Posts filed under 'Last Minute Reprieve'
1271: Not Nichiren, at the Tatsunokuchi Persecution
Add comment October 17th, 2020 Headsman
On this date in 1271, the Japanese Buddhist priest Nichiren was taken away to be executed by his political foes … only to find them spooked off completing their mission by terrifying heavenly signs.
He's the founder of the still-extant school of Nichiren Buddhism, his name concatenating the words for Sun (Nichi) and Lotus (Ren) — for he centered his philosophy on the Lotus Sutra.
Nichiren (English Wikipedia entry | Japanese) was a major, and controversial, teacher in the mid-13th century: attributing a series of devastating natural disasters in the 1250s to the enervated spiritual condition of the populace owing to non-Lotus Sutra strains of Buddhism attracted enough enmity that he faced multiple assassination attempts, and was exiled to the Izu Peninsula in 1261. (He was suffered to return a couple of years later.)
Nichiren's doomsaying got a lot more credible — a lot more dangerous — by the end of that decade when the expanding Mongols reached the coasts of China and Korea and started threatening Japan. He'd literally forecast foreign invasion as a consequence for failing to get your lotus right and the arrival of that very prospect drew followers to Nichiren. He intensified his preaching against the rival, but state-favored, varietals of Buddhism.
Summoned to court for questioning, Nichiren remonstrated effectively with his opponent Hei no Saemon. By the prophet's own account, "on the twelfth day of the ninth month" of Japan's lunisolar calendar — corresponding, per this calendar converter, to the 17th of October of 1271 by the Julian calendar — an armed host abducted Nichiren and carried him to Tatsunokuchi for beheading.
Instead the would-be executioners were shaken to their core, as Nichiren described in his autobiographical The Actions of the Votary of the Lotus Sutra.
That night of the twelfth, I was placed under the custody of the lord of the province of Musashi and around midnight was taken out of Kamakura to be executed. As we set out on Wakamiya Avenue, I looked at the crowd of warriors surrounding me and said, "Don't make a fuss. I won't cause any trouble. I merely wish to say my last words to Great Bodhisattva Hachiman." I got down from my horsee and called out in a loud voice, "Great Bodhisattva Hachiman, are you truly a god? When Wake no Kiyomaro was about to be beheaded, you appeared as a moon ten feet wide. When the Great Teacher Dengyo lectured on the Lotus Sutra, you bestowed upon him a purple surplice as an offering … If I am executed tonight and go to the pure land of Eagle Peak, I will dare to report to Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, that the Sun Goddess and Great Bodhisattva Hachiman are the deities who have broken their oath to him. If you feel this will go hard with you, you had better do something about it right away!" Then I remounted my horse.
Finally we came to a place that I knew must be the site of my execution. Indeed, the soldiers stopped and began to mill around in excitement. Saemon-no-jo, in tears, said, "These are your last moments!" I replied, "You don't understand! What greater joy could there be? Don't you remember what you have promised?" I had no sooner said this when a brilliant orb as bright as the moon burst forth from the direction of Enoshima, shooting across the sky from southeast to northwest. It was shortly before dawn and still too dark to see anyone's face, but the radiant object clearly illuminated everyone like bright moonlight. The executioner fell on his face, his eyes blinded. The soldiers were filled with panic. Some ran off into the distance, some jumped down from their horses and huddled on the ground, while others crouched in their saddles. I called out, "Here, why do you shrink from this vile prisoner? Come closer! Come closer!" But no one would approach me. "What if the dawn should come? You must hurry up and execute me — once the day breaks, it will be too ugly a job." I urged them on, but they made no response.
The warriors could by no means be persuaded to do their duty in the face of this dread omen. Eventually the lot of them — executioners and former prisoner alike — wandered off together and drank some well-earned sake as comrades. Nichiren's official pardon arrived the next morning.
The incredible event is known as the Tatsunokuchi Persecution, and (obviously) remembered as a watershed moment in Nichiren's life.
1902: Jim Buchanan, escaping lynching - 2019
1734: John Ormesby and Matthew Cushing - 2018
1976: Masacre de Los Surgentes, during the Dirty War - 2017
1968: Harun Thohir and Usman Janatin, for the MacDonald House bombing - 2016
1677: John S., William Fletcher, and Robert Perkins - 2015
1817: Maggie Houghtaling - 2014
1698: Six Streltsy of rank - 2013
1934: Harry Pierpont, Dillinger mentor - 2012
1859: Danford Balch, inadvertent PDX benefactor - 2011
1999: Zein al-Abidine al-Mihdar, Yemeni terrorist - 2010
1409: Jean de Montagu - 2009
1622: Anne de Chantraine, young witch - 2008
1603: The men of the Bye Plot, but not those of the Main Plot
1525: Jakob Wehe, rebel priest
1622: Not quite Squanto (Tisquantum), Pilgrim befriender
1945: Not Fabian von Schlabrendorff, saved by a bomb
1924: Not Onisaburo Deguchi or Morihei Ueshiba, Japanese new religion exponents
1430: Ten men beheaded, and an eleventh man married
1661: Archibald Campbell
Entry Filed under: 13th Century,Beheaded,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Famous,History,Japan,Last Minute Reprieve,Lucky to be Alive,Not Executed,Pardons and Clemencies,Power,Religious Figures
Tags: 1270s, 1271, astronomy, buddhism, buddhists, nichiren, october 17, tatsunokuchi
1820: The pirates of the William
Add comment February 4th, 2020 Headsman
On this date in 1820, six pirates of the brig William hanged at the Maltese capital Valletta.
This vessel had the previous July departed her Liverpool berth hauling a cargo of lucrative sugar to Malta under the command of Charles Christopher Delano. The latter evidently labored under some legal judgment he considered unjust and convinced a none-too-reluctant crew that it would be "neither a sin nor a shame" to augment their wages by turning buccaneer.
To this end, the William waylaid an Italy-bound English brigantine, the Helen, off the Spanish coast just inside the Straits of Gibraltar on August 2. All that night and throughout the next day the pirates were engaged in transferring the Helen's cargo to their own ship, finally boring open the hull and abandoning her to sink with all hands aboard. The contingent of the Helen was able with difficult to force their way out of confinement and take a longboat (likewise disabled by the raiders and therefore in need of constant bailing) towards the coast until they encountered the aid of friendlier mariners. All survived their brush with the William although their prosecutor would rightly observe that "the confidence on which the prisoners relied for their security (and which has led to their present arraignment) must have arisen from the belief that all evidence of their crime was extinct, and that the intention of a deliberate and comprehensive murder must be added to their already too prominent offence."
The William, meanwhile, had proceeded to Sardinia where her crew was able to unload some of the ill-gotten gains, and thence to Malta, where they discharged the remainder, along with the legitimate sugar cargo they'd carried out of Liverpool.* However, the Maltese transactions attracted enough suspicion that after the William left harbor, British insurance men there hired a ship named Frederick to apprehend the William — which was soon accomplished.
The case itself was open and shut, and from an appendix to its record we discover the usual climax that is this site's stock in trade:
On Friday morning, the 4th of February, at eight o'clock, the awful sentence of the law was carried into execution, on board the brig William, upon Charles Christopher Delano, Thomas Thompson, Benjamin Wilcock, John Smith, John Lewis, and John Webb, in the mode prescribed by the following order issued upon that occasion: —
That the William, brig, being the vessel in which the unfortunate convicts committed the flagrant and most atrocious act of piracy, be painted black, hauled out and anchored in the middle of the great port of Malta, viz. that of Valetta [sic]; and that the aforesaid most unhappy convicts be carried on board of the said vessel, at such time and in such manner as may hereafter be directed; and that on Friday morning, being the fourth day of the month, between the hours of eight and twelve, the aforesaid convicts, viz. Charles Christopher Delano, the late master of the said brig; Thomas Thompson, late mate of ditto; Benjamin Wilcock, late mariner and second mate of ditto; John Webb, late mariner of ditto; John Lewis, late mariner and cook of ditto; John Smith, late mariner of ditto; John Curtis, late carpenter of ditto;** and Reuben Marshall, late mariner of ditto, be hanged as may be directed between the hours of eight and twelve on Friday morning next, being the fourth day of the month of February, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty; and after hanging till they be dead, that they be cut down, put in open shells, and protected by a proper guard from his Majesty's ships; that they be carried to the appointed place, viz. Fort Ricasoli, where the body of the late Charles Christopher Delano, late Captain of the William, is to be hung in irons on the right hand gibbet, next to the Port of Valletta, erected for this purpose in the north-west angle of the said fort; the body of John Lewis, late cook and mariner on board the same vessel, on the left hand gibbet in the same angle; the body of Thomas Thompson, late mate, on the right hand gibbet, erected for the purpose on the north-east angle of the same part of the said fort; and the body of John Smith on the left hand gibbet in the same fort; and that the four remaining bodies be interred at the feet of the before-mentioned gibbets — the body of Benjamin Wilcock under the gibbet on which the late Charles Christopher Delano hangs; the body of John Webb under the gibbet on which the late John Lewis hangs; the body of John Curtis under that on which Thomas Thompson hangs; and the body of Reuben Marshall under the gibbet on which John Smith hangs.
It is satisfactory to state, that the unfortunate man, who commanded the piratical vessel, confessed, in the last hours of his life, in order to reconcile himself with that Supreme Being on whom alone all his hopes then depended, that he was the prime mover and instigator of this most heinous crime.
His Majesty's most gracious clemency was extended to the persons of the other two prisoners, Reuben Marshall and John Curtis, whose fatal sentence was respited on the spot, after the execution of their associates, by a warrant to that effect from his Excellency Sir Thomas Maitland,† issued at ten o'clock on the preceding night.
The following extract from the Malta Government Gazette will explain the laudable motives which induced His Excellency to this most humane and gracious act of clemency: —
We understand that His Excellency was induced to grant this mark of favour from the conviction, after a laborious investigation into the subject, that cases had occurred, although very rarely, of such clemency having been extended, in previous instances, to some of the parties convicted of aggravated piracy.
Such a precedent was, no doubt, most grateful to his Excellency's feelings, and in the choice of the two persons to be spared, we understand his Excellency was guided by the uncommonly good character which Marshall had possessed previous to this atrocious act in which he was concerned; and in the case of Curtis, independently of his youth, by some very peculiar circumstances which had been disclosed in his favour by the captain and the rest of his ill-fated associates.
* One of the crew members reported receiving a total of 345 dollars from his share of the booty. Even allowing that "legitimate" fourfold share he claimed for himself as the captain, Delano apparently shortchanged his associates.
** So many Johns!
† Catch a Maitland cameo in this post from the Haitian Revolution.
1926: Iskilipli Mehmed Atif Hoca, headstrong - 2019
1707: Baron Otto Arnold Peikel - 2018
1939: Maurice Pilorge, Le Condamné à mort - 2017
1784: James Andrews, the last to hang in the Grassmarket - 2016
2015: Sajida al-Rishawi and Ziyad Karboli, Jordan's revenge on ISIS - 2015
1653: Jasper Hanebuth, robber and murderer - 2014
1999: Sean Sellers - 2013
1940: Nikolai Yezhov, terror namesake - 2012
1940: Robert Indrikovich Eikhe, "believing in the truth of Party policy as I have believed in it during my whole life" - 2011
1529: Ludwig Haetzer, Anabaptist - 2010
1703: 47 Ronin forced to commit seppuku - 2009
1738: Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, "Jud Süß" - 2008
1725: John Gow and his pirate crew
1704: John Quelch, pirate
1817: Two-fifths of the condemned in Valenciennes
1803: Joseph Samuel survives three hangings
1719: Richard Worley, pirate
1830: Benito de Soto, a pirate hanged at Gibraltar
1609: Captain John Harris, Captain John Jennings, and 15 other pirates at Wapping
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,At Sea,Capital Punishment,Crime,Death Penalty,England,Execution,Gibbeted,Hanged,History,Last Minute Reprieve,Malta,Mass Executions,Not Executed,Occupation and Colonialism,Pardons and Clemencies,Pelf,Piracy,Pirates,Public Executions
Tags: 1820, 1820s, benjamin wilcock, charles delano, february 4, john curtis, john lewis, john smith, john webb, reuben marshall, thomas maitland, thomas thompson, valletta
1999: Eduardo Agbayani, omnishambles execution
Add comment June 25th, 2019 Headsman
At three in the afternoon this date in 1999, Eduardo Agbayani was put to death by lethal injection in the Philippines.
At that very same moment, President Joseph Estrada — an erratic populist who months ago had presided over the first execution since the Marcos dictatorship — was furiously, unsuccessfully, trying to dial the prison to halt the execution.
Initially intent on the condign punishment of a man who raped his own daughter, Estrada had his mind bent towards mercy by a silver-tongued Catholic bishop. With the lethal drugs imminent, he set about on his mission of grace only to find that the nation's sovereign placing a life-and-death call runs into the same banal connectivity fails that you and I have trying to ring the motor vehicles department. The Economist described it thus:
According to the bishop, Mr Estrada later said he tried several times to telephone the prison, where the execution procedure had already begun, but he got an engaged or fax tone. Mr Estrada was not in the part of the presidential palace with the telephone linked by direct line to the prison — installed for the very purpose of calling off an execution at the last minute. As the seconds slipped by, an aide was dispatched to call on the direct line.
What happened next is unclear. Witnesses to the execution said that there was knocking on the door of the execution chamber and a voice could be heard, saying, "Hold! Hold!" The aide's cries, according to an official, were at first thought to be a prank. The president's spokesman later said that the aide's call had got through at 12 minutes past three. Mr Agbayani had been pronounced dead a minute earlier.
1950: The Martyred, at the outset of the Korean War - 2020
1942: Gordon Cummins, the Blackout Ripper - 2018
1880: Three juvenile offenders in Canton, Ohio - 2017
1942: Evzen Rosicky, athlete - 2016
1483: Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers - 2015
1646: Jan Creoli, for sodomy in slavery - 2014
2003: He Xiuling, Ma Qingxui, Li Juhua and Dai Donggui - 2013
10 executions that defined the 1980s - 2012
1804: Georges Cadoudal, Chouan - 2012
1790: Thomas Bird, the first federal execution under the U.S. constitution - 2011
1591: Euphane MacCalzean, witch - 2010
1579: Hatano Hideharu, en route to the Tokugawa Shogunate - 2009
1959: Charles Starkweather, Nebraska spree killer - 2008
1999: Leo Echegaray, by lethal injection in the Philippines
2001: Robert Lee Massie, who spent a lifetime dying
1994: John Wayne Gacy, scary clown
1972: The rapists of Maggie dela Riva
1999: Gary Heidnik, serial kidnapper
1985: Carroll Edward Cole
1918: A day in the death penalty around the U.S.
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Last Minute Reprieve,Lethal Injection,Pardons and Clemencies,Philippines,Rape,Reprieved Too Late
Tags: 1990s, 1999, eduardo agbayani, joseph estrada, june 25
Add comment May 24th, 2019 Headsman
From the Pueblo Chieftain (May 25, 1918):
Salt Lake City, May 24. — Howard H. Deweese, who was shot here today for the murder of his wife, Fannie Fisher Deweese, left a grim legacy for his wife's former husband. It is a silk handkerchief and the bullets which passed thru the heart of Deweese, first passed thru the bit of silk which he had pinned over his chest.
Before his execution Deweese secured the promise of the warden of the state prison to forward the handkerchief, together with a note to Fisher in New York. The letter, dated at the Utah state penitentiary last Monday, reads:
Mr. H.W. Fisher, 150 Second avenue, New York:
In accordance with customs observed by certain people, I herewith conform with precedents and law governing the conduct of aforesaid people. I have rigidly adhered to my vows. You have violated yours. Therefore, put your house in order. The allotted time customary in such cases is yours. The souvenir enclosed herewith (by the warden of this institution) will doubtless serve to convince you that time, distance, political influence or money cannot change the inexorable workings of things decreed by men who do not hesitate in risking all, even life, for things they have sworn to uphold.
The U.B.C. thru one who has proven loyal, bids you 'prepare.' It is written.
J.E.W.
The initials affixed at the bottom of the note stand for Deweese's alias — J.E. Warren. The "U.B.C." Deweese explained just before his execution, was the initials of the "Universal Brotherhood Club of New York."
From the Kansas City Star (May 24, 1918):
DALLAS, TEX. May 23. — A claim that the idea for the Red Cross poster, "The Greatest Mother in the World," originated in the mind of Leonard Dodd, who with Walter Stevenson is sentenced to hang here tomorrow for murder, was placed here today before the state board of pardons at Austin as part of a plea for commutation of sentence.
Council for Dodd informed the board a draft of the poster had been sent by him to the Red Cross headquarters at Washington and that it was later drawn by an Eastern artist. Dodd, Stevenson, and Emmett Vestal, also convicted of murder, will be hanged tomorrow unless Governor Hobby commutes their sentences. [Dodd and Stevenson hanged; as for Vestal's … read on. -ed.]
From the Arizona Republic, Jan. 1, 1955:
Evangelist Emmett T. (Texas Slim) Vestal, a man twice condemned to die in the electric chair, is in Phoenix conducting a revival, and illustrating that "no matter how low a man can get, he still can be saved by following Christ."
For more than 20 years, Mr. Vestal has been preaching in churches throughout the country, and recounting his experiences as bank robber, drug addict, and gang member.
Services will be conducted every night through next Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Revival Center, 902 N. 24th St.
In 1917 he shot a rival gang leader who tried to ambush him near Victoria, Tex. and was sentenced to die May 24, 1918. Five minutes before the hanging, he was granted a reprieve by the late Governor W.P. Hobby.
He returned to prison, contracted tuberculosis and was sent to a state hospital from which he escaped. Law officials found him in 1926 in St. Louis and took him back to Texas for a new trial because the state had changed his sentence from hanging to electrocution.
He was again convicted and sentenced to die, this time in the electric chair. Three days before the electrocution, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the late Governor Miriam (Ma) Ferguson. Three days after that she granted him a full pardon.
Methodist church workers taught him to read and write and gave him Christian education while he was in prison. After his release he began his evangelic career. He was ordained a baptist minister.
1726: Étienne-Benjamin Deschauffours - 2020
1989: Stephen McCoy, botched - 2018
1878: A day in the death penalty around the U.S. - 2017
1935: Tully McQuate, "If I hang, I hang" - 2016
2014: Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, billionaire - 2015
1871: Archbishop Georges Darboy, Paris Commune hostage - 2014
1872: John Presswood Jr., the last legal hanging in DeKalb County - 2013
1944: Admiral Inigo Campioni - 2012
2007: Christopher Newton - 2011
1725: Jonathan Wild, Thief-Taker General and Receiver of Stolen Goods - 2010
1980: Kim Jaegyu, intelligence chief - 2009
1917: Dr. Arthur Waite, the Playboy Poisoner - 2008
1962: Mack Merrill Rivenburgh cheats the executioner
1915: Leo Frank lynched
2007: Not Sina Paymard, saved by a flute
2013: Vahid Zare pardoned while hanging
1827: Isaac Desha pardoned by Gov. Joseph Desha
1922: George Hornsby
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Hanged,Last Minute Reprieve,Murder,Not Executed,Pardons and Clemencies,Shot,Texas,USA,Utah
Tags: 1910s, 1918, emmett vestal, howard deweese, leonard dodd, may 24, propaganda, salt lake city, walter stevenson, world war i
546: Croesus
Add comment January 5th, 2019 Headsman
It was perhaps around the winter outset of 546 BCE that the Lydian king Croesus was captured and executed or spared by the Persians.
Famed for his wealth — he funded the construction of the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders* — Croesus was heir to a 600-year-old empire dominating western Anatolia. Herodotus credits the Lydians as the inventors of coinage, a likely basis for the "rich as Croesus" expression.
Would that he had been so rich in wisdom.
In perhaps 547 BCE, Croesus launched a war against the rising power on his eastern border — the Persian Achaemenid Empire, led by Cyrus the Great. In a classic ancient own-goal, Croesus got the thumbs-up for this adventure from the Oracle of Delphi, who told the Lydian envoys that if Croesus fought Persia, he would destroy a great empire.** That empire turned out be his own.
After fighting to a stalemate in the autumn of 547, Croesus retired to his capital of Sardis to winter, believing war would abate with the end of the campaigning season — even dismissing his allies until the spring.
Cyrus surprised him instead, marching aggressively on Sardis and putting it to siege after routing a much larger Lydian army at the Battle of Thymbra.† It wasn't long before the Persians found an ill-defended entrance into the city's citadel via a mountain ascent, and fulfilled the Pythian priestess's prophecy.
We have no certain record of Croesus's actual fate; the histories for him come from later Greeks, whose accounts are contradictory and even folklorish; J.A.S. Evans suggests in a 1978 scholarly exploration that the Greeks were equally in the dark about the matter but that "Croesus had become a figure of myth, who stood outside the conventional restraints of chronology."
Herodotus renders his version thus, turning the action on Croesus's remembrance of a previous encounter with the Greek wise man Solon, who had counseled him that wealth is not happiness:
The Persians gained Sardis and took Croesus prisoner. Croesus had ruled fourteen years and been besieged fourteen days. Fulfilling the oracle, he had destroyed his own great empire.
The Persians took him and brought him to Cyrus, who erected a pyre and mounted Croesus atop it, bound in chains, with twice seven sons of the Lydians beside him. Cyrus may have intended to sacrifice him as a victory-offering to some god, or he may have wished to fulfill a vow, or perhaps he had heard that Croesus was pious and put him atop the pyre to find out if some divinity would deliver him from being burned alive. So Cyrus did this.
As Croesus stood on the pyre, even though he was in such a wretched position it occurred to him that Solon had spoken with god's help when he had said that no one among the living is fortunate. When this occurred to him, he heaved a deep sigh and groaned aloud after long silence, calling out three times the name "Solon." Cyrus heard and ordered the interpreters to ask Croesus who he was invoking … He explained that first Solon the Athenian had come and seen all his fortune and spoken as if he despised it. Now everything had turned out for him as Solon had said, speaking no more of him than of every human being, especially those who think themselves fortunate.
While Croesus was relating all this, the pyre had been lit and the edges were on fire. When Cyrus heard from the interpreters what Croesus said, he relented and considered that he, a human being, was burning alive another human being, one his equal in good fortune.
In addition, he feared retribution, reflecting how there is nothing stable in human affairs. He ordered that the blazing fire be extinguished as quickly as possible, and that Croesus and those with him be taken down, but despite their efforts they could not master the fire.
Then the Lydians say that Croesus understood Cyrus' change of heart, and when he saw everyone trying to extinguish the fire but unable to check it, he invoked Apollo, crying out that if Apollo had ever been given any pleasing gift by him, let him offer help and deliver him from the present evil.
Thus he in tears invoked the god, and suddenly out of a clear and windless sky clouds gathered, a storm broke, and it rained violently, extinguishing the pyre.
Even in this one text, Cyrus both does and does not execute Croesus, a figure whose proportions of historicity and legend are impossible to measure. In different variants of this tragic fall, Croesus puts up his own pyre for desperate self-immolation like the Steward of Gondor …
… or it is or is not successfully extinguished. A post-pyre Croesus then goes on to become a dutiful slave of Cyrus, the relationship of conquered and conquering kings full of aphorism and fable-ready vignettes with no dependable historical warrant.
* For the pedants in the room, the "Seven Wonders" roster was composed later in antiquity, and the Temple of Artemis made the list based on its rebuild version after the one put up by Croesus had been torched by the fame-seeking Herostratus.
** Croesus rated the Delphic oracle's advice highly. Aesop, the fable guy got himself executed by the Delphians by misbehaving while in the course of delivering a tribute from Croesus.
† Allegedly, the unnerving sight of Cyrus's camels arrayed for battle panicked the Lydian cavalry into flight.
2011: Yaqub Ali, stabber - 2020
1866: Charles Carrington - 2018
1963: Stanislaw Jaros, twice-failed assassin - 2017
1945: Robert E. Folkes, the first condemned man to see the Oregon gas chamber - 2016
1900: Geronimo Parra and Antonio Flores, the last hanged in El Paso - 2015
1771: Captain David Ferguson, for the murder of his cabin-boy - 2014
1655: Jane Hopkins, Bermuda's last known witch execution - 2013
1638: Four Frenchmen in effigy - 2012
1917: Sub-Lt. Edwin Dyett, shot at dawn - 2011
1993: Westley Allan Dodd, child molester - 2010
1527: Felix Manz, the first Anabaptist martyr - 2009
1463: Not François Villon - 2008
30 B.C.E: Caesarion, "Little Caesar"
c. 415 B.C.E.: The men of Melos
401 B.C.E.: Clearchus of Sparta
1389: Saint Tsar Lazar, after the Battle of Kosovo
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews
71 B.C.E.: The followers of Spartacus
1836: The defenders of the Alamo, much remembered
Entry Filed under: Ancient,Arts and Literature,Burned,Execution,Executions Survived,Famous,Heads of State,History,Language,Last Minute Reprieve,Mass Executions,No Formal Charge,Not Executed,Occupation and Colonialism,Pardons and Clemencies,Persia,Popular Culture,Power,Reprieved Too Late,Royalty,Summary Executions,The Supernatural,Turkey,Uncertain Dates,Wartime Executions
Tags: croesus, cyrus the great, oracle of delphi, sardis
1758: Not Florence Hensey, Seven Years' War spy
1 comment July 12th, 2018 Headsman
The French spy Florence Hensey was due to die at Tyburn on this date in 1758. As it happened, the only violence done there was to the spectators.
A well-traveled Irish Catholic, Hensey had a prosperous London medical practice when he made an offer to a former colleague in France to share intelligence on war preparations at the outset of the England-vs.-France Seven Years' War (1756-1763).
Upon being accepted into the ranks of salaried moles, Hensey set his industry to forming acquaintances at establishments where parliamentarians and their clerks met and gossiped, transmitting the resulting nuggets to France by way of Germany in lemon juice ink concealed within letters bearing nothing but everyday pleasantries. Eventually clerks suspicious at the volume of such superficially trivial exchanges being imposed upon the international post got nosy and found out the real story.
Hensey's treachery was obvious, ongoing, and in the midst of wartime. He should have died for it, but on that very morning he was spared that miserable fate. The Newgate calendar professes "much surprise at the extension of royal mercy" considering numerous other precedents to the contrary.
De la Motte, the particulars of whose case we shall hereafter give, was "hanged, drawn, and quartered," for the same kind of offence which Hensey committed; and in still more recent times, numbers have suffered death for similar treason; and yet we have to observe, without finding any especial reason for it, that Doctor Hensey was pardoned. If granted from political motives, it must have been in fear of Spain; an unworthy impulse of the ministers of a far greater and more powerful nation.
Indeed, the Spanish connection appears to be the best explanation for Hensey's unexpected reprieve: he had a brother in the retinue of a Spanish ambassador who was able to exercise his empire's diplomatic channels in the doctor's service. (Spain was on the sidelines at this moment, and Britain keen to keep her there; the Spanish finally joined the war on France's side very late in the game, in 1762.)
This gambit, however, came as quite a nasty surprise to the ample and bloodthirsty crowd that had turned up at Tyburn.
The awful procession to Tyburn, intended to impress the multitude with sentiments of reverence for the laws of their country, produced a very contrary effect; and the eager and detestable curiosity of the populace, to witness executions, became a source of considerable emolument to certain miscreants, who were in the habit of erecting scaffolds for spectators; many of these scaffolds were substantial wooden buildings, and erected at every point from whence a glimpse of the execution could be obtained; the prices for seats varied according to the turpitude or quality of the criminal: — Dr. Hensey was to have been executed for High Treason in 1758, the prices of seats for that exhibition amounted to 2s. and 2s. 6d.; but, in the midst of general expectation, the Doctor was most provokingly reprieved.
As the mob descended from their stations with unwilling steps, it occurred to them, that, as they had been deprived of the intended entertainment, the proprietors of the seats ought to return the admission-money; which they demanded in terms vociferous, and with blows offensive, and in short, exercised their happy talent for rioting with unbounded success. On this occasion a vast number of these erections were destroyed.
Hensey spent a couple more years in Newgate, then was released into obscurity; presumably he left the realm to his brother's custody.
1822: Gullah Jack - 2020
1391: Amerigot Marcel, cast down - 2019
2008: Two alleged prostitutes, by the Taliban - 2017
1995: Boris Dekanidze, the last in Lithuania - 2016
1936: Earl Gardner - 2015
Themed Set: Meaghan Good (II) - 2015
2013: Zeng Chengjie, China's Bernie Madoff - 2014
1960: Manfred Smolka, East German border guard - 2013
1833: Frankie Silver, Morganton legend - 2012
2006: Rocky Barton, suicidal - 2011
1916: Cesare Battisti and Fabio Filzi - 2010
1537: Robert Aske, for the Pilgrimage of Grace - 2009
1726: William Fly, unrepentant pirate - 2008
Themed Set: Embarrassed Executioners - 2008
1781: Francois Henri de la Motte, French spy
1782: David Tyrie, the last hanged, drawn, and quartered
1721: John Meff
1741: Cook, Robin, Caesar and Cuffee
1717: Three spared en route to Tyburn, thanks to Jack Ketch's debts
Entry Filed under: 18th Century,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Doctors,Drawn and Quartered,England,Espionage,Execution,Gruesome Methods,History,Last Minute Reprieve,Lucky to be Alive,Not Executed,Pardons and Clemencies,Public Executions,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Spies,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1750s, 1758, diplomacy, florence hensey, july 12, london, seven years' war, Tyburn
Add comment April 5th, 2018 Headsman
On this date in 1525 the radical priest Hans Jakob Wehe was beheaded.
Wehe led a muster of 3,000 Bavarian peasants which briefly seized the town of Lepheim, during Germany's bloody Peasants War, ere it was routed by the Swabian League.
On the 5th of April towards evening, they [Wehe and some other captives] were taken to a flowery meadow lying between Leipheim and Budesheim to be executed. As Master Jakob was led forward to the block, Truchsess turned to him with the words: "Sir paster, it had been well for thee and us hadst thou preached God's word, as it beseemeth, and not rebellion." "Noble sir," answered the preacher, "ye do me wrong. I have not preached rebellion, but God's word." "I am otherwise informed," observed Truchsess, as his chaplain stepped forward to receive the confession of the condemned man. Wehe turned to those around, stating that he had already confessed to his Maker and commended his soul to Him. To his fellow-sufferers he observed: "Be of good cheer, brethren, we shall yet meet each other to-day in Paradise, for when our eyes seem to close, they are really first opening." After having prayed aloud, concluding with the words: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," he laid himself on the block, and in another moment his head fell in the long grass.
The preacher of Günzburg, who had also taken part in the movement, and an old soldier of fortune, who had joined the rebels, were brought forward in their turn to submit to the same fate, when the old soldier, turning to Truchsess, observed: "Doth it not seem to thee a little late in the day, noble lord, for one to lose one's head?" This humorous observation saved the lives of himself and the preacher. The latter was carried about with the troops in a cage, until he had bought his freedom with eighty gulden. He lost, however, the right of preaching and of riding on horseback!
1923: Bernard Pomroy - 2020
1919: The Pinsk Massacre - 2019
1864: Jose Maria Chavez Alonso, governor of Aguascalientes - 2017
1356: Four friends of Charles the Bad - 2016
1766: William Whittle - 2015
Themed Set: Lancaster's Golgotha - 2015
1901: Filipino insurgents on Luzon - 2014
2005: Glen James Ocha, poorly endowed - 2013
1916: Joseph Hani, abandoned - 2012
1918: Robert Prager lynched during war hysteria - 2011
1984: Elmo Patrick Sonnier, Dead Man Walking - 2010
1722: Arundel Cooke and John Woodburne, despite a novel defense - 2009
1794: Georges Danton and his followers - 2008
1525: Thomas Müntzer, prophet of the Peasants' War
1478: Pazzi Conspiracy attempted … and suppressed
1521: The Comuneros of Castile
1526: Antonio Osorio de Acuña
1541: Cristóvão da Gama, Portuguese crusader in Ethiopia
1937: Tom Steinbock and Juan Mirbol in Sartre's The Wall
Entry Filed under: 16th Century,Beheaded,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Gallows Humor,Germany,History,Last Minute Reprieve,Not Executed,Pardons and Clemencies,Power,Religious Figures,Revolutionaries,Soldiers,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1520s, 1525, april 5, jakob wehe, leipheim, peasant uprising, peasants war, swabian league
Add comment November 6th, 2017 Headsman
From the London Weekly Journal or Saturday's Post, Nov. 9, 1717:
On Wednesday we had a very odd Accident happen'd upon Occasion of the ordinary Execution of Criminals; the Number to be hang'd was five, according to the Dead Warrant, but two of these had obtain'd a respite of Execution, the other three were put into the Cart and carry'd to the Place of Execution.
The Person they call the Finisher of the Law, alias the Hangman, and who, for the common Understanding inherits the Name of Jack Ketch, going before the Cart on Foot, in order to be ready at the Place, was arrested in Holborn by three Bayliffs or Officers, on a Sheriffs Warrant for Debts, and was carry'd away.
However, after some Time he got out of their Hands, but soon fell into worse Company; for the Mob got him into their Clutches, and whether he had given them Occasion or no, we know not, but no Pick-Pocket was ever used worse by them; for if all we hear is true, they left him with little Life in him.
In the mean Time the Prisoners came to the Place of Execution; but no Hangman could be found to do them the usual last Offices of Kindness. The Under-Sheriff, it is said, offered very generously to several Persons to officiate, but none could be found. Mr. Ordinary, we hear, might have had the Compliment, but did not think fit to say he would accept it if it had been offer'd.
One bold Fellow, being half inclin'd, his Comrade prompted him earnestly, Do Jack, says his Brother Tom, thou hast not earn'd a Penny in an honest Way a great While.
No, says Jack; da___e, not I, for I deserve it as much as any of them; but do you do it your self, Tom, you know it will be your Turn quickly, and Jack Ketch shall use you the better for it.
But in short, neither Jack nor Tom would do it, and the poor Wretches, tho' they waited in the Cold a great While, were not willing to do it for themselves; and so the Sheriff's Officers were fain to bring them back again to Newgate, where it is said they must lie till Jack Ketch recovers of his Suffocation in the Horse-Pond, and is in Condition for his honest Employment.
The prisoners in question all had their sentences commuted.
The hangman, William Marvell — who had obtained the position because his predecessor was also clapped in debtors' prison — likewise lost the executioner's gig thanks to the embarrassing arrest. Too reviled thereafter to find honest work he wound up being sentenced to convict transportation for shoplifting in 1719.
1837: Luis Candelas, urban bandit - 2020
1941: Shura Chekalin, Hero of the Soviet Union - 2019
1938: Kasym Tynystanov, Kyrgyz intellectual - 2018
1922: Ali Kemal - 2016
1863: James Murphy, after a reunion - 2015
1964: Vuyisile Mini, Zinakile Mkaba and Wilson Khayingo - 2014
1918: Roman Malinovsky, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy - 2013
1944: Boy Ecury, Aruban Dutch Resistance hero - 2012
1600: Ishida Mitsunari, Konishi Yukinaga and Ankokuji Ekei for the Tokugawa Shogunate - 2011
1793: Philippe Egalite, hoisted on his own petard - 2010
2003: Four for the oil of Chad - 2009
1730: Hans Hermann von Katte, Frederick the Great's lover - 2008
1914: Carl Hans Lody - 2007
1730: Neither James Prouse nor James Mitchel, much to their surprise
1774: Not Patrick Madan, saved at the death
1740: Not William Duell
1789: Not Mary Wade, 11-year-old thief
Entry Filed under: 18th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,England,Execution,Hanged,History,Last Minute Reprieve,Lucky to be Alive,Not Executed,Pardons and Clemencies,Public Executions,Theft
Tags: 1710s, 1717, jack ketch, london, november 6, Tyburn, william marvell
1863: Not Nathaniel Pruitt, reprieved deserter
On this date 150 years ago, according to Larry Daniel's Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee, a middle-aged man was all set to be shot for deserting the Army of Tennessee, and the much-resented command of Gen. Braxton Bragg.
In a well-documented incident, a soldier received a reprieve as a result of a dramatic incident. Forty-seven-year-old Nathaniel Pruitt of the Nineteenth Tennessee was found guilty of desertion and on June 10, 1863, was taken to a field beside his regimental camp, his coffin placed beside an open grave. A minister cut a lock of hair to give to Pruitt's wife. The firing squad was positioned and ordered to take aim, but just then an officer came galloping up with a special order to suspend the sentence. The prisoner began crying. "I was truly glad [of the reprieve], but must say some of the boys were disappointed," a Mississippi diarist noted. Incredibly, the very next day, Pruitt again deserted and was never heard from again.
One takes the author's point here about Pruitt's risk-seeking second flight, but even so it might not really be all that "incredible" that one would desert the company of armed men who had recently shown open disappointment about being prevented from shooting one dead.
1996: Huugjilt, wrongful execution - 2020
1566: Bartholome Tecia, Geneva sodomite - 2019
1697: The Paisley Witches - 2018
2015: Aftab Bahadur Masih, "I just received my Black Warrant" - 2016
1822: Armand Valle, carbonari plotter - 2015
1902: Hirsh Lekert, Jewish assassin - 2014
1944: Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane - 2013
1896: Amelia Dyer, baby farmer - 2012
1876: Kenneth Brown, father of Edith Cowan - 2011
1692: Bridget Bishop, the first Salem witch hanging - 2010
1942: The village of Lidice, for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich - 2009
1358: Guillaume Cale, leader of the Jacquerie - 2008
1814: Four of five deserters, in Buffalo
1862: An unknown Confederate deserter
1861: Not William Scott, the Sleeping Sentinel
1812: John Rickey but not Benjamin Jackson
1778: Samuel Lyons and Samuel Ford, Fort Mifflin deserters
1815: Eight deserters by order of Andrew Jackson
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Capital Punishment,Confederates,Death Penalty,Desertion,Execution,History,Last Minute Reprieve,Lucky to be Alive,Military Crimes,Not Executed,Pardons and Clemencies,Shot,Soldiers,Tennessee,USA,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1860s, 1863, braxton bragg, june 10, nathaniel pruitt, u.s. civil war
Add comment September 2nd, 2016 Headsman
In Philadelphia this date in 1778, "Lyons, Ford and Wilson, late Lieutenants, and John Lawrence, late gunner, in the navy of this State, were taken from the gaol to one of the gallies lying off Market Street wharf, where the two former were shot agreeable to their sentence, but the two latter reprieved." (Pennsylvania Evening Post, September 2, 1778)
Samuel Lyons, Samuel Ford, John Wilson and John Lawrence all served on various of the American "row galley" fleet that gave the American revolutionaries at least some seaborne presence in their fight against the world's preeminent naval power.
The four, executed and pardoned alike, had deserted the American garrison when that preeminent power put Fort Mifflin in the Delaware River under siege the previous autumn. (There's a very detailed account of this operation here; the British eventually captured the fort from its badly outnumbered defenders.)
While desertion between the antagonists was a common phenomenon in the American Revolution, this made for an especially bad look a year later once the British abandoned Philadelphia to the aggressively triumphalist Patriots.
Even so, the last-minute clemencies alongside the actual shootings were also very much a part of the Continental Army's delicate enforcement of discipline, in an environment where it feared that being either too lenient or too harsh could fatally undermine the tenuous morale of the rank and file. Every enforcement was considered in the light of its public impression.
"The number of spectators was very great," our short report in the Evening Post concluded. "And it is hoped the melancholy scene will have a proper effect upon the profligate and thoughtless, who do not seriously consider that the crime of desertion is attended with the dreadful consequences of wilful perjury."
2014: Steven Sotloff, two lives - 2020
1853: Gasparich Mark Kilit - 2019
1937: Alexander Shlyapnikov, Workers' Opposition leader - 2018
1942: Tom Williams, IRA martyr - 2017
1914: Eugene Odent, the mayor of Senlis - 2015
1944: Olavi Laiho, the last Finn executed in Finland - 2014
Daily Double: The last executions in Finland - 2014
1887: Josiah Terrill, "I ain't guilty of this here charge" - 2013
1944: Six Milice collaborators in France - 2012
1772: Moses Paul - 2011
1983: Jimmy Lee Gray, drunk-gassed - 2010
1685: Dame Alice Lisle, first victim of the Bloody Assizes - 2009
1724: Half-Hangit Maggie Dickson - 2008
Themed Set: Judging Abortion - 2008
1778: Patrick McMullen, repeat deserter
1720: A deserter, by fellow-deserters
1862: 38 Sioux
1715: Four Jacobites including George Lockhart's brother
Entry Filed under: 18th Century,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Desertion,England,Execution,History,Last Minute Reprieve,Military Crimes,Not Executed,Occupation and Colonialism,Pardons and Clemencies,Pennsylvania,Public Executions,Shot,Soldiers,U.S. Military,USA,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1770s, 1778, american revolution, fort mifflin, philadelphia, samuel ford, samuel lyons, september 2