On this date in 2016, Saudi Arabia beheaded Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr (familiarly known as Sheikh Nimr) — one of 47 executions carried out in 12 cities throughout the kingdom that included at least four political prisoners (one of them al-Nimr) as well as two foreign nationals.
A prominent dissident who became an emblem of resistance in his predominantly Shiite province of Al-Awamiyah*, al-Nimr had been arrested several times before without blunting his sharp tongue. “People must rejoice at his death,” he offered in June 2012, about the death of militant Wahhabist crown prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. “He will be eaten by worms and will suffer the torments of Hell in his grave.”
But here in the terrestrial sphere, Nayef’s death made Salman the crown prince … and queued up Salman’s son, Mohammad bin Salman to become the de facto ruler of the kingdom.
Al-Nimr was seized in July 2012, during crackdowns** on the 2011-2012 “Arab Spring” protests — shot in the leg during the course of his arrest and beaten bloody by his captors. This arrest itself brought thousands into the streets, at least two of whom were shot dead in their own turn as al-Nimr went on hunger strike. By the time al-Nimr was put up on charges in 2014, the aforementioned Mohammad bin Salman — “MbS” of dread popular parlance, infamous for his bonesaws — was well along his rise to power in Saudi Arabia as the hand and the heir who transacted the business of a dementia-addled prince.
Al-Nimr’s October 2014 death sentence for “seeking ‘foreign meddling’ in the kingdom, ‘disobeying’ its rulers and taking up arms against the security forces” drew worldwide condemnation and protests over the ensuing year, a year coinciding with MbS’s overt conquest of political power in Saudi Arabia.
The execution sparked global outrage of varying hues, most sharply from Shiite Iran, where angry protesters attacked the Saudi embassy: not the decisive event but emblematic of Saudi Arabia’s growing enmity with Iran that shapes regional conflicts from Yemen to Iraq to Syria.
* Adjacent to the similarly restive Sunni-ruled, Shiite-majority Gulf monarchy of Bahrain.
** Al-Nimr’s nephew, Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr, is still under a death sentence today that could be ratified by the sovereign at any time. He was arrested in February 2012 for anti-regime protests, when he was only 17 years old.
Joaquin Casillas Lumpuy, an officer of Cuba’s defeated Batista regime, died on this date in 1959 — either executed, or killed in a struggle trying to escape his executioners. (Both reports, amounting to the same thing, went abroad.)
Casillas most “distinguished” himself by carrying out the Batista dictatorship’s 1948 murder of trade unionist Jesus Menendez.* He served a token jail sentence for his trouble.**
Restored to his situation, Casillas was called upon to defend Fulgencio Batista once again in the last days of 1958 at the Battle of Santa Clara — what would prove to be the decisive battle clinching the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. The battle was won on New Year’s Day, and Casillas captured that day by revolutionary commander Che Guevara.
“The sources contradict each other concerning names and numbers,” writes Paco Ignacio Taibo in Guevara, Also Known as Che, “but there is no doubt that in the hours following the liberation of Santa Clara, Che signed death warrants for several of Batista’s policeman whom the people accused of being torturers and rapists … including Casillas Lumpuy.”
Quoting Che now, Taibo continues: “‘I did no more and no less than the situation demanded — i.e., the death sentence for those twelve murderers, because they had committed crimes against the people, not against us.'” They would scarcely be the last.
Meanwhile,
the crowds in Havana were exacting a long-delayed justice. A sort of reasoned and selective vandalism took hold of the crowds, who attacked the gas stations belonging to Shell, which was said to have collaborated with Batista by giving him tanks. They also destroyed the casinos belonging to the American Mafia and the Batista underworld, trashed parking meters — one of the regime’s scams — and attacked houses belonging to leading figures in the dictatorship.
* Casillas carried out the murder in a law enforcement guise: sent on some pretext to arrest Menendez, Casillas shot his man dead when Menendez flexed his parliamentary immunity and told the cop to pound sand.
** Casillas’s defense lawyer in the Menendez proceeding was Jose Miro Cardona, who briefly became Prime Minister of post-Batista Cuba but had a much longer career as a prominent anti-Castro exile. As chair of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, he was the potential head of state had the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion succeeded.
Nuremberg executioner Franz Schmidt on this date in 1588 broke on the wheel two of the countless violent thieves that haunted the byways of early modernity. As the meticulous Nachrichter did for all his clientele, Schmidt noted the occasion in his diary:
January 2nd. George Hörnlein of Bruck, Jobst Knau of Bamberg, a potter, both of them murderers and robbers. Two years ago Hörnlein and a companion attacked a carrier on the Remareuth, stabbed him four times so that he died, and took 32 florins. Six weeks ago he and Knau were consorting with a whore. She bore a male child in the house, where Knau baptised it, then cut off its hand while alive. Then a companion, called Schwarz, tossed the child in the air, so that it fell upon the table, and said: “Hark how the devil whines!” then cut its throat and buried it in the little garden belonging to the house.
A week later the above-mentioned Hörnlein and Knau, when the whore of the aforesaid Schwarz bore a child, wrung its neck; then Hörnlein, cutting off its right hand, buried it in the yard of the house. Six weeks ago Hörnlein and Knau with a companion, a certain Weisskopf, attacked a man between Herzog and Frauen Aurach. Knau shot him dead, took 13 florins, dragged the body into the wood and covered it with brushwood.
[A long list of murders and highway robberies follows here. Schmidt adds:]
To conclude it would require another half sheet to write down all the people they attacked … The two murderers were led out on a tumbril. Both their arms were twice nipped with red-hot tongs, and their right arms and legs broken; lastly they were executed on the wheel.
From the Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, Jan. 17, 1823.
CONFESSIONS OF ROBERT HARTLEY
On the 2d instant, an immense concourse of people assembled at Penenden Heath, to witness the execution of Robert Stainton Hartley, convicted at the late Kent Assizes of stabbing Captain Owen, of the Bellerophon hulk,* at Sheerness.
He was of a bold and fearless disposition, and seemed to be little concerned at the thoughts of death. He had frequently observed, “I do not fear death, nor ought I to fear it. I have sought for it, and have got it; and I have got no more than I deserved.”
Previously to his execution, he made confessions, which, if they can be relied on (but those that knew him say that truth was a stranger to his nature), may be the means of bringing to justice the long-sought murderers both of Mrs. Donatty, and Mr. Bird and his housekeeper, at Greenwich.
Hartley confessed to the Rev. Mr. Winter having been concerned in upwards of two hundred burglaries, in Kent, Essex, Surry [sic], Middlesex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Yorkshire, Westmorland, Durham, Lincoln, and Norfolk. He had been confined in sixteen different prisons, besides undergoing several examinations at the different police-officers; and he had gone by the following names: — Robert Stainton, Alexander Rombollon, George Grimes, Robert Wood, William Smith, George Croggington, and Robert Hartley.
Hartley’s father formerly kept an inn (the Sir John Falstaff), at Hull, in Yorkshire. He was put to school in that neighbourhood, but his conduct at school was so marked with depravity, and so continually did he play the truant, that he was dismissed as unmanageable. He then, although only nine years of age, began with pilfering and robbing gardens and orchards, till at length his friends were obliged to send him to sea.
He soon contrived to run away from the vessel in which he had been placed, and having regained the land, pursued his old habits, and got connected with many of the principal thieves in London, with whom he commenced business regularly as a house-breaker, which was almost always his line of robbery.
Hartley acknowledged that from his earliest days he was of a most vindictive and revengeful spirit. He had been punished when at school, and, in revenge, contrived to get from his bed in the night, and destroy the whole of the fruit-trees and every plant and shrub in his master’s garden.
At another time, having robbed a neighbour’s garden, he was detected and punished; when, in order to wreak his vengeance, he set fire to the house in the night, which was nearly destroyed, together with its intimates. He had adopted a plan to escape from his father’s house in the night-time without detection, which was done by means of a rope ladder, that he let down from his bed-room window, and after effecting his robberies, he used to return to his room in the same way.
Hartley had once before received sentence of death, and was not respited till within a few hours of the usual time of execution; he was then sent to Botany Bay, whence he contrived to make his escape, and afterwards entered on board one of his Majesty’s ships in the East Indies. Whilst at this station, he was removed to the hospital on shore at Bombay, on account of sickness; but even in this state he could not refrain from thieving.
His practice was to scale the walls of the hospital in the evening, and way-lay the natives, whom he contrived to rob, by knocking them down with a short ebony stick; and then seizing their turbans, in which their wealth was usually deposited, he stole off unperceived, whilst his victims were left weltering in blood, which always followed his blows.
Whilst on this station, a gentleman on board the ship missed a valuable box of pearls, and suspicion falling upon a native Indian, he was put on shore and dreadfully tortured (his finger and toe nails being torn out), to make him confess. A few days before Hartley’s execution, he confessed that he had been the thief, having stolen the pearls, and secreted them in a crevice in the ship’s side, where they had slipped down to the bottom, and he never could get at them again.
Hartley wrote an account of this circumstance to the commander of the ship, who came to Maidstone immediately, and recognized Hartley as having been engaged as an officer’s servant on board; and the latter assured him that the pearls still remained in the place where he had secreted them.
Hartley acknowledged that he was an accomplice in the murder of Mr. Bird and his housekeeper, at Greenwich, for which murder Hussey was executed in 1818, but that neither himself nor Hussey was the actual murderer. Hartley obtained admission into the house by presenting a note at the door, when himself, with Hussey and another person, whom he named, —, rushed into the house and shut the door.
Hartley instantly ran up stairs to plunder the drawers, and whilst there he heard a loud cry for mercy. He went to the top of the stairs, and saw Hussey pull Mr. Bird’s housekeeper to the floor, whilst — struck her repeatedly with a hammer. Hartley ran down stairs, and saw Mr. Bird lying dead on his back. The sight so affected him that he immediately threw on the table two watches which he had secured, ran out of the house, and never saw Hussey afterwards, nor had any share in the plunder.
Happy would it have been had his hands always been as free from blood; but he confessed that he afterwards met a gentleman on the highway and shot him dead; after which he took from his person a watch and 75l.
Hartley was also witness to another scene of murder which occurred in one of his midnight robberies. Himself and a companion had entered the house of a gentleman, who, being alarmed, seized a poker and made towards Hartley, who snapped a pistol, which missed fire. The gentleman seized him by the collar and drugged him to the floor, when Hartley’s companion plunged a knife into his heart, and he fell dead upon hartley.
Two ladies had followed the gentleman into the room, and at the horrid sight they instantly fainted, whilst Hartley and his companion made their escape. He has also frequent[l]y confessed that the murderer of Mrs. Donatty was the above-mentioned —, who he represented to be a most blood-thirsty villain.
In one of his midnight excursions with two of his companions, he had a narrow escape of his life. They had packed up the principal part of the plate in the lower rooms; when one of his companions, with horrid oaths, declared that he would proceed up stairs, in attempting which, he was shot dead at the side of Hartley, who with his other companion, made a hasty retreat.
This circumstance only served to harden him in iniquity, as he acknowledged that he was totally devoid of fear and natural affection. Feelings of remorse were, however, a little awakened a few days before his trial, by an affectionate letter from a sister imprisoned for debt, whom he had robbed of two hundred pounds by forging a power of attorney, by which he obtained possession of a legacy bequeathed to her by a distant relation.
He looked forward to the time of his execution with astonishing coolness; and, in order that he might have the day continually before him, he had drawn a circle on paper, to form a kind of dial, with an index pointing to the number of days yet remaining, and this index he moved daily as the days of life decreased. This monitor he fastened against the wall of his cell, where it was constantly in view. He was but twenty-five years of age, and about five feet six inches high.
That was curtains for the Bellerophon‘s career as well as the Corsican’s; the ship was converted into a prison hulk upon her return. Jams celebrating the ship by her nickname, “Billy Ruffian”, still live on to this day.
This date in 1863 saw the last hanging ever at Worcester — that of a decrepit old drunk, William Ockold, either 69 or 70 years of age, who had beaten his wife to death in one of the brutal thrashings that had been a mainstay of their half-century of married life.
We’ll let the period’s press tell the tale.
Birmingham Daily Post November 10, 1862
On Saturday morning a shocking murder was committed at Hales Owen Street, Oldbury, and as might be expected, the inhabitants of that locality manifested no small interest in the matter.
The facts, so far as we have been enabled to ascertain at present are as follow: — William Ockold, tailor, in his 70th year, and his wife, Sophia Ockold, aged seventy-three, lived together in the above-named street. They lived in a very poor way, and were known to indulge together in intoxicating drinks.
For a few days prior to Saturday last Mrs. Ockold was unwell, but not confined to her bed; and at about a quarter past nine on the morning in question a young woman, named Maria Glazebrook, aged about nineteen or twenty years, went into the house to enquire as to Mrs. Ockold’s health. The young woman was very intimate with the Ockolds, and though not related to them, she called them respectively “grandfather” and “grandmother.” She is a domestic servant at the George and Dragon public house, in Hales Owen Street.
When she went to Ockold’s house she asked him how “grandmother” was.
He replied, “I don’t know.”
The girl then said, “Where is she? Is she in bed?”
Ockold made answer, “I suppose she is.”
The girl then noticed that there was some blood upon Ockold, and she said to him “Laws, grandfather, how did that come there?” and he said, “I have given the old woman a punch or two.”
The girl then went to the foot of the stairs, and called out “grandmother,” and, receiving no answer, she asked Ockold if his wife was asleep. She again called at the foot of the stairs two or three times, and still receiving no answer, she said she would go upstairs. Ockold told her she must not; but he did not get up to prevent her doing so, but continued as he had been during the time of the ialogue given above, working on the board. She, however, said “I will go up,” and went upstairs accordingly.
Here a shocking spectacle presented itself to the view of the affrighted girl. The body of Mrs. Ockold was stretched upon the floor, covered with blood, life being quite extinct.
The girl screamed out, and ran down stairs, exclaiming, “Why, grandfather, you have killed her.”
He said “Her ain’t dead, is her?” and the girl replied “She is, though.”
She then ran out of the house, and fetched in some neighbours, Mr. Weston, butcher, who lives next door, with his wife, being the first to come into the house. In the meantime Ockold went upstairs, took up the body of his murdered wife, and laid it upon the bed.
The police were then communicated with, and Sergeant Simmons was speedily in attendance.
By the time he arrived the news of the sad affair had spread rapidly through the town, and a crowd of from 200 to 300 persons had assembled. Mr. Simmons went into the house, and saw the old man standing in the chimney corner apparently careless of what was going on around.
The officer went upstairs, and briefly examined the body of deceased, observing that the face was covered with blood, and that one of the eyes presented the appearance of having been battered in. He came downstairs, and then observed that there was blood all the way down …
No one saw the murder committed, yet the facts are so concise and significant that there exists not the slightest doubt as to how and when it was done. When the body was found life had not been extinct more than an hour or two, and the heart was still warm. It is supposed that Ockold had been at work al night, that he had been disagreeing with his wife, and that in a moment of passion he committed the awful crime.
There are rumours abroad that deceased and his wife were heard having high words at four o’clock on the morning of the murder, and the police-constable on duty heard him cursing her at about that time. Another rumour is that the old woman was heard begging for mercy at about the hour named. A broken mopstick was found in the pantry by Sergeant Simmons, and this leads to the suggestion that the prisoner broke it over the head of his victim. Deceased and her husband were well known in the parish, the latter for certain peculiarities of conduct in working all night and playing all day. They frequently went out together drinking, and used to return home arm in arm, the worse for what they had taken.
The prisoner had half-a-pint of beer at six o’clock on the morning of the murder. There is some pretence that he was very much vexed at his wife for having been drinking with another man; but this seems to be too ridiculous a notion to be entertained seriously, especially as deceased had been very unwell for two or three days prior to her death …
Birmingham Daily Post, December 15, 1862
WORCESTER WINTER ASSIZES
…
Mr. Benson proceeded to the task of defending the prisoner. The learned counsel, in a powerful speech, contended, first that there could not have been any motive on the part of the prisoner to murder his wife. It had been shown that for almost half a century the deceased had shared the humble bed and board of the prisoner, and in the manner of the rough part of the country in which they lived, they lived in terms of conjugal love and fellowship …
That the wife fell by the hand of her husband he would at once concede, but arguing upon the absence of motive, of malice, or forethought, the learned counsel, contended that the crime of the prisoner was not greater than the crime of manslaughter, and asked the Jury to spare the prisoner the few short years which Providence might still allot to him, and not send his tottering feet to the gallows, and leave a gibbet over the prison gate as a legacy of their labours that day.
There was no doubt that on the night when the woman met her fearful death, the husband and wife were quarrelling, and the man made use of passionate words, which would in all probability be met with taunting words by his wife … The man had gone upstairs to get his wife from bed, and used the violence which had caused her death in a moment of passion; he appeared indifferent the next morning when asked where his wife was, for the simple reason that he in ungoverned anger had thrown his wife down without knowing that he had hurt her. He was callous, harsh, brutal if they would, but not guilty of murder and malice aforethought. The learned counsel went into a careful and searching analysis of the evidence offered on behalf of the prosecution, and concluded by an eloquent appeal to the Jury for the life of the old man at the bar.
The learned Judge then proceeded to sum up to the Jury, and charged them to disabuse their minds of all compassion and indignation, and return a verdict which would be a just one. He carefully stated to the Jury the facts which had been brought before them, and fully explained the law of the case.
The Jury then retired, and after an absence of an hour returned into Court. The prisoner was brought up from the cell and again placed at the bar. The indifferent look which he had borne during the trial was now passed away, and his twitching lips and moistening eye showed the state of his feelings.
Amid solemn silence the Foreman of the Jury said that they had found the prisoner guilty, but desired to recommend him to mercy, on the ground that nothing had transpired during the trial which was adverse to his previous good character, and also on account of his extreme age.
The Clerk of Arraigns called upon the prisoner whether he had anything to say why sentence should not be pronounced upon him, and his lips moved as though he would have spoken, but the words died in his throat, and he stood calm and silent.
The learned Judge then assumed the black cap, and in a tremulous voice addressed the prisoner and said: William Ockold, you have been found guilty of this dreadful crime, the murder of your wife, to whom you had been married, by your own statement made to your son, near upon fifty years.
It is a most painful thing indeed to see a man at your advanced period of life, convicted of such a crime, and a crime committed against the wife whom you had sworn to love and cherish.
The Jury have recommended you to mercy. That recommendation I shall take care to transmit to the proper quarter. I have no power whatever to hold out any hopes to you; the power is entirely vested in the breast of the Sovereign, and it is only from her clemency that any possible mitigation of your sentence can proceed. What may be the course taken is not for me to say, and I should be deceiving you if I were to hold out hopes of any remission of the sentence.
I beseech you, therefore, by penitence and prayer to apply yourself to the Throne of Mercy, that you may obtain that mercy which you denied your poor ailing unfortunate wife, and that the short remainder of your days may be spent in preparation for the doom which awaits you, and the other Judge, before whom you will have to stand; and may God in his infinite mercy have mercy upon your soul.
His Lordship then passed sentence of death in the usual form, and the prisoner was removed from the dock.
Birmingham Daily Post, December 16, 1862
In the name of humanity as well as of justice, we feel bound to call attention to the case of William Ockold, found guilty and sentenced to death, on Saturday, at Worcester Assizes, for the murder of his wife.
The facts of the sad history may be very briefly told. Ockold, who is in his seventieth year, was a tailor at Oldbury, his wife, who was about the same age, assisting him in his business. They seem to have been very poor, and their means were still further reduced by their addiction to drinking. Drink led to its natural result, — frequent quarrels, accompanied by violence; and, indeed, the wretched pair seem to have led a sadly dissipated, wrangling, miserable kind of life — tolerably good-tempered when sober, but when drunk perpetually quarrelling. Several witnesses deposed to this — one of them adding that “the people round there [the place where Ockold lived] are very rough people.”
On the 7th of November Mrs. Ockold was ill — as one of the witnesses stated, “she was groaning very much and seemed in great pain.” Ockold, evidently disbelieving his wife’s illness, expressed great annoyance at having been kept awake by her groans during the previous night, and declared that she should not keep him awake again — evidently meaning that he would give her a beating.
In the night a policeman heard the wife groaning and the prisoner cursing her from the bottom of the stairs; but such noises being frequently heard upon his beat the officer took no further notice of them. On the morning of the 8th Mrs. Ockold was found dead in her bedroom, death having evidently resulted from blows inflicted on the head with a mopstick.
Ockold who was seated at work downstairs admitted at once that he had beaten his wife, but was evidently unconscious that the poor woman was dead. Dead, however, she was, manifestly killed by the blows inflicted by her husband.
On this evidence the Jury returned a verdict of wilful murder, coupled with a recommendation to mercy; but the Judge while promising to send the recommendation to the Home Office, held out no hope that it would be complied with.
We call attention to this case because while entirely assenting to the recommendation of the Jury, we dissent from the grounds on which their merciful conclusion was arrived at. The Jury endeavoured to save the life of the unhappy convict “because nothing had transpired during the trial which was adverse to his previous good character, and also on account of his great age.”
The latter reason is a good ground for abstaining from hanging this wretched old man, but the former, if acted upon, would free from punishment half the murderers who are arraigned at the bar of justice.
The strongest ground in favour of a remission of sentence is, we think, that urged by Mr. Benson, the prisoner’s counsel — that the prisoner was deeply irritated in a quarrel with his wife, that the blows were given in a moment of uncontrollable passion, without premeditation, and with no design to cause death; and therefore, that the offence was not murder but manslaughter.
With all respect for the Jury, we submit that the whole probabilities of the case favour this view, and that it is very hard to reconcile the incidents narrated by the witnesses with any other. The girl Glazebrook proved that Ockold did not believe in the reality of his wife’s illness, the policeman and a neighbour deposed to the occurrence of a quarrel in the night, and the demeanour of the prisoner next morning was perfectly consistent with the supposition that he meant to beat his wife, but did not mean to kill her. There was plenty of evidence to support this view of the case; but none at all to indicate the malicious motive and design which the law regards as the very essence of murder.
If we felt sure that the recommendation of the Jury would produce its effect we should not trouble our readers with these remarks. But we are inclined to think that some further effort may be needed to induce a reconsideration of the case; and as there is no time to spare, we urge some benevolent persons to take the matter in hand at once.
To hang a gray-headed man, who has nearly run out the period allotted to human life, would be bad enough under any circumstances; but it would be infinitely worse in a case like this where so much doubt hangs over the nature of the offence.
Even if he were guilty of murder, what would justice gain by hanging this wretched old man, already tottering on the brink of the grave, and so sunk in ignorance, so debased by constant association with scenes of violence that he scarcely knows the character or the consequences of his acts? In the “rough neighbourhoods” of the black country blows and curses are unhappily the commonest arguments of domestic life, and a passionate man living within constant sight and hearing of such teaching might easily carry his violence to a fatal issue, without the least intention either to kill his victim or to bring himself within the grasp of the law.
We have no doubt that this was Ockold’s case, and therefore we feel that, despite the serious nature of his crime, it would be a grievous perversion of justice to hang an old man, with the snows of seventy winters upon his head, for an offence which substantially does not amount at the utmost to more than aggravated manslaughter.
Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, December 27, 1862
THE CONDEMNED CONVICT, W. OCKOLD
Unless the sentence of death passed upon this old man at the late Worcestershire Assize, for the murder of his wife, is commuted, the dreadful spectacle of an execution will be witnessed in Worcester city on Friday next. A memorial to the Home Secretary, praying for a commutation of the sentence, has been got up, and there is a strong feeling that it will meet with success, and that the prisoner will not be hanged.
The Morning Post, January 01, 1863
THE CONDEMNED CONVICT OCKOLD
This wretched old man, now lying in Worcester county gaol, condemned to death for the murder of his wife at Oldbury, will, it seems, be executed.
Friday next is the day fixed for the execution, and workmen are already engaged in erecting the drop.
On Tuesday the following communication was received from the Home-office, in answer to a memorial sent up by the city magistrates, praying for some commutation of the sentence: —
Whitehall, Dec. 27, 1862.
Sir, — I am directed by Secretary Sir George Grey to acknowledge the receipt of a memorial presented by you from the mayor and magistrates of Worcester, on behalf of William Ockold, now under sentence of death for the murder of his wife.
Sir George Grey would have been very glad if he could have satisfied himself that there were sufficient grounds for complying with the prayer of this memorial, and of another which he had previously received, which prayed for the commutation of the sentence on the ground that the prisoner was not of sound mind when he killed his wife.
Of the latter allegation — which, indeed, is rather suggested as probable than affirmed as a fact — there is no evidence whatever.
He has, therefore, only to consider the evidence given at trial, which he has carefully read, and the recommendation to mercy with which the verdict was accompanied.
The attack by the prisoner on his wife appears from the evidence to have been wanton and unprovoked. She was so weak and ill as to be unable to make any effectual resistance, and the violence used and the repeated blows which must have been struck were such as, under such circumstances, would not fail to produce death.
She was heard crying out to him “not to kill her,” or “that he would kill her;” and the state of her body, as proved by the medical witness, afforded ample evidence of the determination with which the prisoner acted in the commission of the crime.
The jury recommended the prisoner to mercy on account of his extreme age, and nothing having transpired detrimental to his previous character. Character may be entitled to much weight where doubt exists as to the facts, but not so where the crime is clearly proved to have been committed; but were it otherwise, the recommendation on the ground of character seems in this case scarcely consistent with the evidence of the bad feeling of the prisoner towards his wife, and of the language used by him to her.
The age of the prisoner, Sir George Grey is informed, is 69. He cannot agree in the opinion that a murder committed by a person of this age is on that account only to be exempt from the penalty attached to it by law. He fears that if he yielded to the consideration, he should be establishing a precedent which would be detrimental to the due administration of the criminal law.
Under these circumstances, he much regrets that he oes not feel it consistent with his duty to advise any interference in this case with the ordinary course of law.
–I am, sir, your obedient servant,
H. Waddington
Sir E. Lechmere, High Sheriff of Worcestershire
Birmingham Daily Post, January 3, 1863
THE OLDBURY MURDER.
EXECUTION OF OCKOLD, YESTERDAY.
(From our own Reporter.)
Within the calm old city of Worcester, yesterday — in the early light of the second morning of this new year — while we were yet keeping high festival in honour of Christmas — and while the departing echoes of that angel-song of peace and goodwill, sung eighteen centuries ago, still lingered on the confines of thes eason — William Ockold, a hale old man of seventy, white-headed, rosy-faced, and kindly-looking, was publicly hanged, in the presence of gaping thousands, for the wilful murder of his wife, at Oldbury.
It was a harrowing spectacle — a sight to make the heart sick.
Hard upon threescore and ten years had the old man journeyed through time, and for nearly half a century had the old woman, who was older than he by some three or four years, borne him company. They had children; and, on the whole, seem to have lived as happily as people in their class of life and of their tastes do in the Black Country.
When the old man — who was a tailor — worked, the old woman helped him; when he went out drinking — which was often — she went with him, and they generally staggered home in company.
They mostly lived upon the parish, and spent their scant earnings in drink.
Occasionally the old man best his wife, but not very often and not very badly — perhaps not oftener than he conscientiously thought she deserved it, for he does not look like a cruel man, and report speaks somewhat kindly of him for a drunkard.
And thus they travelled on through life — loving each other very much, in their rude way, at times, and falling out now and then when provisions or money ran short. It was a long journey in married life — fifty years; and they had nearly completed it. A peaceful grave lay before them, and a few more tottering paces would have brought them to it. The old woman, indeed, was well nigh there, for she was very infirm and sorely diseased.
But they were never destined to reach it.
In the last stage, just before the final step was to be taken, the old man either unwittingly or wilfully — a Jury of his countrymen say wilfully — hurled the old woman into eternity before her time, and followed her, red-handed, to the presence of their common Maker, by way of the gallows, yesterday.
It is a fearful story.
Instead of waiting a few brief moments, till Death came, the hoary patriarch dragged his seventy years through blood to meet him, and while earning for himself a murderer’s grave, leaves nothing to his children but the bitter legacy of shame and sorrow.
And what is more dreadful is the fact that he never seems to have realised to the full the enormity of his crime.
Utterly ignorant, accustomed no doubt in his younger day to constant scenes of brutality, his mental acuteness blunted by the wear of drunk and years, and his dim notions of right and wrong almost entirely obliterated, he has shown hardly any symptom either of sorrow for what he has done, of pity for his victim or of fear regarding his own fate. He seems indeed to have been a man, not brutal by nature, but one who overcome by the stupor of ignorance, mingled blindly with the class amongst whom he fell; never dreaming, even, that there was anything nobler in life than eating and drinking, and sleeping and dying.
And to this besotted callousness rather than to any actual, premeditated guilt perhaps his violent death yesterday was owing.
…
Imminent death upon the scaffold seemed to have no terrors for him, and as to that mystic other world, he did not comprehend it. The chaplain of the gaol (the Rev. J. Adlington) was unremitting in his endeavours to impress the old man with a due sense of his position, but without any apparent effect.
Sometimes he would sit and listen as to a strange story that had pleased him, and at others as to a dreary narration that wearied him, but at no time did he seem to grasp hold of and understand the truths laid before him.
With what he occupied his mind during the long night watches in the silence of the condemned cell is a secret that none mortal may know, for he revealed his mind to no one … when he displayed any emotion of the mind at all it was generally of a cheerful character; as, for instance, when on one occasion he congratulated himself that the prison apartments were like those of a palace when compared with his wretched home at Oldbury.
…
[F]rom first to last, his conduct was that of an old, old man, whose uneducated faculties were dimmed by age, who had no very refined ideas of right and wrong, who thought beating a righteous correction for a wife who displeased him, and who, in an untoward moment of passion, under-rated his own strength, over-rated his poor old wife’s powers of endurance, and dealt her a blow that unhappily proved fatal to both of them.
…
And so the old man of seventy, half unconscious of having committed any crime at all, utterly incapable of comprehending the enormity of it, and too sunken in ignorance to lay hold on the comforts of religion, was publicly and judicially strangled in front of the County Gaol at Worcester, yesterday.
And thousands came as witnesses. Not many thousands — four or five perhaps — of whom several hundreds were strangers in the city. The mere anticipation of the sickening sight had proved sufficiently attractive to bring crowds from their warm beds miles away, and that on a miserably windy stormy night.
Early on the previous evening the wind blew up briskly, and brought with it some sharp sprinklings; and as the night wore on the breese [sic] broke up into cold gusts, and bore upon its wings still heavier loads of rain. It whistled dismally through the streets all night long, and sung mournfully through the gallows which had been put up ere midnight.
Some few hundreds of citizens ventured out in the storm to see it, but after gazing at it, and finding no signs of early crows, they shivered drearily, and betook themselves homewards. As time went on, and three and four o’clock came, a pedestrian party or two from the black country, drenched but hilarious, tramped up to the gaol front, and finding all still clear, sauntered off to neighbouring public-houses. Five came, and with it a continual plashing of footsteps along the sloppy streets. More people had come in from the country, some in traps and some on foot, and there were two continual streams of them passing each other to and from the gallows; for few cared to take their places even yet.
At six, however, the wind came unladen with rain, and from that time onward sunk to a low soft breeze. And then the crowd began to assemble in Infirmary Walk, a road running straight out in front of that part of the gaol on which the drop had been erected. Some few had come from Birmingham overnight.
Seventy years ago it seems the old man was born there, and six and fifty years ago he was apprenticed by his mother, who carried on business as a pawnbroker, to a tailor in Steelhouse Lane … From the villages and hamlets immediately around Worcester, too, there came a large sprinkling of agricultural labourers. But what was most revolting was the fact that women and children formed a very large part of the crowd. There were mothers there — not one or two, but many — with infants in their arms, and there were old men with their grandchildren.
There were people of all ages, from the man well stricken in years to the baby in arms; there were people of all classes, from the well-to-do tradesman to the pauper; and there were hundreds of little boys and girls mingling with them everywhere.
And by half-past seven in the gray morning they had crowded up the three avenues to the gaol. And there they stood gazing upon the gallows fixed high up on the castellated gaol, and looking more like some ghastly remnant of feudal barbarity than an engine of modern punishment in a Christian land.
As the morning light intensified, and the sky cleared, the crowd thickened, and then some three or our Scripture-readers made their appearance to “improve the occasion” — some by distributing tracts, and two by preaching extempore sermons. And so the crowd waited on, very orderly in its conduct, more than usually so, for the harrowing scene to follow.
A strong body of the county police, under the charge of Superintendent Phillips, were the duty inside the gaol railings, and a strong body of the city police, under the charge of Chief-superintendent Power, were on duty outside. But their services were not required.
Meanwhile, the old man inside the gaol was being made ready for death.
He went to bed on the previous night at nine, fell asleep directly, and woke at two. During the remainder of the night he only slept at intervals, and seemed restless but still indifferent. The warder who was with him thought proper to remind him that he was spending his last morning on earth, to which the old man replied, almost jocularly, “That’s a pretty thing to tell a fellow, that is.”
The whole of his conversation during the night was of a similarly cheerful character. Between six and seven he got up and dressed himself, and had breakfast — tea and bread and butter, of which he ate and drank as heartily as usual. At half-past seven he was visited by the chaplain, who remained and prayed with him, the old man remaining to all appearance indifferent the while, until the hour fixed for the execution.
He would have been hanged at eight, but the Governor had deferred the execution till after the arrival of the morning post, hoping to the last that a reprieve would arrive. Shortly before half-past eight Mr. Hyde, the Under-Sheriff, accompanied by his javelin men — for the ceremony was performed in the ancient manner — arrived. The morning post was in, and no reprieve had come, so the usual procession was formed, and the old man was led out of the condemned cell in the east wing, to death.
The chapel bell clanged out three weird notes — and three more — and three more.
And while that awful funeral cortege moved slowly on to the gallows, and that hoar old man was listening to the reading of his own burial service, a dreadful hush ran through the crowd without.
Then followed a brief low murmur of excitement and a gentle surging down upon the gaol railings. And then there were a few brief moments of eager expectancy. The procession had halted in the porter’s tower in order that the old man might be bound. Arrived there he calmly sat down upon a seat provided for him, and was pinioned without displaying the least sign of fear or emotion of any kind until he was told to set forward again.
Then, and not till then, a tear stealing out of his eye rolled down his cheek, and he paled and began to tremble violently. The bell again clanged out three dismal notes, and there was another hush in the crowd without. And then, one by one, the execution[er]s and their victim glided out upon the scaffold.
First came six javelin men, who ranged themselves in front of the scaffold, then six warders, who ranged themselves behind it. Then came the Governor of the Gaol and the Under Sheriff, and then Calcraft — for he had been engaged to end the ceremony — leading along the old man, at sight of whom, bare-headed, pale and trembling, his long white hair fluttering in the morning breeze, the very crowd who came to see him hanged sent up, with one consent, a long low utterance of pity.
Still he was led on, along the scaffold, up the rude steps, beneath the gallows, on to the drop. Once there, while the burial-service was being ended, he looked calmly down upon the thousands of upturned faces before him. The Chaplain, who, though not seen could be distinctly heard, then paused, and Calcraft came forward — with some difficulty drew a too small cap over the white flowing hair, over the furrowed face, down to the thin gaunt neck of the old man — quietly dropped the noose upon his shoulders, while the victim trembled in every joint — drew it tight around the throat — adjusted the knot with deadly nicety upon the blue scaly prominent vein — fillipped the other end of the rope over the cross-beam, looped it into a knot around it — grasped the shrivelled hand in token of farewell — buckled a strap around the thin weak legs — grasped the hand again — and was about to retire, when the old man questioned him.
“I suppose I’m goin now, aint I?” he asked.
“I’ll let you know that,” replied the hangman, and retired.
Then there was one moment in which the chaplain’s voice rose up in the midst of the surrounding silence, and the old man’s weaker voice joined with it, in the antiphon, “Lord have mercy upon us; Christ have mercy upon us; Lord have mercy upon us.”
The words were scarcely ended ere there was a rattling of bolts. The drop fell with a horrible clatter; a wild wail, acute, heart-piercing, arose from the crow, and the body of William Ockold, after a few brief nervous contortions, swung lifeless in the breeze.
In that one moment the pains, many, and the pleasures, few, of a long, sad life were ended — the memories of seventy years driven rudely from their storehouse. In that one moment the soul of the old man had learned more than seventy years could teach it, and appallingly ignorant as he was, that one “leap in the dark” made him wiser than all living.
In one instant the clutch of man had released him from the clutch of man, and had rendered him up to the hand of that All Wise One who will try him truly, judge him righteously, and temper mercy with justice, in a way of which we blind mortals know little and perhaps guess hardly.
As soon as the body had ceased to move the greater part of the crowd dispersed, but large numbers still remained to see it cut own. After it had hung an hour it was removed. It was then found that the neck had been broken and the jugular vein burst in the fall. Cessation of sensation must, therefore, have been instantaneous, and the convulsions after the fall the result of unconscious vitality. The body was at once buried beside those of two other murderers, under the western wall of the prison, hard by the debtors’ promenade.
This makes the seventh execution at Worcester since 1832. In that year two brothers, James and Joseph Carter, were executed the highway robbery near Bewdley; in 1834, Robert Lilley was executed for the murder of Jonathan Wall, at Bromagrove; in 1837, William Lighthand was executed for the murder of Joseph Hawkins, at Areley Kings; in 1849, Robert Pulley was executed for the murder of Mary Ann Staight, at Broughton; in 1855, Joseph Meadows was executed for the murder of his sweetheart, Mary Ann Mason, at Kate’s Hill, near dudley; and now, in the first week of 1863, William Ockold, an old man of seventy, has been executed for the murder of his wife, at Oldbury.
Dramatization of events in this post for the video game-derived film Assassin’s Creed: Lineage.
On this date in 1477, the assassins of the Duke of Milan suffered bitter death for fame eternal.
Famous for both his astute political machinations and for cruelty verging on the sadistic, Galeazzo Maria Sforza inherited leadership of Milan in at the age of 22 with the passing of his father, the great condottieroFrancesco Sforza.
Francesco, the founder of the Sforza dynasty, had dynastically married himself to one Bianca Maria Visconti, a daughter of Milan’s previous ruling house.* But not all of the Visconti were at home with the Sforza.
A brash young man of that noble family, Carlo Visconti, as full of humanistic idealism as he was of bile for the licentious Duke’s alleged violation of his sister, joined a conspiracy also compassing two other gentlemen, Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani and Gerolamo Olgiati, to do Galeazzo Sforza to death.
At a St. Stephen’s Day service in a basilica christened to Stephen Lampugnani approached the prince feigning supplication for some audience, then produced a hidden blade and stabbed Galeazzo Sforza. Visconti and Olgiati then rushed on Sforza as well and before anyone realized what was happening the Duke, croaking some half-heard invocation of Mary, was falling dead on the church floor.
Illustration of Galeazzo Sforza’s murder on the title page of a 1476 Lament for the Duke decrying the assassination.
Pandemonium ensued, and in the ensuing helter-skelter, Sforza’s bodyguards fell on Lampugnani and killed him on the spot, while Olgiati managed to escape.**
“It now only remains for us to consider those dangers which follow after the execution of a plot,” Machiavelli mused in his “Of Conspiracies” typology of his Discourses. “These in fact resolve themselves into one, namely, that some should survive who will avenge the death of the murdered prince. The part of avenger is likely to be assumed by a son, a brother, or other kinsman of the deceased.”
Well, yeah.
The assassins of the Duke of Milan appear not to have burdened themselves overmuch with advance consideration of this danger, possibly indulging the dream of Brutus that by a dagger’s stroke alone they could restore the lost republic.
Needless to say, this beautiful hope vanished in the bloody revenge carnival that actually ensued the murder. Just a few days after the assassination, having taken refuge with a priest — his justly frightened family had closed its door on him and needed to make theatrical denunciations of his treason for their own safety — Olgiati was captured, put to a torturous interrogation, and publicly butchered. He had outlived the Duke by only a week, and his gashed carcass was hung up in sections around town by way of warning. The rotting heads of the conspirators remained impaled on lances on the city’s bell tower well into the 1490s.
According once again to Machiavelli, Olgiati “exhibited no less composure at his death than resolution in his previous conduct, for being stripped of his apparel, and in the hands of the executioner, who stood by with the sword unsheathed, ready to deprive him of life, he repeated the following words, in the Latin tongue, in which he was well versed
“‘Mors acerba, fama perpetua, stabit vetus memoria facti.'”
That is,
‘Death is bitter but fame is eternal, and the memory of the deed will endure.’
This attempt, quixotic and doomed, to depose an Italian tyrant by murdering him in church might well have formed the blueprint for a similar plot in Florence in 1478, the Pazzi conspiracy. That version was even less successful than its Milanese predecessor: at least Olgiati and company could say that they actually managed to kill their target before everything else hit the fan.
And republic or not, Sforza’s murder did shake up the polity. It put the Duchy of Milan in the hands of his wife, as the unsteady regent of a seven-year-old heir. A few years later, the late duke’s brother Ludovico displaced the regent and effectively bossed Milan until the French imprisoned him in 1500 during the Italian Wars.
While he had the run of the place, Ludovico Sforza commissioned of Leonardo da Vinci a monumental equestrian statue in memory of his brother that da Vinci never finished.† Quite strangely, the master’s notes were plumbed by a 20th century Pennsylvania airline pilot who dedicated the latter part of his life to actually casting “Leonardo’s Horse”.
** There is a positively maddening inconsistency, thus far irresolvable for this author, between accounts (here’s one example | and another) asserting that Carlo Visconti was slain by Sforza’s bodyguards directly after the assassination, and other accounts (like Gregory Lubkin’s 1994 history of Sforza’s Milan) that put Visconti on the scaffold beside Olgiati.
† Da Vinci’s ponderously slow progress on this high-profile project led Michelangelo to cattily impugn the rival artist’s bronze-casting aptitude.
On this date in 1997, Libya announced the executions of six military officers and two civilians as “agent-spies who sold their honor, dignity and homeland to their enemies and supplied agents of foreign governments with information relating to the country’s defense secrets.” They had been convicted just the day before.
On this date in 1946, former Nazi Kreisleiter Franz Strasser was hanged at Landsberg Prison for war crimes.
Strasser was condemned for shooting five downed American airmen in Czechoslovakia in December 1944, an American tribunal dismissing the defense: “There is not a scintilla of evidence to support STRASSER’s contention that he shot the prisoners to prevent their escape.” (A pdf scan of the entire verdict is here.)
On this date in 1916, Sergeant John Robins of the 5th Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment — demoted for the occasion to Private — was shot “at a point on the beach 400 yards North of the mouth of the Gully Ravine” for disobeying orders.
This redundantly named topography was a feature of an ill-starred (for the British) peninsula Robins’s army was quite ready to see the back of: Gallipoli.*
Winston Churchill’s brainchild for a knockout punch in the First World War had long since come to grief — the enduring grief of the British, Australian, and New Zealand troops who died by the thousands under Ottoman guns whilst attempting to seize the Dardanelles, open the Black Sea, knock the Turks out of the war, and expose the Central Powers’ soft underbelly.
It didn’t do any of those things, but it did help Mel Gibson’s career.
The first days of 1916 were the very last days of the Gallipoli campaign, by which time the object was just to get out.
Actually, the invaders’ positions had been steadily, stealthily evacuated over the preceding weeks — successfully slipping away without alerting the Ottomans to the opportunity for a turkey shoot. The evacuation, at least, was a triumph.
Sergeant Robins was a part of this hot mess; he’d once had to flee from his bed when the Turks surprised his camp and overran it. But it didn’t seem to be jangled nerves that did him in so much as the everyday infirmity of the flesh.
By December 1915, a quarter of his unit was laid up on the sick rolls, but when Robins begged off a patrol assignment for unwellness, the powers that be didn’t reckon him among the legions of ill — but court-martialed him for refusing an order. A rather stunned Robins attempted to explain:
On the night in question I was not well enough to go out. I was eight and a half years in India where I suffered a good deal from fever and ague, and I still get fits of this. I had been suffering from this for several days off and on, and the wet weather had greatly affected me. I have been out here for nearly five months and this is the first trouble I have ever been in. I have always done my duty. This would not have happened if I had been quite well. At the time I did not realise the seriousness of what I did.
He realised the seriousness when he was shot at 8 a.m. on January 2, 1916. A week later, his unit — all his countrymen’s units — were out of Gallipoli.
In the early morning hours this date in 1981, three young Jehovah’s Witnesses were hailed out of their cells at Havana’s La Cabaña Fortress, and apparently executed.
Cipriano, Eugenio and Ventura Garcia-Marin Thompson were three of eight Cuban Witnesses who attempted to claim asylum at the Vatican embassy in early December. After a few hours’ standoff, elite government anti-terrorism troops simply broke in and seized them.
(Rome still catches flak (Spanish link) for its failure to maintain a bigger diplomatic ruckus about this violation of its diplomatic prerogatives; the raid may in fact have been green-lighted by a Vatican embassy official.)
You’ll find this tale most commonly expounded on anti-Castro sites, such as this pdf from the Cuba Archive:
The three brothers were taken to Villa Marista headquarters and told by prosecutor Carlos Amat that they had been “tried and sentenced to death.” They were taken from their prison cells in early morning hours of January 2, 1981, and presumably executed, the others were sentenced to long prison terms.
An Interior Ministry official who defected in 1992 reported that their fate had been decided in “an extremely summary process.” The family was denied the remains of the three brothers for burial. The mother was sentenced to 20 years in prison for protesting the executions and served ten years after her mental health deteriorated.
Sources: Testimony of Margarita Marin Thompson (mother) in Ricardo Bofill, Diario Las Américas, September 9, 1997. Pablo Alfonso. El Nuevo Herald, 31 October 1997, p. 6A. Valladares, 1985, p. 416. Amnesty International Annual Report 1983, p. 130. Nuestra Cuba, 1998, p. 3. Reader’s Digest, October 1998, p. 83. Montaner, 1984, p. 267. Cuban American National Foundation, The Quilt of Fidel Castro’s Genocide, 1994. Reinaldo Bragado, 1998, p. 5. Instituto de la Memoria Histórica Cubana contra el Totalitarismo, 2002, p. 35. Fuentes 2002, p.s 102-104. Juan O. Tamayo, “Ex-Cuban prosecutor’s role in rights panel criticized,” The Miami Herald, April 16, 1998. Circuito Sur, July 2002, p. 35, and http://members.aol.com/aguadacuba/cs/datafusi/vaticano.htm.
A prominent dissident who became an emblem of resistance in his predominantly Shiite province of Al-Awamiyah*, al-Nimr had been arrested several times before without blunting his sharp tongue. “People must rejoice at his death,” he offered in June 2012, about the death of militant Wahhabist crown prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. “He will be eaten by worms and will suffer the torments of Hell in his grave.”
Casillas most “distinguished” himself by carrying out the Batista dictatorship’s 1948 murder of trade unionist 
On the night in question I was not well enough to go out. I was eight and a half years in India where I suffered a good deal from fever and ague, and I still get fits of this. I had been suffering from this for several days off and on, and the wet weather had greatly affected me. I have been out here for nearly five months and this is the first trouble I have ever been in. I have always done my duty. This would not have happened if I had been quite well. At the time I did not realise the seriousness of what I did.
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