Centenaries - whole and half

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1965 October 6 - Edward Evans, 17, is attacked with an axe and strangled with an electrical cord by Ian Brady in the killer's home. Brady's girlfiend and accomplice Myra Hindley is present as is Hindley's brother-in-law, David Smith. Mr. Smith agrees to help the pair dispose of the body the following day then leaves to report what he's seen to police. The two British serial child killers are arrested and sent to prison for life. They are believed to have slain at least five in the past two years including a 10-year-old girl whose screams they recorded on audio tape as she was being raped, tortured and killed. Brady is still confined but Hindley died of natural causes in 2002 while still incarcerated.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1915 October 8 - An Oregon rancher named William Booth is shot and killed. His wife Anna and a man named William Branson, who is 23 and about 12 years her junior, are rumored to be secret lovers and are arrested for the crime. After several judicial balks, the couple are convicted for the killing. There were significant doubts regarding the guilt of this couple and at least one man confessed to the murder while the pair were incarcerated. Mostly as a result, Anna was paroled in early 1920 and Mr. Branson was granted an unconditional pardon later in that same year. Today, the solution to the crime remains inconclusive.

[curious4]

50 years ago - 1965 October 6 - Edward Evans, 17, is attacked with an axe and strangled with an electrical cord by Ian Brady in the killer's home. Brady's girlfiend and accomplice Myra Hindley is present as is Hindley's brother-in-law, David Smith. Mr. Smith agrees to help the pair dispose of the body the following day then leaves to report what he's seen to police. The two British serial child killers are arrested and sent to prison for life. They are believed to have slain at least five in the past two years including a 10-year-old girl whose screams they recorded on audio tape as she was being raped, tortured and killed. Brady is still confined but Hindley died of natural causes in 2002 while still incarcerated.

This was so horrible. Still can't listen to that Christmas carol. :-(.

C4

[Mayerling]

50 years ago - 1965 October 6 - Edward Evans, 17, is attacked with an axe and strangled with an electrical cord by Ian Brady in the killer's home. Brady's girlfiend and accomplice Myra Hindley is present as is Hindley's brother-in-law, David Smith. Mr. Smith agrees to help the pair dispose of the body the following day then leaves to report what he's seen to police. The two British serial child killers are arrested and sent to prison for life. They are believed to have slain at least five in the past two years including a 10-year-old girl whose screams they recorded on audio tape as she was being raped, tortured and killed. Brady is still confined but Hindley died of natural causes in 2002 while still incarcerated.

I wonder if Brady ever has nightmares about what happened or regrets or attacks of conscience. Probably not.

[Ginger]

I wonder if Brady ever has nightmares about what happened or regrets or attacks of conscience. Probably not.

He never really struck me as having a conscience. I'm sure he understands that other people find his deeds appalling, but I really don't think he understands why in anything more than an academic way.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1965 October 9 - While returning home alone from a lake outing with friends, Elsie Frost, 14, is stabbed in the head and back as she passes through a West Yorkshire tunnel. One of the two stabs to the back penetrates her heart and kills her. No motive for the assault was ever determined and the murder was never solved.

[sdreid]

450 years ago - 1565 October 12 - In Florida, Jean Ribault, a French naval commander, and majority of his men are executed after surrendering to Spanish forces. Ribault and most of his men were Protestants and thus judged heretics by the Spaniards. Boys and Catholics in Ribault's force were spared.

100 years ago - 1915 October 12 - Edith Cavell, a British nurse and noncombatant, is executed by a German firing squad in Belgium. She had been charged with aiding the Allies.

100 years ago - 1915 October 12 - In Idaho, Robert Dooley dies from arsenic given him by his wife, the former Lyda Trueblood. She also murdered his brother, her daughter and four future husbands with the same substance. The serial killer was sent to prison and died in 1958 from natural causes.

[Mayerling]

450 years ago - 1565 October 12 - In Florida, Jean Ribault, a French naval commander, and majority of his men are executed after surrendering to Spanish forces. Ribault and most of his men were Protestants and thus judged heretics by the Spaniards. Boys and Catholics in Ribault's force were spared.

The incident (Francis Parkman deals with it in his "Pioneers of France in North America"). The incident (seven years before the anti-Huguenot St. Bartholemew's Day Massacres) was avenged actually within a year. A Spanish fort was built near the site, and it got attacked by a French fleet - and the Spanish were massacred this time.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

100 years ago - 1915 October 12 - Edith Cavell, a British nurse and noncombatant, is executed by a German firing squad in Belgium. She had been charged with aiding the Allies.

After the "Lusitania" torpedoing in May 1915 this became the biggest anti-German piece of propaganda of the War up to that time. It would be still big during World War II, when a film, "The Woman the Germans Shot" was made. Sadly Edith is somewhat forgotten today.

Ironically Edith was helpful to any foreign soldiers in her care. There was some evidence she helped some German soldiers earlier who were in danger of being captured. If so, the Germans "conveniently" forgot this.

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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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