William Marwood

William Marwood

William Marwood (* 1818 in Goulceby with Asterby, East Lindsey , † September 4, 1883 in Horncastle , Lincolnshire ) was an executioner commissioned by the British government . He developed as a long fall (long drop) become known technique of hanging .

Life

Foundry Street, Horncastle, where William Marwood lived until his death

William Marwood's shoemaker's workshop on Church Lane, Horncastle

William Marwood was born the fifth of ten children of William and Elizabeth, baptized on November 8, 1818, and learned the shoemaking trade in his father's family business. He was a master shoemaker in Bolingbroke, Lincolnshire, before opening a shop on Church Lane in Horncastle in 1855, making and selling shoes. He also worked as a Methodist preacher in Horncastle. At a young age he married Jessie, several years his senior. The couple lived on nearby Foundry Street. In 1867, a few months after her death at the age of 61, he married the widow Ellen Andrews of Northallerton , North Yorkshire .

At the age of 54 he persuaded the director of Lincoln Castle Prison to allow him to carry out an execution. In the run-up to this, he had already tried out different pitches and weights and learned about anatomy. He is also credited with introducing the split trapdoor. Marwood developed the long case technique which ensured that the delinquent would die instantly of a broken neck from the fall . He thought this was a more humane method than slow death by strangulation in the short fall technique . It also reduced the burden on the prison warden and his staff, who were required to witness the executions at close range after the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868 abolished public executions . The efficient manner in which he carried out the hanging of William Frederick Horry on April 1, 1872 contributed to his appointment as executioner of London and Middlesex in 1874. He succeeded William Calcraft and received an annual salary of £ 20 and £ 10 for each execution. Marwood also introduced tables that measure the rope length required depending on the weight of the convict. Marwood died in 1883 of pneumonia and jaundice . After his death, the suspicion arose that the Fenian Brotherhood had harmed his health in some way, and so an autopsy was performed on behalf of the Minister of the Interior, but the death was determined from natural causes. He was buried in the graveyard of Trinity Church, Horncastle, Lincolnshire.

Known executions

Blue plaque on William Marwood's shoemaker's shop on Church Lane

In his nine years as an executioner, Marwood executed 176 convicts, including eight women. He carried out 26 executions in Ireland and another seven in Scotland.

• William Frederick Horry , the first delinquent executed by Marwood for the murder of his wife and the first person to be hanged by the long case method at Lincoln Castle on April 1, 1872.
• Henry Wainwright, a brush maker who murdered his mistress Harriet Lane in September 1874 and buried her body in a warehouse he owned. When he went bankrupt the following year, he dug up the body again in September 1875 and was arrested while trying to remove the body. The execution took place in Newgate Prison on December 21, 1875 . This criminal case attracted more public attention than the crimes of Jack the Ripper .
• Charles Peace, a thief and multiple murderer who was hanged in Armley Prison, Leeds , Yorkshire, on February 25, 1879.
• Kate Webster, an Irish maid hanged for the murder of her employer Julia Martha Thomas in London's Wandsworth Prison on July 29, 1879.
• Phoenix Park Murders : Joe Brady and four other members of the Irish National Invincibles , a radical faction of the Irish Republican Brotherhood , were hanged at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin in 1883. They murdered the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish and the Undersecretary for Ireland Thomas Henry Burkewith in Dublin's Phoenix Park .

popularity

A popular rhyme was circulating in Marwood's day:

If Pa killed Ma
Who'd kill Pa?
Marwood.

Gustave Doré drew Marwood while he was hanging Wainwright on December 21, 1875. The picture is entitled L'execution à Londres . A wax figure of Marwood hanging Charles Peace (with a piece of the original rope) was made for Madame Tussaud's wax museum. Marwood was the namesake of one of the two executioner characters in the British puppet theater Punch and Judy .

literature

• Douglas G. Browne: The Rise of Scotland Yard: A History of the Metropolitan Police . George G. Harrap & Co., London / Toronto / Wellington / Sydney 1956, p. 181
• Matt Fullerty: The Murderess and the Hangman . Biographical novella about Marwood's execution by Charles Peace and Kate Webster
• Adam L. Hargrave: Notable British Trials Series: Trial of George Henry Lamson . William Hodge & Co., London / Edinburgh / Glasgow 1912, 1951, pp. 210-213
• John Laurence: A History Of Capital Punishment . Sampson Low, Marston & Co., London 1930, pp. 114-120
• Leonard A. Parry: Some Famous Medical Trials . Charles Scribners' Sons, New York 1928, p. 226
• GC Boase, rev. J. Gilliland: Marwood, William (bap. 1818, d. 1883). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004, accessed August 17, 2019.

Web links

• Hanging and the executioners . Old Mersey Times

Individual evidence

1. ^ UK Parish Register Information: William Marwood
2. ^ William Marwood Hangman ( Memento July 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved April 4, 2015
3. ^ Brian P. Block, John Hostettler: Hanging in the balance: a history of the abolition of capital punishment in Britain . Waterside Press, 1997, ISBN 1-872870-47-3 , pp. 38-39.
4. ↑ Lost Lives: William Marwood ( Memento from November 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ GC Boase, rev. J. Gilliland: Marwood, William (bap. 1818, d. 1883). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004, accessed August 17, 2019.
6. ^ James Conway Walter: A history of Horncastle, from the earliest period to the present time . ( Memento of April 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Editor: WK Morton, 1908, p. 155
7. ^ William Marwood. 1818-1879 . Black Country Muse
8. ^ Judith Flanders: The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime . HarperCollins Publishers Limited, 2011, ISBN 0-00-724888-1 , pp. 338-343
9. ↑ Horace Bleackley: The hangmen of England: how they hanged and whom they hanged: the life story of “Jack Ketch” through two centuries . Taylor & Francis, 1929, ISBN 0-7158-1184-3 , p. 235
10. ^ Philip Lindsay: A mirror for ruffians . Ayer Publishing, 1939, Reprint, ISBN 0-8369-2799-0 , pp. 133-134
11. ^ Crime Novel Becomes Reality for GW English Professor . GW English News, English Department, George Washington University, October 28, 2010