On this date in 1620, Thomas Dempster was condemned by a Scottish assize to execution for counterfeiting. No documentation specifying the execution date appears to be available but such sentences were commonly implemented almost immediately — either directly from the courtroom or within a couple of days.
The Dempster family of Muresk were baronial landowners who owed both privilege and surname to the hereditary rank of dempster. This curious office of “dooms-man” connects etymologically with judging (“deem”), the successor to a Gaelic position called the judex that once projected royal authority into the courtroom.
Over the centuries-long term, this pre-Norman holdover was on a downward trend towards obsolence; the dempster transitioned to being the pronouncer of the court’s sentences and “ultimately became the common hangman.”* (Source)
Nevertheless, in our man’s time the Muresk Dempsters had estate enough to squander, and the quarrelsome Thomas did yeoman work in that respect, blowing the family fortune on clan feuding that extended even to a violent rivalry with his own son, James.** The assize record would note him “altogidder sensles of that his miserable cairage, nawayis being movet thairwith, bot rather resolveing to rwn heidlongis in all godles and cruiket courses.”
Having been found in this degraded state guilty of forgery, he was condemned by the court “to be tane to the Castell-hill of Edinburgh, and thair his heid to be strukin frome his body; and all his moveable guidis and geir pertening to him to be escheit to his Maiesteis use, &c.”
* The office of the dempster was abolished in 1773.
** James and his team ambushed and injured the father in a rivalry over a woman, driving James to a life of banditry. Another son — James’s younger brother, confusingly also named Thomas Dempster — was snatched away from this noxious family atmosphere by a kindly uncle who gave him a continental education; this other better-favored Thomas Dempster grew up to become a noted ecclesiastical historian.
On this day..
- 1849: Sarah Harriet Thomas, the last female juvenile hanged in Great Britain
- 1623: Nicolas Antoine, Judaizer
- 2017: Ledell Lee
- 1785: Alexander Stewart, the first to hang at the Tolbooth
- 1824: Three Bondy brigands
- 1963: Julian Grimau, the last casualty of the Spanish Civil War
- 1945: The children of Bullenhuser Damm
- 1954: Michael Manning, the last hanged in Ireland
- 1534: Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent
- 2004: Abdullah Shah, Zardad's dog
- 1994: Rwandan Queen Dowager Rosalie Gicanda, and six attendants
- 1622: Antonio di Nicolo Foscarini
