Tag Archives: january 4

1946: The treacherous Theodore Schurch

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One day after William Joyce became the last Briton put to death for treason, 27-year-old Theodore Schurch hanged for treachery at London’s Pentonville Prison.

Like Joyce, Schurch had enrolled in the British Union of Fascists as a teenager in the 1930’s, and it was reputedly at the party’s direction that he joined the army as a driver.

During World War II, Schurch crossed and recrossed enemy lines, delivering operational intelligence to the Italians and Germans by helping to interrogate prisoners of war, or posing as a P.O.W. himself to gain the confidences of other captured Allied soldiers.

Scurch’s army buddies seemed to think he was alright, and there was probably more than a shred of truth to the defense’s contention, paraphrased by the London Times (September 18, 1945), that the lad

was a poor, uneducated fool who was caught young [by fascist ideology] when he knew no better and jockeyed into a position from which he could not recover.

But obviously, one makes this argument when one is in no position to contest factually the capital charges against oneself, and indeed has admitted much of it. Schurch was convicted on all nine counts of treachery, plus one of desertion. Not a big fish, maybe — but just the right size to become the last man hanged in Britain for a crime other than murder.

He’s actually listed as a war casualty, which in a way he was, on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Brookwood Memorial outside of London.

On this day..

838: Babak Khorramdin

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On this date in 838, Babak Khorramdin was chopped to pieces for his 20-year rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate.

A Zoroastrian son of northwest Iran’s Azerbaijan region, Babak rose to head a movement at once political and religious rooted in cultural preservation against the Arab-dominated caliphate.

Captured at last — he had spurned a guarantee of safety with that timeless insurrectionary sentiment, “Better to live for just a single day as a ruler than to live for forty years as an abject slave” — he had his hands and legs struck off in the presence of the caliph. It is said that Babak washed his face in the blood of these wounds to deprive his royal observer the pleasure of seeing his face fall pallid.

Babak remains an iconic figure in his homeland for his resistance to Arab domination, as evidenced by this Farsi-language vignette …

… and this performance of the Persian Ballet.

But he is not an unproblematic character for contemporary Iran, and not so much because of the anti-Islamic character of his revolt. Babak, whose personal ethnic composition seems to be a bone of historical contention, is also hailed an Azeri nationalist hero vis-a-vis Iran. His fortress is mountainous northern Iran still stands … and has latterly become a meeting-ground for advocates of “greater Azerbaijan” on the occasion of Babak’s birthday in July, much to the displeasure of Iranian authorities.

On this day..