Tag Archives: patrick whelan

Seven Generic Halloween Costumes You Can Spice Up With an Execution Story

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Executed Today’s Guide to Halloween, Part II (Click here for Part I.)

Not enough time to assemble an individual masterpiece to play Halloween make-believe? Looking at that off-the-rack costume, that witch outfit from last year, and sighing that it’ll have to do?

No sweat.

Let Executed Today help you go from so generic to sui generis with a horrible backstory that adds conversation-starting depth to the most bland of disguises.

Witch

The Halloween standby has a few hundred thousand real-life executions of which we’ve covered a bare handful.

Anne de Chartraine, a Walloon teenager burnt for witchcraft during the Thirty Years’ War, makes a good characterization of the classic black-hat-and-broomstick outfit.

More complex occultist disguises might consider presenting themselves as poisoner La Voisin, author Jacques Cazotte or the Weirs.

Pirate

Avast, ye sea-dog — there be more pirates than Blackbeard.

Men (especially leftists, anarchists and Bostonians — but I repeat myself) will enjoy answering the inevitable question when representing as William Fly. Ladies — think Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

Ghost

Appropriately, the Great White North has interesting specters to round out the old white-sheet look. Haunt the scene of the kegstand as Madame Marie Josephte Corriveau or assassin Patrick Whelan.

Roman

Cicero is an obvious choice for the toga set, but consider writing Catiline on the nametag instead.

For the whole centurion look, call yourself Sejanus and start settling scores.

Soldier

There are many military looks for many times and places, of course, lots of them liable to be politically touchy in the wrong crowd.

Partisans like Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Evagoras Pallikarides cut heroic figures with a plain set of clothes, some basic military gear, and a knapsack full of consonants.

More formally equipped modern-ish choices of various different lands include Francisco Caamano, Breaker Morant, Mikhael Tukhachevsky, Claus von Stauffenberg, Dmytro Bilinchuk, Emil August Fieldorf, and Theophile Maupas et al.

Werewolf

This blog will always have a special place at the stake for supposed real-life lycanthrope Peter Stubbe, the “Werewolf of Bedburg” who was profiled in our very first post: he was executed October 31, 1589.

Executioner

Of course, there is one ubiquitous character in these pages — and his face isn’t always well-hidden.

Klutzy Brit Jack Ketch, prolific French Revolution headsman Sanson, U.S. President Grover Cleveland and (helpfully, for Halloween) flamboyantly costumed Italian executioner Mastro Titta are among the famous characters to tread the scaffold boards.

Creative Commons pumpkin image courtesy of fabbio

On this day..

1869: Patrick Whelan, Canada’s first assassin?

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On this date in 1869, Irish immigrant Patrick Whelan was hanged at Ottawa’s Nicholas Street Gaol for the assassination of Canadian politician Thomas D’Arcy McGee.

McGee, a Father of the Confederation — Canada as a self-governing dominion was only months old when he was gunned down in Ottawa — was the first politician assassinated in the country, and for a century more, the only one. He may have been a sort of proto-Michael Collins, shot by onetime fellow-travelers in the Irish nationalist movement for going legit with the English.

It’s an open question whether the tailor convicted of his murder was actually one of them. Whelan, like McGee, was an Irish immigrant and supposedly a Fenian sympathizer. He also matched the gunman’s description.

Whelan was snatched up within 24 hours and convicted on essentially circumstantial evidence.

Hanged in a snowstorm before thousands, he maintained his innocence to the end — a plea that has had its advocates in posterity, including a high-profile recent play. Whelan bolsters his own case by haunting the jail where he met his fate … a structure which still stands today, now serving as a (singularly atmospheric) hostel.

Whelan is sometimes reported as the last man publicly hanged in Canada, although apparently he is not. (Officially, that honor belongs to Nicholas Melady.)

On this day..