Centenaries - whole and half

[sdreid]

250 years ago - 1765 November 13 - Patrick Ogilvie is executed by hanging in Scotland for the murder of his brother Thomas. Catherine Ogilvie, who was Thomas' wife and Patrick's lover, was also sentenced to death but was given a tempory stay so she could bare the child she was carrying. After the birth and while preparations were in motion to carry out her execution, she escaped from prison and was never recaptured.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1965 November 12 - A Chicago prostitute, Ernestine Williams is stabbed to death by Donald Lang. The killer was determined to be unfit to stand trial and sent to a mental institution. In 1971, Lang was freed then killed another woman the year following and was returned to the asylum.

[sdreid]

150 years ago - 1865 November 10 - In DC, Henry Wirz is hanged for war crimes. He had been sentenced to death for his actions as commandant in the Confederate POW camp at Andersonville, Georgia.

[Ginger]

Baniszewski was convicted of first degree murder and given a life sentence but was released in 1985 on grounds of "good behavior" and died in 1990 from cancer.

I lived in Indiana at the time, and to say that people were scandalized doesn't even come close to the truth.

[sdreid]

450 years ago - 1565 November 1 - William Fynne dies from a mysterious illness. A local woman named Agnes Waterhouse is eventually charged and convicted for causing his death by bewitchment. The case featured several bizarre elements including a supposed talking cat named Satan. Watterhouse was hanged in the following Summer and was the first woman to be executed for witchcraft in England.

50 years ago - 1965 November 1 - In Poland, a young hotel receptionist named Janka Popielski is stabbed and mutilated with a screwdriver by Luciak Staniak. She was not the first murder victim of the serial killer, also known as The Red Spider due to the writing style he used in his correspondences to authorities, nor will she be his last. Staniak was finally captured in 1967 and sent to an insane asylum.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1965 October 26 - In Indiana, Sylvia Likens, 16, dies after weeks of torture by Gertrude Baniszewski, 46, her children and youth minions. When Mrs. Baniszewski wasn't torturing girls to death, she occupied her time playing around with her 14-year-old boyfriend who was also involved in the crime. The toyboy, Ricky Hobbs, was convicted on a lesser charge and sent to prison. Baniszewski was convicted of first degree murder and given a life sentence but was released in 1985 on grounds of "good behavior" and died in 1990 from cancer.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1965 October 21 - The remains of John Kilbride, 12, are unearthed from an English moor. John had been slain in 1963 and was the second known victim of British serial child killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. By this time they were under arrest and were eligible for the death penalty because they had killed more than one person in seperate events but capital punishment for murder was abolished in Britain before their trial was concluded. Brady is still incarcerated however Myra died in 2002 while serving her sentence.

[sdreid]

150 years ago - 1865 October 20 - In Tennessee, Confederate guerrilla Champ Ferguson is executed for war crimes. He had killed numerous wounded and captured Union soldiers as well as some civilians he considered to be Union sympathizers.

[Mayerling]

Yes, I agree, Jeff. By the way, what a strange character John Amery was, apparently. No moral compass whatsoever and a very strange personal life. A trouble to his parents from the time he was small.

His case is barely known in the U.S., but it was really big in post-war England, as his father Leo Amery was a leading figure in the Tory Party (Leo was the one who in a moment of total disgust after the Norway fiasco in 1940 told Prime Minister Nevil Chamberlain to go). I first read of John in Rebecca West's "A New Meaning of Treason", and of how he pleaded guilty to the charge (thus making a public trial unnecessary). There has been much discussion of this decision of his ever since, as to whether or not John was protecting his family from revelations about his own life or not. The problem was that while a guilty verdict after a trial might have been reduced by the legal system out of some compassion or feature that had come out in the trial, a guilty plea made that action impossible - so John Amery was hanged.

I always was fascinated by the Joyce Case, and the "comedy" about the British, German, and United States citizenship and passport questions as of September 1, 1939. I have never seen anything like it elsewhere.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

200 years ago - 1815 October 13 - The former King of Naples, Joachim Murat is executed by a firing squad after being judged a traitor by his enemies. Murat bravely faced his executioners unblindfolded, asking only that they spare his face.

One of two marshals of Napoleon to be executed for treason after the defeat at Waterloo (the other, of course, was Michel Ney). Marshal Brune was murdered by an anti-Napoleon mob. Decades later Marshal Mortier was killed in Fieschi's assassination attack on King Louis Philippe. Marshal Berthier apparently committed suicide while ill by jumping from a window (there is a question if he was also murdered). In another way Marshal Sebastiani would die due to an act of violence - his beloved daughter Fanny was the Duchesse de Choiseul-Pralin, whose husband Theobald killed her in 1847. Sebastiani, an important member of the Louis Philippe Court, never recovered from the loss and died in 1851.

Jeff

[John G]

200 years ago - 1815 October 13 - The former King of Naples, Joachim Murat is executed by a firing squad after being judged a traitor by his enemies. Murat bravely faced his executioners unblindfolded, asking only that they spare his face.

One of Napoleon's Marshals I believe. He also had a habit of placing his relatives on the thrones of Europe: Joseph, King Of Spain, Louis, King of Holland, and Jerome, King of Westphalia. However they all proved to be pretty inadequate.

[sdreid]

200 years ago - 1815 October 13 - The former King of Naples, Joachim Murat is executed by a firing squad after being judged a traitor by his enemies. Murat bravely faced his executioners unblindfolded, asking only that they spare his face.

[Rosella]

Yes, I agree, Jeff. By the way, what a strange character John Amery was, apparently. No moral compass whatsoever and a very strange personal life. A trouble to his parents from the time he was small.

[Mayerling]

The shooting of Edith Cavell certainly turned out to have been a serious blunder by the Germans, doesn't it? There were lurid accounts of her execution by 'German monsters' and her image appeared on posters and postcards for the duration of the war. Propaganda made her a martyr for the Allied cause, the last thing she would have wanted.

Wartime martyrdom is very selective (unless you have mass murders like the Armenian massacres of World War I, or the Jewish Shoah of World War II). In the American Revolution many people were hanged as spies or agents of the Americans, the British, the Tories, or whoever, but we only recall two: Nathan Hale hanged for spying for the Americans by the British, and Major John Andre hanged for his role in Benedict Arnold's 1780 treason plot (Andre was caught out of his uniform while trying to return to his lines).

In World War I there were many people who were executed, like the German spy Carl Lody, or the pro-German French agent Bolo Pasha. But the two we remember are Ms Cavell and Mata Hari.

In World War II the names of executed people on the Allied side are not too well recalled (the Nazi sabateurs off the submarine off Long Island in 1942, and the unfortunate U.S. private Eddie Slovik for desertion in 1944). More names pop up in Nazi Germany, with the Scholls and their allies in the White Rose pacifist movement of 1943, and the July 1944 Rastenberg bomb plot conspirators of 1944-45. One also adds figures like Dietrich Bonhoffer. After the war the war criminals are hanged at Nuremburg and Tokyo, but there are two notable British treason trial figures: William "Lord Haw-Haw" Joyce and John Amery.

Jeff

[Rosella]

The shooting of Edith Cavell certainly turned out to have been a serious blunder by the Germans, doesn't it? There were lurid accounts of her execution by 'German monsters' and her image appeared on posters and postcards for the duration of the war. Propaganda made her a martyr for the Allied cause, the last thing she would have wanted.