Peter Williams and Abraham (or Abram) Cox were hanged on this date in 1858* in Auburn, Maine, for the maritime murder of the crew of the Albion Cooper.
They’ll tell you all about it in a lyrical “last words” that would have you believe they did a musical number on the scaffold, to the air of the Oliver Wendell Holmes poem “Old Ironsides”. A couple of fine gentlemen have done us the favor of making a shanty of the poem on YouTube, if this helps put you in the mood, although, since “Williams and Cox” imitate Holmes’s meter and nautical theme but not his brevity, you’ll need to run it back a few times if you mean to make it to the end.
And a one and a two …
* The Espy file of U.S. executions erroneously attributes the double hanging to August 27, 1860.
On this day..
- 1909: Joe Gauvitte, wife-slayer
- 1861: Martin Doyle, the last hanged for attempted murder
- 1830: Ebenezer Cox, gone postal gunsmith
- 1870: Charles Harth, Prussian spy
- 1824: Johann Christian Woyzeck, non compos mentis?
- 1610: Roger Cadwallador, English priest
- 1853: John Hurley, medicalized
- 1628: Milady de Winter, Three Musketeers villainess
- 1500: 18 thieves in Rome
- 1679: St. David Lewis, the last Welsh martyr
- 30 B.C.E: Caesarion, "Little Caesar"
- 1979: Eleven by a Firing Squad in Iran