1885: Robert Goodale, messily

(Thanks to Richard Clark of Capital Punishment U.K. for the guest post, a reprint of an article originally published on that site with some explanatory links added by Executed Today. CapitalPunishmentUK.org features a trove of research and feature articles on the death penalty in England and elsewhere. -ed.)

45-year-old Robert Goodale was a market gardener who had been married to a lady called Bethsheba for 22 years. He owned a piece of land at Walsoken Marsh, near Wisbech, where he grew fruit and vegetables. On the property was a house that was used only for storage and not lived in, together with a well. The Goodales lived in Wisbech with their two sons, aged 18 and 21. All of them would walk to Walsoken in the mornings and work on the land.

On the 15th of September 1885 Bethsheba did not arrive at the market garden and a search was made for her. Her body was discovered the following day in the well. Examination of the body revealed that she had been struck three times on the head, most probably with a bill-hook, and then thrown down the well, where she drowned.

Goodale was arrested by Sgt. Roughton on suspicion of murder and later charged with the crime. He came to trial at the Norfolk Assizes at Norwich before Mr. Justice Stephen on Friday the 13th of November 1885.

Evidence was presented of the Goodales’ unhappy marriage and of threats of violence made against Bethsheba by her husband. A witness testified that he had heard a quarrel in the Goodales’ house on the afternoon of the murder. Dr. Stevenson the Home Office analyst said he had found traces of mammalian blood on the prisoner’s hat and jacket.

The defence led by Mr. Horace Browne contended that the case against Goodale was very weak. He conceded that husband and wife were not on good terms but insisted that Goodale’s conduct was not consistent with that of a murderer. He rebutted the blood stain evidence and suggested that it had come from the prisoner having a nose bleed. At this time it was not possible to determine the group to which the blood belonged and therefore it could not be certain that it was the victim’s blood, or even that it was human rather than animal blood.

The trial resumed on the Saturday and after the closing speeches and the summing up it took the jury just 20 minutes to reach their verdict of guilty of the wilful murder of his wife. Goodale was sentenced to death and removed to the Condemned Cell in Norwich Castle to await execution on Monday the 30th of November.

He was visited by his two sons and his sister on the Friday. Later that day he asked to see the governor of Norwich Castle, Mr. Dent. He and the Chief Warder went to Goodale’s cell where he told them that the crime had taken place due to extreme provocation. He claimed that his wife had told him that she liked other men. Mr. Dent took Goodale’s statement down in writing and sent it to the Home Secretary. The Rev. Mr. Wheeler and a former Sheriff of Norwich went to London and made representations for a reprieve at the Home Office. On Sunday the 29th of November the governor received a letter saying that the Home Secretary had not found cause to grant a reprieve.

James Berry had arrived at the prison and tested the drop on the Monday morning in the presence of the governor and under-sheriff. The gallows there had been constructed some three and a half years earlier for the execution of William Abigail on the 22nd of May 1882. The trap doors were set level with the floor over an 11′ 5″ deep brick lined pit in the middle of a small yard. This yard was approximately 48 feet long by 15 feet wide near the Castle wall, opposite Opie Street. The gallows consisted of a black painted wooden beam supported by two stout uprights set over the black painted trap doors.

Goodale stood 5′ 11″ tall and was a heavy man at 15 stone (210 lbs.) with a weak neck. Berry considered that a drop of 5′ 9″ should be given. He used a “government rope” that had been used for the hanging of John Williams at Hereford a week earlier.

At 7.55 a.m. on the Monday morning the bell of St. Peter’s church began to toll and the officials proceeded to the condemned cell. A procession then formed consisting of the governor, the Rev. Mr. Wheeler, the surgeon, Mr. Robinson and the under-sheriff, Mr. Hales. Mr. Charles Mackie of the Norfolk Chronicle represented the press. They went down a passage that connected the cell to the gallows yard where Berry met them and pinioned Goodale, after which they continued into the prison yard.

Here Berry strapped Goodale’s legs and applied the white hood and the noose. Goodale several times exclaimed “Oh God, receive my soul.” As the church clock struck for the eighth time Berry released the trap doors and Goodale disappeared into the pit, but the rope sprung back up to the horror of the witnesses.

As they looked down into the pit they could see the body and the head lying separately at the bottom.

The law required that an inquest be held after an execution and this was presided over by Mr. E. S. Bignold, the Coroner. Mr. Dent gave evidence that the machinery of the gallows was in good working order and that Goodale was decapitated by the force of the drop. Mr. Dent did not think that a drop of 5′ 9″ was excessive and in fact thought it was insufficient for a man of ordinary build. He also stated that James Berry was perfectly sober.

Berry himself testified and at the end of this the Coroner absolved him of any blame for what had happened. The jury returned a verdict that Goodale “came to his death by hanging, according to the judgement of the law.” They further said “that they did not consider that anyone was to blame for what had occurred.”

This is the only occasion of a complete decapitation occurring at a hanging in England, Scotland and Wales, although Berry had several partial ones.

Assuming that Goodale actually weighed 15 stones (in some reports it is given as 16 stones) and that Berry had correctly set the drop at 5′ 9½” or 5′ 10″ then the energy developed would have been around 1218 foot lbs. This is around 100 foot lbs. more than would have been given after 1939 for a man of normal build with a normal neck. The “Goodale Mess” as it came to be known, led to a lot of unfavourable comment in the press.

Just one day after the most damning newspaper editorials had appeared, the head of the Prison Commission, Sir Edward Du Cane, wrote to the Home Secretary on the 2nd of December. In his letter he suggested the setting up of a Committee on Capital Punishment (which became the Aberdare Committee).

Footnote:

The Norwich Chronicle published an interview with Goodale’s spiritual advisor, the Rev. Mr. Wheeler, a Baptist minister. He felt that maybe Goodale might not have been convicted of murder if he had said earlier what he said in his confession on the Friday evening. When Bethsheba fell into the well, he fetched a ladder to go down and look for her but that he could not get down the well since the opening was just 18 inches wide and he could not physically fit through it.

Had he spoken up earlier, Mr. Wheeler said, the police would have found the ladder still in the well and the dirt of the well on Goodale’s clothes. It might have led to a verdict of manslaughter.

When Goodale finally came forward with this tale, it was too late.

On this day..

1558: Three reformers at Norwich

From the 16th century tome of Protestant martyrology, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs — with evocative original Early Modern English from the 1570 edition.

The Martyrdome of William Seaman, Thomas Carman, and Thomas Hudson, put to death by the persecuting papistes at Norwich in the county of Norfolke.

Immediatly after William Nicole, succeded in that honorable and glorious vocation of Martyrdome three constant godly me[n] at Norwich in Norfolke, who were cruelly and tyrannically put to death for thee true testimony of Iesus Christ, the 19. of May an. 1558. Whose names be these.

William Seaman.
Thomas Carman.
Thomas Hudson.

The sayd William Seaman was an husbandman, of the age of xxvj. yeares, dwelling in Mendlesham in the county of Suffolke, who was sought for sundry tymes by the commaundement of Syr Iohn Tirrell Knight, and at last hee hym selfe in the night searched hys house and other places for hym: notwithstanding, hee somewhat mist of his purpose, God be thanked. Then he gaue charge to his seruantes, Robert Baulding, and Iames Clarke with others, to seeke for hym. Who hauing no officer, went in the euening to hys house, where he beyng at home, they tooke hym and caryed hym to their master Syr Iohn Tirrell. This Baulding beyng Seamans nigh neighbour, and whom the sayd Seaman greatly trusted as a speciall frend, notwithstandyng to do his Master a pleasure, now became enemy to his chief frend, and was one of the busiest in the takyng of him. Now as they were goyng to cary him to their Master Syr Iohn Tyrrel in the night, it is credibly reported that there fell a light betwene them out of the element and parted them. This Bauldyng beyng in company with the rest whe[n] the light fell, albeit he was then in hys best age, yet after that tyme neuer enioyed good day, but pined away euen vnto the death.

Well, for all that straunge sight (as I sayd) they caried hym to their master. Who when he came, asked hym why he would not go to masse, and receaue the sacrament, and so to worship it? Vnto which William Seaman aunswered, denying it to be a sacrament, but sayde it was an Idoll, and therefore would not receaue it. After which wordes spoken, Syr Iohn Tirrell shortly sent hym to Norwich to Hopton then Byshop, and there, after conference and examination had with him, the Byshop red hys bloudy sentence of condemnation against hym, and afterward deliuered hym to the secular power, who kept hym vnto the day of Martyrdome.

Thys sayd William Seaman left behind him when he dyed, a wife and three children very yonge: and with the sayd younge children, hys wife was persecuted out of the sayd towne also of Mendlesham, because that she would not go to heare Masse, and all her corne & goods seased and taken away by master Christopher Coles officers, he beyng Lord of the sayd towne.

Thomas Carman (who, as is said, pledged Richard Crashfield at hys burning, and thereupon was apprehended) beyng in prison in Norwich, was about one tyme with the rest examined & brought before the sayd Byshop, who aunswered no lesse in hys masters cause then the other, and therefore had the like reward that the other had, which was the Byshops bloudy blessing of condemnation, and deliuered also to the secular power, who kept him with the other vntill the day of slaughter, which hasted on and was not long after.

Thomas Hudson was of Ailesham in Norfolke, by his occupatio[n] a Glouer, a very honest poore ma[n], hauing a wyfe and three children, and laboured alwayes truely and diligently in his vocation, being of thirty yeares of age, and bearing so good a will to the Gospell, that he in the dayes of king Edward thee sixt, two yeares before Queene Maryes raigne, learned to read Englishe of Anthony and Thomas Norgate of the same Towne, wherein he greatly profited about the tyme of alteration of religion. For when Queene Mary came to raigne, and had chaunged the seruice in the church, putting in for wheate, draffe and darnyll, and for good preaching, blasphemous crying out agaynst truth and godlines, he then auoyding all their beggerly Ceremonies of superstition, absented him selfe from his house, and went into Suffolke a long tyme, and there remayned, traueling from one place to an other, as occasion was offered. At the last, he returned backe agayne to Norfolke, to his house at Ailesham, to comfort his wife & hys childre[n], being heauy & troubled with his absence.

Now when he came home, and perceaued his continuaunce there would be daungerous, he and his wife deuised to make hym a place among hys fagots to hyde himselfe in, where he remained all the day (in stede of hys chamber) reading and praying continually, for the space of halfe a yeare, and hys wife like an honest woman being carefull for hym, vsed her self faythfully and diligently towardes him.

In the meane tyme came the Vicar of the towne, named Berry (who was one of the Byshops Commissaryes, a very euill man) and inquired of thys sayd Thomas Hudsons wife for her husband. Vnto whom she aunswered, as not knowing were he was. Then the sayd Berry rated her, & threatned to burne her, for that she would not bewray her husband where he was.

After that, when Hudson vnderstoode it, he waxed euery day more zealous then other, and continually red and sang Psalmes, to the wonder of many, the people openly resorting to hym to heare his exhortations and vehement prayers.

At the last he walked abroad for certayne dayes openly in the Towne, crying out continually agaynst the Masse and all their trompery, and in the end, commyng home in his house, he sat him downe vppon hys knees, hauyng his booke by him, readyng and singyng Psalmes continually without ceassing. for. iij. dayes and iij. nightes together, refusing meate & other talke, to the great wonder of many.

The one Iohn Crouch his next neighbour, went to the Constables Robert Marsham and Robert Lawes in the night, to certifie them therof: for Berry comaunded openly to watch for hym: and þe Constables vnderstadyng the same, went cruelly to catch him in the breake of the day, the., xxij. of the moneth of Aprill. an. 1558.

Now when Hudson saw the come in, he sayd: Now mine houre is come. Welcome frendes welcome: you be they that shall lead me to lyfe in Christ, I thanke God therfore, and the Lord enhable me thereto for his mercies sake. For his desire was, and euer he prayed (if it were the Lordes wil) that he might suffer for the Gospell of Christ. Then they tooke hym, and lead hym to Berry the Commissary, which was Vicare of the Towne, and the sayd Berry asked hym first, where he kept his Church for iiij. yeares before. To the which the sayd Hudson aunswered thus: where soeuer he was, there was the Church.

Doest thou not beleue, saith Berry, in the Sacrame[n]t of the altar? What is it?

Hudson. It is wormes meate: my beliefe (saith he) is in Christ crucified.

Berry. Doest thou not beleue the Masse to put away sinnes?

Hudson. No, God forbid: it is a patched monstre, and a disguised Puppet, more longer a pecing then euer was Salomons temple.

At which wordes Berry stamped, fumed, and shewed him selfe as a mad man, and sayd: well thou villayne, thou: I will write to the byshop my good Lord, and trust vnto it, thou shalt be handled according to thy desertes. Oh syr, sayd Hudson: there is no Lorde but God, though there bee many Lordes and many Gods. With that, Berry thrust him backe with hys hand. And one Richard Cliffar standing by, sayd: I pray you syr, be good to the poore man. At which wordes Berry was more mad then before, and would haue had Cliffar bound in a recognisance of 40. poundes for his good abearing, both in worde and deede: which hys desire tooke no effecte. Then he asked the sayd Hudson whether he would recant or no. Vnto which wordes Hudson sayd: the Lord forbid: I had rather dye many deathes, then to doo so.

Then after long talke, the sayd Berry seing it booted not to perswade with him, tooke his pen and yncke, and wrote letters to the byshop therof, and sent thys Hudson to Norwich bound like a theefe to hym, which was viij. miles from thence, who with ioye and singing chere went thether, as mery as euer he was at any time before. In prison he was a moneth, where he did continually read and inuocate the name of God.


Original illustration via JohnFoxe.org, which notes that depictions of several triple burnings attest to the certainty that the printer had no block to illustrate three men in a fire.

These three christians and constant Martyrs, William Seaman, Thomas Carman, and Tho. Hudson, after they were (as ye haue heard) condemned, the xix. day of May. 1558. were caryed out of prison to þe place where they should suffer, which was without Bishops gate at Norwich, called Lollards pit.

And being all there, they made theyr humble prayers vnto the Lord. That being done, they rose and went to the stake, and standing all there with chaynes about them, immediately thys sayd Thomas Hudson commeth fourth from them vnder the chayne, to the great wonder of many: wherby diuers feared and greatly doubted of him. For some thought he would haue recanted: other iudged rather that hee went to aske a further day, and to desire conference: and some thought he came forth to aske some of hys parentes blessing: So some thought one thing and some an other: but hys two companions at the stake cryed out to hym to comforte hym what they could, exhorting hym in the bowels of Christ to be of good chere. &c. But thys sweete Hudson, felt more in his hart and conscience, then they could conceaue in hym. For (alas good soule) he was compassed (God knoweth) with great dolour and griefe of mind, not for his death, but for lacke of feeling of hys Christ, and therfore beyng very carefull he humbly fell downe vppon his knees, and prayed vehemently and earnestly vnto the Lord, who at the last, according to hys olde mercyes, sent hym comfort, and then rose he with great ioy, as a man new chaunged euen from death to life, and sayd:

Now I thanke God I am strong, and passe not what man can doo vnto me.

So going to the stake to his fellowes agayne, in the end they all suffered most ioyfully, constantly, and manfully the death together, and were consumed in fire, to the terror of the wicked, the comforte of Gods Children, & the magnifiing of the Lords name, who be praysed therfore for euer, Amen.

After thys, the fore named Commissary Berry, made great styrre about other which were suspected within the sayd towne of Aylesham, and caused two hundred to creepe to the Crosse at Penticost, besides other punishmentes which they susteyned.

On a time this Berry gaue a poore man of his parish of Marsham, a blow with the swingell of a flayle, for a word speaking, that presently theron he dyed, and the sayd Berry (as is sayd) held vp his hand at the barre therefore.

Then, after that in his parish of Aylesham also, an. 1557. there was one Alice Oxes came to his house, and going into the Hall, he meting her (being before moued) smote her with his fist, whereby she was fayne to be caryed home, and the next day was found dead in her chamber.

To write how many concubines & whores he had, none would beleue it, but such as knewe him in the countrey he dwelt in. He was rich and of great autoritie, a great swearer, altogether geuen to wemen, and persecuting of the Gospell, & compelling men to idolatry.

One Iohn Norgate a man learned, godly, and zealous, who would not go to theyr trash, but rather dye, being sore hunted by the sayd Berry, prayed hartely to God, and the Lord shortly after in a consumption deliuered hym. Notwithstanding, the rage of this wicked man waxed more fiercer and fiercer. He troubled sundry men, burnt all good bookes that he could get, and diuorsed many men and wemen for religion.

When he heard say that Queene Mary was dead, and the glory of theyr triumph quailed, the sonday after, being the xx. of Nouember, an. 1558. he made a great feast, and had one of his concubines there, with whom he was in his chamber after diner vntill Euensong. Then went he to church, where he had ministred baptisme, and in going from church homeward, after Euensong, betwene the churchyarde and hys house, being but a litle space (as it were a churchyard bredeth asunder) he fell downe sodeinly to the ground with a heauy grone, & neuer stirred after, neither shewed any one token of repentance. This hapned hys neyghbors being by, to the example of all other. The Lord graunt we may obserue his iudgementes.

And those that had his great riches, since his death haue so consumed with them, that they be poorer now then they were before they had his goodes, such iudgement hath the Lord executed to the eyes of all men.

On this day..

1549: Robert Kett, rebelling against enclosures

On this date in 1549, Robert Kett (sometimes “Ket” or “Kette”) was hanged over the side of Norwich Castle for an eponymous rebellion.

Reviews here and here.

Possibly England’s last medieval peasant rising, and possibly its first modern revolt, Kett’s Rebellion pitted the agrarian feudal commons against the proto-capitalist world taking shape.

A 15th century of relative prosperity for the English peasant had given way to a decades-long process (centuries-long, really) of enclosure.

Impelled by the profitable wool export business, landlords began “enclosing” formerly open arable land for pasture, thereby destroying the communal and quasi-communal agricultural models of the middle ages.

Karl Marx

For Marx, among many others, this revolution in agricultural production — and the attendant proletarianization of the former peasantry — marks the dawn of the capitalist epoch, when

great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled as free and “unattached” proletarians on the labour-market. The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process …

Although, therefore, the English land, after the Norman Conquest, was distributed in gigantic baronies, one of which often included some 900 of the old Anglo-Saxon lordships, it was bestrewn with small peasant properties, only here and there interspersed with great seignorial domains. Such conditions, together with the prosperity of the towns so characteristic of the 15th century, allowed of that wealth of the people which Chancellor Fortescue so eloquently paints in his “Laudes legum Angliae;” but it excluded the possibility of capitalistic wealth.

The prelude of the revolution that laid the foundation of the capitalist mode of production, was played in the last third of the 15th, and the first decade of the 16th century. A mass of free proletarians was hurled on the labour-market by the breaking-up of the bands of feudal retainers, who, as Sir James Steuart well says, “everywhere uselessly filled house and castle.” … In insolent conflict with king and parliament, the great feudal lords created an incomparably larger proletariat by the forcible driving of the peasantry from the land, to which the latter had the same feudal right as the lord himself, and by the usurpation of the common lands. The rapid rise of the Flemish wool manufactures, and the corresponding rise in the price of wool in England, gave the direct impulse to these evictions. The old nobility had been devoured by the great feudal wars. The new nobility was the child of its time, for which money was the power of all powers. Transformation of arable land into sheep-walks was, therefore, its cry … As Thornton rightly has it, the English working-class was precipitated without any transition from its golden into its iron age. (Capital, volume I, chapters 2627)

It did not suffer its precipitation quietly.

Thomas More

Enclosures were a predominant social problem in England throughout the century, and if contemporaries could hardly descry the shape of the economic revolution taking shape, they worriedly noticed the poverty, the vagabondage, and the depopulated villages.

In Utopia, Thomas More upbraids a country where

your sheep, which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be said now to devour men and unpeople, not only villages, but towns; for wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy men, the abbots! not contented with the old rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good. They stop the course of agriculture, destroying houses and towns, reserving only the churches, and enclose grounds that they may lodge their sheep in them. As if forests and parks had swallowed up too little of the land, those worthy countrymen turn the best inhabited places into solitudes; for when an insatiable wretch, who is a plague to his country, resolves to enclose many thousand acres of ground, the owners, as well as tenants, are turned out of their possessions by trick or by main force, or, being wearied out by ill usage, they are forced to sell them; by which means those miserable people, both men and women, married and unmarried, old and young, with their poor but numerous families (since country business requires many hands), are all forced to change their seats, not knowing whither to go; and they must sell, almost for nothing, their household stuff

Commissions studied enclosure; edicts forbade and reversed them; commentators denounced them — all to no effect.

Robert Kett

Robert Kett, from a larger painting (click to see it) by Samuel Wale.

Henrician England had plenty of violent social transformation on its plate, of course, and plenty of violent tools to manage it. When the philandering tyrant kicked the bucket in 1547, he left the unfolding social catastrophe to the weakened protectorate government of his sickly nine-year-old heir.

In East Anglia in the summer of 1549, a peasant riot against an enclosure caught a spark. Unexpectedly, when the mob moved to throw down the enclosures put up by Robert Kett (another small landowner), he committed himself to the peasant cause and ably steered the rebellion for six heady weeks.

Kett was the man for his time and place: proving a natural leader, he marshaled the inchoate rage of his countrymen into an orderly, disciplined force.

Kett’s peasant army marched on Norwich, and stunningly captured England’s second city, thereupon petitioning the crown upon a variety of economic grievances (the petition is available on Wikipedia).

And Kett meant business, as this fiery (perhaps slightly fatalistic) oration suggests; he well knew that he had committed his own person to glory or destruction.

Now are ye overtopped and trodden down by gentlemen, and put out of possibility ever to recover foot. Rivers of riches ran into the coffers of your landlords, while you are pair’d to the quick, and fed upon pease and oats like beasts. You are fleeced by these landlords for their private benefit, and as well kept under by the public burdens of State wherein while the richer sort favour themselves, ye are gnawn to the very bones. You tyrannous masters often implead, arrest, and cast you into prison, so that they may the more terrify and torture you in your minds, and wind our necks more surely under their arms. And then they palliate these pillories with the fair pretence of law and authority! Fine workmen, I warrant you, are this law and authority, who can do their dealings so closely that men can only discover them for your undoing. Harmless counsels are fit for tame fools; for you who have already stirred there is no hope but in adventuring boldly.

Alas, like the enclosures themselves, the matter was to be resolved against the peasantry by main force. [bits and bobs on the daily progress of skirmishes and battles in this pdf] Though the rebels actually defeated the first force sent against them, they were decisively beaten at Dussindale on Aug. 27.

“We were promised ynoughe and more then ynoughe. But the more was an hawlter.”*

Promises of clemency induced the survivors to surrender peacably; though wholesale punitive bloodletting seems not to have been imposed, the leaders, of course, had to be made an example of.

Robert Kett and his brother, William, were convicted of treason and hanged.

Smoothly leveraging his dispatch in handling the rebellion, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, overturned the national political leadership of the Lord Protector the Duke of Somerset, who was accused of having triggered the rising with an excess of sympathy for the dispossessed peasant class. (Both Somerset and Northumberland would end up on the chopping block themselves.)

* Quote from a survivor of the rebellion, cited by Diarmaid MacCulloch in “Kett’s Rebellion in Context,” Past & Present, No. 84 (Aug., 1979).

On this day..

1672: Thomas Rood, the only incest execution in America

On this date in 1672, Thomas Rood (or Rhood, or Roode, or even Rude) achieved in Norwich, Conn., the distinction of being the only person executed in the future United States of America for incest.

The native of Glastonbury, England got in a bad way for, in the words of the indictment,

not haveing the feare of God before thine eyes thou hast committed that abominable sin of incest haveing carnall copulation with Sarah Rhood thy reputed daughter for which according to the law of God & the law of this colony thou deservest to dye …

Actually, the laws of the colony said nothing about incest, requiring the Hartford Court of Assistants to ask around the local clergy whether this sort of thing should be a hanging offense.

Hey, what do you think they’re going to say? Antonin Scalia would call this originalism.

Thomas Rhood thou art to goe from here to the place from whence thou camest & in due time to be carryed from thence to the place of execution & there to be hanged by the neck till thou art dead & then cut down & buried.

Of course, it takes two to make the beast with two backs; daughter/lover Sarah was in some fear for her neck as well, until the court took

notice of a great appearance of force layd up upon her spirit by her father overaweing & Tiranical abuse of his parentall authority besides his bodily striveings which not onely at first brought her into the snare but allso in after yeilding to his Temptation.

Having seemingly found her to be a rape victim, the court extended leniency.

[T]he sentence of the court is that shee be severly whipt on the naked body once at Hartford & once at Norwich that others may heare & fear & do no more such abominable wickednesse.

17th century texts from this pdf on a site selling an 820-page genealogy of the Rood lineage in America … to which the randy old man contributed to the tune of at least nine children.

On this day..

1786: Hannah Ocuish, age 12

(Thanks to Caitlin at Vast Public Indifference for the guest post -ed.)

On December 20, 1786, the Sheriff of New London, Conn., led a distraught 12-year-old girl to the gallows, placed a rope around her neck, and hanged her in front of a crowd of spectators. The girl was Hannah Ocuish, a young member of the Pequot nation. She was charged with the murder of six-year-old Eunice Bolles, a white girl with whom Hannah had quarreled the previous summer.

While it is difficult to get a clear picture of Hannah’s life from the available sources, it is clear that hers was not a comfortable existence. An appendix to Rev. Henry Channing’s execution sermon notes that Hannah’s mother was “an abandoned creature, much addicted to the vice of drunkenness,” who sent Hannah to work as a servant in a white family’s home. At the age of six, Hannah was accused of beating a white child while trying to steal her necklace. The anonymous author describes Hannah’s character thus:

Her conduct, as appeared in evidence before the honorable Superior Court was marked with almost every thing bad. Theft and lying were her common vices. To these were added a maliciousness of disposition which made the children in the neighborhood much afraid of her. She had a degree of artful cunning and sagacity beyond many of her years.

This description, expressed in terms designed to emphasize the importance of training children in obedience, may or may not be accurate. Regardless, all evidence suggests that Hannah was alone in a hostile world.

On July 21, 1786, someone found Eunice Bolles’ body at the side of the road outside Norwich, Conn. The corpse displayed signs of extreme trauma: “the head and body were mangled in a shocking manner, the back and one arm broken, and a number of heavy stones placed on the body, arms and legs.” Investigators questioned Hannah, who initially denied any involvement, but mentioned that she had seen a group of boys on the road earlier. The town officials did not believe her. On July 22, “she was closely questioned, but repeatedly denied that she was guilty.” Still unconvinced, the investigators “carried [Hannah] to the house where the body lay, and being charged with the crime, burst into tears and confessed that she killed her, saying if she could be forgiven she would never do so again.”

Hannah’s confession, which was accepted as truth by the court, indicated that she had sought revenge on Eunice because the younger girl had “complained of her in strawberry time … for taking away her strawberries.” When Hannah saw Eunice walking to school alone, she beat and choked her, covering the body with rocks “to make people think that the wall fell upon her and killed her.”

Rev. Henry Channing, a talented local minister, visited Hannah in prison many times, urging her to repent so that her soul might be spared. On the day of her execution, he delivered a thundering sermon entitled, God Admonishing His People of Their Duty as Parents and Masters, which held Hannah up as an example of what could happen if parents did not raise their children to be “dutiful and obedient.”

Her crimes, he argued, were the “natural consequences of too great parental indulgence,” and warned that “appetites and passions unrestrained in childhood become furious in youth; and ensure dishonour, disease and an untimely death.” In the portion of the sermon directed at Hannah herself, Channing did his best to scare her into repentance:

HANNAH! — prisoner at the bar– agreeably to the laws of the land you have arraigned, tried and convicted of the crime of murder … The good and safety of society requires, that no one, of such a malignant character, shall be suffered to live, and the punishment of death is but the just demerit of your crime: and the sparing you on account of your age, would, as the law says, be of dangerous consequence to the publick, by holding up an idea, that children might commit such atrocious crimes with impunity … And you must consider that after death you must undergo another trial, infinitely more solemn and awful than what you have here passed through, before that God against whom you offended; at whose bar the deceased child will appear as a swift witness against you — And you will be condemned and consigned to an everlasting punishment, unless you now obtain a pardon, by confessing and sincerely repenting of your sins, and applying to his sovereign grace, through the merits of his Son, Jesus Christ, for mercy, who is able and willing to save the greatest offenders, who repent and believe in him.

At her trial in October, Hannah “appeared entirely unconcerned,” but as the date of her execution approached, she began to show fear. In early December, visitors began to ask her how long she had to live, and Hannah “would tell the Number of her Days with manifest Agitation.” On December 19th, she “appeared in great Distress . . . and continued in Tears most of the Day, and until her Execution.” Witnesses to her execution reported that Hannah “seemed greatly afraid when at the Gallows.” With her last words, she “thanked the Sheriff for his kindness, and launched into the eternal World.”

In the United States, the youngest children put to death by the government have all be children of color. James Arcene, a Cherokee boy, was only 10 or 11 years old when he was hanged for committed a robbery and murder that resulted in his 1885 hanging in Arkansas.* At 12, Hannah Ocuish was the youngest female offender executed by any state. In the 20th century, the youngest children executed were both African-American: 13-year-old Fortune Ferguson of Florida (1927) and 14-year-old George Stinney of South Carolina (1944).

In 2005, the United States Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for criminals who committed their crimes as juveniles (Roper v. Simmons). The court split 5-4, with Jutices Scalia, O’Connor, Thomas, and Chief Justice Rehnquist dissenting. In his dissent, Justice Scalia excoriated the majority for considering international consensus (along with the laws of 30 of the 50 U.S. states) on the cruelty of executing children under the age of 18 when determining the standard for “cruel and unusual.” Justice Scalia, an avowed proponent of Constitutional originalism, proclaimed, “I do not believe that the meaning of our Eighth Amendment, any more than the meaning of other provisions of our Constitution, should be determined by the subjective views of five Members of this Court and like-minded foreigners.”

* This post originally asserted that Arcene was a juvenile when hanged. In fact, he was (or claimed to have been) 10 years old or so at the time he committed the crime, but was not tried and hanged until over a decade later. (This is corrected in the Arcene post.) -ed.

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