On this date in 1781, the Spanish social bandit Diego Corrientes Mateos was hanged and quartered in Seville.

A robber who plied the roads from Portugal to his native Seville, Corrientes (English Wikpedia entry | Spanish) was said to be of farmworker stock himself. His consequent good treatment of the rural common folk enabled him to operate with great freedom and situated him as a Robin Hood character; folklore has consequently inflated the valor of his exploits and the bile of Sheriff of Nottinghamesque pursuers like the lieutenant governor of Seville. For example, surprising his adversary on one occasion, Corrientes is supposed to have remarked, “I have learned that you boast you will be able to capture me.”

“Yes, and hang you,” shot back Francisco de Bruna.

“Then I must spare your life so you can fulfill your promise,” the sporting Corrietes allowed. (The reader will discern that Francisco de Bruna soon made good his threat.)

By the 19th century, he’d become a positive fixture of romantic and nationalist literature.

On this day..

• 1908: Chester Gillette, A Place in the Sun inspiration
• 2007: Six Bangladesh bombers
• 1900: Joseph Hurst
• 1702: Not Nicholas Bayard, anti-Leislerian
• 1555: Robert Ferrar, Bishop of St. David's
• 1875: John Morgan, slasher
• 1883: Emeline Meaker, child abuser, first woman hanged in Vermont
• 1911: Joseph Christock
• 2011: Three Philippines drug mules in China
• 1938: Arkadi Berdichevsky, Jon Utley's father
• 1952: Nikos Beloyannis, the man with the carnation
• 1689: Kazimierz Lyszczynski, the first Polish atheist