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| Tyburn Tree |
Hangmen have been hated
throughout history. After all, they killed people. Some of these men found
their calling so appealing, they took their jobs to a new level. Jack Ketch was
one of them.
Little is known of the man except
he was married to a woman named Katherine. Almost always drunk on and off the
job, he was a sadist and an artisan in his field.
He loved torture and knew how to
delay death. He’d purposefully botch jobs. When at a hanging, he tied the noose
around the victim’s neck so that the knot was awry. Once the prisoner was
shoved off the back end of a cart, their necks wouldn’t break and the person
would dance the jig while he choked to death. Loved ones would run under the gallows to aide in their deaths or pay Jack to bring a quick end. They hung on
the body until the trachea snapped.
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| A Gibbet |
Other lucrative perks included: Payment
to torture a person. He’d receive monies when he sent corpses to Surgeon’s Hall
for dissection. He auctioned off lengths of the noose at a nearby tavern, sell
the dead body’s shoes and clothing.
For the dead who committed treason,
Ketch quartered them beneath the gallows. When he gibbeted corpses, he’d
retreat to his chambers (later called Ketch’s Kitchen) in Newgate Prison, where
he parboiled the cadavers then covered them in pitch to keep the flesh from
rotting too quickly. These gibbets, a large cage, were hung at crossroads or busy byways as a warning to
passersby.
Ketch was
not a good executioner. He preferred other methods than the axe. Maybe, he wasn’t
burly enough to wield one, or he did not look handsome as he swung it toward a
person’s neck.
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| Lord Russell saying goodbye |
Lord
Russell, executed for high treason.
Ketch
chopped on Russell’s neck so often, missing his mark or only maiming him, (One
stroke hit his shoulder.) that those who watched became incensed by his
cruelty. Later, Ketch felt impelled to write an apology.
“'The
Apologie of John Ketch, Esquire in vindication of himself as to the execution
of the late Lord Russell, 21 July 1683.' Ketch repudiated the charge that he
had been given 'twenty guineas
the night before that after the first blow my lord should say, "You dog,
did I give you ten guineas
to use me so inhumanly?..”
This
exchange must have thrown off Ketch’s aim, but it does not explain how he could
have bungled the execution so badly. John Evelyn who wrote a journal during
this time, described the messy affair as done in a ‘butcherly fashion’.
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| Duke of Monmouth |
When it
came to the Duke of Monmouth in 1685, Ketch had not improved his disposition or
attempts to make a clean kill.
“At
Monmouth's execution, 15 July 1685, Ketch played a prominent part. Monmouth, in
his address to him on the scaffold, alluded to his treatment of Russell, and
this appears to have totally unnerved him. After three ineffectual blows he
threw down the axe with the words, 'I can't do it,' and was only induced to
complete his task by the threats of the sheriffs. Sir John Bramston {Autobiog. p.
192) and others confirm the fact that Ketch dealt at least five strokes, and
even then, according to Macaulay, he had recourse to a knife to completely
sever the head from the trunk (Macaulay, Hist.; Somers Tracts, x. 264-5).”
John
Evelyn again at the execution, he wrote that the crowds would have torn Ketch
to pieces had he not been guarded.
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| Ketch not quite getting it right |
Ketch died
in 1686 or 1687.
~*~*~*~
Thanks to:
Wikicommons, public domain
Hanson, Neil, The Great Fire of London, in that Apocalypic
Year, 1666, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., NJ USA 2002
Sidney
Lee, editor, Dictionary of National
Biography, Vol XXXI, Kennett-Lambart, Macmillan and Co. NY, London, 1892
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