Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders

by Abbott, Geoffrey

  James Scott, Duke of Monmouth

  The illegitimate son of King Charles II by Lucy Walters, the Duke of Monmouth raised an army and sought to overthrow King James II, but was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685. Captured and arrested on 13 July of that year, he was later granted an interview with the King, at which ‘he threw himselfe at the King’s feete and begged his mercie. It is sayd he was soe disingenious in his answers to what the King askt of him that the Kinge turned from him and bid him prepare for death.’

  After the interview King James wrote, ‘The Duke of Monmouth seemed more concerned and desirous to live and did not behave himself so well as I expected, nor do as one ought to have expected from one who had taken upon himself to be King. I have signed the warrant for his execution tomorrow.’

  On 15 July 1685 he was escorted from the Tower by guards and also by three officers, each with loaded pistols, for the Duke was extremely popular with the many members of the public who had little time for King James; so popular indeed, that on arriving on the Tower Hill scaffold he was greeted by a chorus of groans and sighs from the gathered throng of spectators. He looked at Jack Ketch, the executioner so notorious for his savage inaccuracy that his name became synonymous with the very word ‘hangman’. ‘Is this the man to do the business?’ he demanded, and when assured that it was, he prayed, then went over to where the block was positioned with the axe resting against it. Picking it up, he felt the edge of it with his nail, then replaced it and, taking six guineas from his pocket and handing them to Ketch, he said, ‘Pray, do your business well; do not serve me as you did my Lord Russell, for I have heard you struck him three or four times. If you strike me twice, I cannot promise you not to stir.’ Turning to his servant standing next to him, he continued, ‘If he does his work well, give him the other six guineas.’

  Observers reported that:

  ‘he then proceeded to make himself ready. He took his coat off and laid it down, but his peruke he merely tossed aside. Another short prayer, and then with every appearance of calm he laid himself down before the block and fitted his neck into the notches with much precision. But no sooner had he thus settled himself and the executioner begun to raise the axe, than he raised himself on his elbow and said to the headsman, ‘Prithee, let me feel the axe.’ Again he ran his finger along the edge. ‘I fear it is not sharp enough,’ he exclaimed, but the headsman did not like this aspersion on his skill. ‘It is sharp enough, and heavy enough,’ he assured the doubting Duke. And he had the final word. Monmouth fitted his head into the block and shut his eyes to await the end.’

  Another report had this description:

  ‘the executioner first struck an agitated blow, inflicting a small cut, and Monmouth staggered to his feet and looked at him in silent reproach. Then he resumed his place and the executioner struck again and again. Still the head remained on the block, while his whole body writhed in agony. As the horrified fury of the crowd increased, the headsman threw down the axe, crying, ‘I cannot do it. My heart fails me.’ ‘Take up the axe, man!’ roared the Sheriff, while the crowd cried ‘Fling him [Ketch] over the rails!’ So he took it up and hacked away, but the job had to be finished with a knife. A strong guard protected him as he went off, else he would have been torn to pieces.’

  Before being buried in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula within the Tower of London, the head was sewn back on to the body for a portrait to be painted by Sir Godrey Kneller, and it is now displayed in London’s National Portrait Gallery.

  In the Tower of London, awaiting decapitation by the axe for treason against Henry VIII, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, discovered that his cook had failed to produce dinner that day. On being questioned, the man explained, ‘It was common talk in the town that you should die and so I thought it needless to prepare anything for you.’

  ‘Well,’ retorted John Fisher, ‘for all that, thou seest me still alive; so whatever news thou shalt hear of me, make ready my dinner, and if thou seest me dead when thou comest, eat it thyself!’

  Boiled in Oil

  Loys Secretan

  In 1488 the tables were neatly turned in the French city of Tours, when the victim, who should have died, didn’t, and the executioner, who shouldn’t have died, did! Death by immersion in boiling oil was the method of capital punishment in those days, and it so happened that a convicted coiner named Loys Secretan was due to be executed in that manner in the Place de la Fere-le-Roy. Everything went drastically wrong, at least for Denis, the executioner.

  ‘He took the said Loys on to the scaffold and bound his body and legs with cords, made him say his ‘in manus’, pushed him along and threw him head first into the cauldron to be boiled. As soon as Secretan was thrown in, the cords became so loose that he twice rose to the surface, crying for mercy. Which seeing, the provost and some of the inhabitants began to attack the executioner, saying, ‘Ah, you wretch, you are making this poor sinner suffer and bringing great dishonour on the town of Tours!’

  The executioner, seeing the anger of the people, tried two or three times to sink the malefactor with a great iron hook, and forthwith several people, believing that the cords had been broken by a divine miracle, became excited and cried out loudly, and seeing that the false coiner was suffering no harm, they approached the executioner as he lay with his face on the ground, and gave him so many blows that he died.

  Charles VIII pardoned the inhabitants who were accused of killing the executioner, and as for the coiner of false money, he was taken to the church of the Jacobins for sanctuary, where he hid himself so completely that he never dared to show his face again.’

  Found guilty of committing high treason against James I, George Brooke was condemned to be executed by the axe in the courtyard of Winchester Castle. When he was ordered to lay his head on the block, he told them that ‘they must give him instructions what to do, for he was never beheaded before!’

  Branding

  Comtesse Jeanne de la Motte

  One of the most famous cases in which a criminal was disgraced by being disfigured with a brand occurred in France in 1786, the criminal being no less than a lady of society, Jeanne de Saint-Valois, wife of the Comte de la Motte. A witty, elegant and attractive woman, she had become acquainted with Cardinal de Rohan, a man with powerful influence at Court, and she managed to persuade the prelate that she was a close friend of the Queen.

  Her ingenious scheme revolved around a magnificent necklace made by the crown jewellers, MM. Boemer and Bossange, on behalf of King Louis XV for his mistress Mme du Barry. However, the King died before it could be completed, and du Barry was exiled to England, so the necklace, which consisted of no fewer than 541 precious stones, was offered to the new King. Its price, 1,800,000 livres, was considered too high, and so the jewellers offered to make a valuable present to whoever could find a buyer.

  Comtesse de la Motte wove her plot skilfully, telling the Cardinal that the Queen wanted to buy the necklace with her own money without the King’s knowledge, and so desired the Cardinal to buy it on her behalf. She produced an authorisation forged by an ally named Marc-Antoine Retaux de Villette, purporting to be from the Queen, pledging payment to the jewellers.

  Accordingly the necklace was given to the Cardinal, who in turn passed it over to the Comtesse for delivery to the Queen – except that it never reached the royal palace. Instead Jeanne de la Motte sold some of the gems, her husband taking the remaining stones to England, where he promptly disposed of 300 of them for £14,000: a veritable fortune in those days.

  The jewellers, having received no payment, complained to the palace and enquiries were begun, with the result that all involved, including Jeanne, the forger Villette, and the Cardinal were put on trial. The latter dignitary was cleared of all blame but Villette was sentenced to be banished from the kingdom. Jeanne de la Motte was found guilty of initiating the plot, the sentence being that she should be whipped, branded on both shoulders with the letter ‘V’ (voleuse, thief), and imprisoned for lif
e.

  On hearing the sentence, Charles-Henri, the public executioner, sought clarification of that part which stipulated that the prisoner should be ‘beaten and birched naked’; the ambiguous reply he was given was that he was to arrange the affair to take place as discreetly as possible, and to temper the severity of the sentence with humanity. The Comtesse was not aware of the sentence for, as was the judicial custom, the horrific details would not be disclosed to her until the actual day on which they were to be administered.

  On 21 July 1786, the day of retribution, Charles-Henri was sent for and told that the prisoner had shown great displays of temper whilst in prison and would no doubt do so when informed of her sentence. Aware of his responsibilities and also that, rather than delegate it to an underling, he would have to administer the beating himself (the Comtesse being of noble blood), he realised that he would have to take all measures necessary to minimise any disturbance. Going to the prison, he told the gaoler’s wife to inform the Comtesse that she was wanted in the corridor by her counsel. As soon as the prisoner left the cell, the executioner’s assistants seized her arms as, on seeing them, she desperately tried to escape.

  Charles-Henri was able to have a good look at his victim. He later wrote:

  ‘She was rather small in stature . . . her expressive mouth was large and her eyes rather small. What was remarkable was the thickness and length of her hair and the whiteness of her skin, the smallness of her hands and her feet. She wore a silk déshabillé, striped brown and white, and covered with small nosegays of roses, and her head was covered with a small cap.’

  Held firmly by the assistants and also surrounded by four police officers, the Comtesse trembled slightly as Charles-Henri said, ‘We wish you to listen to your judgement, madame.’ She was led to the hall, where the clerk proclaimed the verdict of guilty; as he did so, her eyes rolled in their sockets and she bit her lip, her hitherto pretty face a mask of fury. When the clerk came to the penalties her rage exploded into uncontrollable violence, a protracted struggle ensuing between her and her escorts.

  Eventually overpowered, she was then tied up and carried down to the public courtyard where the scaffold awaited. Despite it being only six o’clock in the morning, a crowd of hundreds had gathered, and as her bonds were loosened, she ran towards the edge of the scaffold, a further frantic struggle taking place as, with an effort, they managed to strip the clothing from her and force her to lie down on the bench so that Charles-Henri could administer the beating.

  A vivid description of what followed was portrayed in a journal written by Nicolas Ruault:

  ‘Her whole body was revealed – her superb body, so exquisitely proportioned. At the flash of those white thighs and breasts, the rabble broke the stunned silence with whistles, catcalls and shouted obscenities. The prisoner slipped from his grasp, the executioner, branding iron in hand, had to follow her as she writhed and rolled across the paving stones of the courtyard. The delicate flesh sizzled under the red-hot iron. A light bluish vapour floated about her loosened hair. At that moment her entire body was seized with a convulsion so violent that the second letter ‘V’ was applied, not to her shoulder, but on her breast, her beautiful breast. Mme de la Motte’s tortured body writhed in one last convulsive moment. Somehow she found strength enough to turn and sink her teeth into the executioner’s shoulder, through the leather vest, to the flesh, bringing blood. Then she fainted.’

  On recovering she was taken back by coach to the prison where, as the vehicle slowed down, she tried to throw herself under the wheels. In her cell she vainly tried once more to commit suicide by choking herself with a corner of her bed sheet. But her imprisonment lasted, not for life, as sentenced by the court, but for a brief ten months, for with the help of a sentry whom she bribed, she escaped to England disguised as a man and joined her husband in London, where she lived until her death in 1791.

  In 1581, having penned seditious writings against Queen Elizabeth’s proposed wedding plans, John Stubbs was sentenced to have the offending hand amputated. Just as the executioner positioned his meat cleaver on the joint of his victim’s right wrist and raised the mallet to strike it, Stubbs, patriotic almost beyond belief, raised his hat with his other hand and, waving it in the air, shouted, ‘God save the Queen!’

  William Prynne, MP

  The one thing a seventeenth-century author and Member of Parliament should never have done was offend members of the royal family, yet that was exactly what William Prynne did when he wrote a book criticising the theatrical profession because one person who loved acting was the Queen (Henrietta Maria) herself. Her husband, Charles I, was so furious that Prynne not only found himself serving twelve months in prison, but was also fined £5,000. Nor was that all, for what really hurt, in more ways than one, was that his sentence included being taken to Westminster where the public executioner removed one of his ears, and from thence to Cheapside, where the other was similarly amputated. Nor was the front of his face overlooked; an additional penalty required his nose to be slit down the centre. One hopes that he could see without the need for spectacles or pince-nez.

  Far from being cowed into submission, the now no longer good-looking author proceeded to publish pamphlets criticising the bishops, hardly a wise move, for once again he was brought to trial. In court a member of the bench ordered the usher to expose the prisoner’s scars. The official did so, pushing back Prynne’s flowing locks to reveal a stub of gristle protruding from one side of his head.

  ‘I thought that Mr Prynne had no ears at all,’ quoth one of the judges, ‘but methinks he hath ears after all!’ Determined to deprive him of what little remained of his sole surviving aural organ, the court sentenced him to lose the stub, to be branded and imprisoned for life – and to be fined another £5,000.

  So one fine day in 1637 the appropriately named Gregory Brandon heated two irons, ‘S’ and ‘L’, for Schismatic Libeller (heretical libeller) and applied them, one to each of William’s cheeks. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment he must have applied one iron upside down, and so had to burn it in again but at least was compassionate enough to ask the attendant surgeon to relieve the agony by applying a plaster. That having been done, Brandon continued to carry out the rest of the court’s sentence by cutting off the residue of Prynne’s ear; such a tricky bit of surgery that in so doing, he sliced off some of Prynne’s cheek as well.

  In 1635, while on his way to Tyburn and execution, Thomas Witherington said to the sheriff ’s deputy, ‘I owe some money to the landlord of the Three Cups Inn a little further on and I’m afraid I’ll be arrested for debt as I go past his door, so could we detour down Shoe Lane and Drury Lane so we don’t get stopped at the inn, and so miss my appointment at Tyburn?’

  The deputy, entering into the spirit of it, said that he couldn’t alter the cart’s route, but if they were stopped by the innkeeper, he, the deputy, would certainly go bail for Thomas. And so Witherington, ‘not thinking he had such a good friend to stand by him in time of need, rode very contentedly to Tyburn.’

  Burned at the Stake

  Catherine Hayes

  At dawn on 2 March 1726 a watchman found a man’s head and a bloody bucket in a dock near Horseferry Road, Westminster. The head was taken to St Margaret’s graveyard and, having been washed of the blood and dirt, it was displayed on a pole for three days for purposes of identification, and then placed in a large glass container full of spirits and shown to anyone who wished to see it. Three weeks later it was recognised as being that of a well-to-do man named John Hayes who lived in Chelsea, and suspicion fell on his wife Catherine. She was arrested and expressed a desire to see the head; on doing so she kissed the container and begged to have a lock of the content’s hair.

  While she was being interrogated, it was reported that the limbs and torso of a man had been found wrapped in blankets, lying in a pond in Marylebone Fields near the Farthing Pie House. Further enquiries elicited the fact that at a party in the Hayes’ house, at which two other m
en had been present, a quarrel had started, during which Hayes was murdered with a hatchet by one of the men, Billings, whereupon Catherine had said, ‘We must take off his head and make away with it, or it will betray us.’ And she, together with Billings and the other man, Thomas Wood, cut it off with the latter’s pocket knife, put it in a bucket and threw it into the Thames. Catherine had next suggested that the body should be put in a box, taken by coach to Marylebone, and there thrown into the pond. As it was too large for the box, she then suggested that it should be cut into pieces.

  All three were confined in Newgate Prison and put on trial. Billings and Wood, found guilty of murder, were hanged, Billings’ corpse being later gibbeted. Catherine Hayes was charged with Petty, or Petit, Treason, and accordingly sentenced to be burned to death (High Treason was the crime of plotting or causing the death of the sovereign, the ‘leader’ of the nation; the penalty was to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Petty Treason was that of causing the death of the husband, the ‘leader’ of the household, and if committed by his wife she was sentenced to be burned).

  Catherine Hayes Decapitating Her Husband

  Catherine Hayes was drawn on a sledge to Tyburn where she was chained to a stake, kindling and brushwood being piled around her. A rope around her neck was then passed through a hole in the stake, but it was reported that: