fresh trial; and on the morning of the execution the state’s governor was obliged to reject Phair’s supporters’ plea for a delay to allow the legislature to intervene yet again. (Phair didn’t even know this last one was occurring.)

The man himself was reported calm in the last hours, even as he persisted with his denials. Guilty or not, he finally fell through the long-awaited gallows trap murmuring “Lord, remember me!” at 2:11 p.m. on this date in 1879.

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1959: Leonard Shockley, the last juvenile executed?

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On this date in 1959, Leonard Shockley was gassed in Maryland.

The appeals court that considered his case found it “perfectly clear that Leonard killed the victim in an attempt to perpetrate a robbery or a rape,” during a heist committed jointly with Leonard’s older brother.

On that basis, young Shockley achieved the distinction of being the second-last person ever put to death for a crime committed as a 16-year-old. For a very long while, it really looked like he might be the last, but Oklahoma’s 1999 execution of Sean Sellers usurped the claim.

While it makes little ethical difference, from the standpoint of attributing criminal culpability, whether a 16-year-old offender is executed promptly at age 16 or held for a lifetime in prison and executed in his eighties, Shockley may also be the last human put to death on American soil before he had attained his own majority. Shockley’s birthdate invariably reports as “1941 or 1942”,* and in the absence of the sort of primary research a blogger is naturally loath to conduct, we’re left with conflicting sources on the subject.

The Washington Post‘s headline the following day annonced, “Slayer, 18, Dies In Gas Chamber”. (Surmounting the text of the perfunctory Associated Press story it ran.)

Whereas the Baltimore Sun reported, “Youth, 17 Dies in Gas Chamber: Shockley Executed for Slaying of Shore Mother”. (Alas, no screenshot: it’s cited by Victor Streib, an anti-death penalty academic.)

So it’s not completely clear whether Shockley enjoys this particular claim to fame. Well, not enjoy it exactly. Of course not that. And poor Sarah Hearne didn’t enjoy being slashed to death; this is also understood. Let’s just say, a sad affair and a minor milestone, and leave it at that.

* The crime was in January 1958, 15 months before the execution. It’s simple enough to work out when Shockley’s birthday would have to fall for the various scenarios.

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1919: Mehmed Kemal, for the Armenian genocide

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Ninety-one years ago today,* the tottering Ottoman Empire hanged one of its officials in Istanbul for his role in the mass slaughter of its Armenian minority during the First World War.

Kemal Bey’s hanging in Bayezid Square occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Great War. Here, on its last legs, the remains of a sultanate splintered apart in the war instituted tribunals for wartime offenses by the Young Turks who had run the government during the war — a sop to the British occupying forces making worrying noises about international trials for much bigger fish.

Much testimony at the trial pointed to the governor’s fervor for massacres; an Armenian priest who survived the slaughter later wrote that a Turkish officer had told him that Kemal “made a vow on the honor of the Prophet: I shall not leave a single Armenian alive in the sanjak of Yozgat.”

A response to the New York Times‘ report of the hanging noted that “his part was that of an executioner. The originators of the plan to exterminate the Armenians were primarily Enver, Tallat, and Djemal.”

These “Three Pashas” who had driven Ottoman policy during the war had fled abroad. They would be condemned to death in absentia, and though none would hang, neither would they outlive Mehmed Kemal by as much as four years.

They were among the many unpunished perpetrators of the slaughter hunted down by Armenian assassins. The latter two were avenged by Operation Nemesis; Enver Pasha died in battle in Tajikistan during the Russian Civil War.

Though overshadowed in historical import by those three, our day’s principal is distinguished as the first person executed for “crimes against humanity.”

This novelty, combined with the trial’s victor’s-justice character, were immediately controversial, and remain so in the fraught politicking around the genocide. (This genocide-denialist paper describes, on page 13, the rowdy funeral scene that erupted the next day, also attested** by annoyed British officials.)

Events would soon outstrip these tribunals and lay waste to all parties’ plans for the Ottoman carcass, incidentally leaving the Armenian issue permanently unresolved.

The month after Mehmed Kemal swung, western allies went one dismemberment too far by backing the irredentist Greek state’s landing at Smyrna — an intervention that was to backfire catastrophically for the Greeks, and help birth the Turkish Republic.

* A few secondary sources say April 12 rather than April 10, but the earlier date appears much better attested.

** e.g., a diplomatic note cited in The Burning Tigris, p. 337: “Not one Turk in a thousand will think that any other Turk deserves to be hanged for massacring Christians.”

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1548: Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisco de Carvajal

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On this date in 1548, the Spanish crown cemented its authority over the territory of the former Incan Empire by beheading its rebellious conquistador authorities.

Gonzalo Pizarro (English Wikipedia entry | Spanish) had served in the force that late elder half-brother Francisco used to destroy the Incas. The poor bloke was always second banana in the conquistador game; when he wasn’t being one-upped by his flesh and blood, he was bailing on the expedition that “discovered” and navigated the Amazon River. (Francisco de Orellana earned those honors instead.)

No, Gonzalo had a more prosaic specialty: killing.

While big bro went off to pacify more territory, Gonzalo along with siblings Hernando and Juan, the Baldwin brothers of New World conquest, chilled in the former Incan capital Cusco and sparked a rebellion in the 1530’s with their iron-fisted rule.

Appointed Governor of Quito in 1541 — he forced the appointment with some exemplary hangings — Gonzalo was just the sort to get a burr in his saddle when the Emperor Charles V promulgated the New Laws requiring slightly less crappy treatment of the natives.

And that was a low bar to clear indeed.

Although the following passage is not particular to Gonzalo Pizarro, gadfly monk Bartolome de las Casas described (perhaps exaggeratedly, but still) the previous Spanish depredations in “Perusia”:

[T]he Spaniards, without the least provocation on their part, as soon as they entred [sic] upon these Territories, did burn at the Stake their most Potent Caciq Ataliba, Prince of the whole Country, after they had extorted from him above Two Millions of Gold, and possessed themselves of his Province, without the least Opposition … As also some few days after, the Ruler of the Province of Quitonia, who was burnt, without any Cause given, or Crime laid to his Charge … and in like manner, burnt the Feet of Alvidis, the greatest of all the Quitonian Lords, and rackt him with other Torments to Extract from him a discovery of Ataliba’s Treasure, whereof as appear’d after, he was totally ignorant …

[T]hese Eyes of mine the Spaniards for no other reason, but only to gratifie their bloody mindedness, cut off the Hands, Noses, and Ears, both of Indians and Indianesses, and that in so many places and parts, that it would be too prolix and tedious to relate them. Nay, I have seen the Spaniards let loose their Dogs upon the Indians to bait and tear them in pieces, and such a Number of Villages burnt by them as cannot well be discover’d: Farther this is a certain Truth, that they snatched Babes from the Mothers Embraces, and taking hold of their Arms threw them away as far as they would from them: (a pretty kind of barr-tossing Recreation.) They committed many other Cruelties, which shook me with Terror at the very sight of them, and would take up too much time in the Relation …

More urgent than “recreation,” Pizarro (and many of the New World’s new landholding elite) were miffed that meddlesome European bleeding hearts types were going to cut into their profit margins.

Pizarro revolted, enlisting the brilliant officer Francisco de Carvajal, a longtime fixture of the Old World battlefield. Now an octogenarian, he had lost neither vigor in command, nor cruelty in conquest. (He played bad cop to Gonzalo’s good cop.) The two killed the guy sent to impose the emperor’s decree.

This uprising forced the next Spanish viceroy to repeal the hated New Laws in order to win political support against Pizarro and Carvajal — a happy outcome for Pizarro’s base, but not for the conquistador himself.

Pedro de la Gasca’s adroit diplomacy caused the entire rebel force to desert before the fight at the “Battle” of Jaquijahuana in Sacsayhuaman.

The two principals were quickly arraigned. Carvajal, at his age, could be wry about being singled out for punishment: “very merciful is the Lord President; for, if the victory had been ours, there would have fallen on this spot nine hundred men.”

Carvajal was hanged and Pizarro beheaded, both of them winding up on pikestaffs at the gates of the city Francisco Pizarro had founded — Lima.

Their partnership — and the arc of Spanish exploits in the New World — is covered in this Google Books freebie.

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1905: Fou Tchou-Li, by a thousand cuts

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On this date in 1905, Fou Tchou-Li suffered the last execution by lingchi in Beijing, for the murder of a Mongolian prince.

Lingchi, or slow slicing, involved the public dismemberment of the victim. As such, it became iconic to westerners as an image of exotic Chinese cruelty — albeit iconic in a mythicized form, the accounts conflicting, undependable, Orientalist. (Many different ones are collected at the Wikipedia page.)

Lingchi is especially notable — apart from fathering the phrase “death by a thousand cuts” in the English lexicology — for its overlap with the era of photography.

Fou Tchou-Li’s death was captured on film, and the images famously captivated Georges Bataille for the expression of seeming ecstasy on the face of the dying (or dead) man.

Bataille was said to meditate daily upon the image below in particular — “I never stopped being obsessed by this image of pain, at the same time ecstatic and intolerable.”

Agony and ecstasy? A sequence of images, strong stuff in spite of their low quality, describing Fou Tchou-Li’s execution can be viewed here. Notice, however, that it’s not the one pictured here — the scholar who maintains this page claims the man’s identity became confused by western interlocutors. The different, unnamed man who as “Fou Tchou-Li” riveted Bataille is pictured here.

In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag explained the mystical nexus of pleasure and pain Fou Tchou-Li’s torture suggested to the French theorist, aptly comparing it to graphic but pre-photographic exaltations of torture in the western artistic tradition, such as Saint Sebastian:

To contemplate this image, according to Bataille, is both a mortification of the feelings and a liberation of tabooed erotic knowledge — a complex response that many people must find hard to credit. … Bataille is not saying that he takes pleasure in the sight of this excruciation. But he is saying that he can imagine extreme suffering as a kind of transfiguration. It is a view of suffering, of the pain of others, that is rooted in religious thinking, which links pain to sacrifice, sacrifice to exaltation — a view that could not be more alien to a modern sensibility.

It’s no idle point to say that all this reads quite a lot into a single frame that may not be all that representative of the moment, though that wouldn’t necessarily diminish Bataille’s gist. More, these are western interpretations of — projections upon — an image marked as fundamentally outside in a tableau irresistibly blending the colonizer and the colonized.

The execution was ordered in the last days of the Qing Dynasty, which had long been substantially beholden to European states, especially the British; the prisoner was apparently administered opium to numb the pain, the very product Britain had gone to war to force China to accept.

Taiwanese video artist Chen Chieh-jen interpreted the photography that so captivated Bataille, and its colonial context, in Lingchi: Echoes of a Historical Photograph (review).

Two weeks after this date, China abolished the punishment for good.

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