The Executioner by Katherine Pym

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A story of 17th c London, medicine & the theatre

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Executioners are interesting although it is not easy to find a lot of data on these guys.  I know of two who were completely different. One was thoughtful, the other a menace to the public... 

The Guillotine during the Fr.Revolution, a humane way to die.

Charles-Henri Sanson was the executioner during the French Revolution. He executed Danton, Robespierre, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Before Camille Desmoulins was guillotined, he handed Sanson a locket of his wife’s hair. “Please return this to my wife’s mother.” 

Sanson did. While he was at the Duplessis’ household, Camille’s mother-in-law learned her daughter would be executed. Afraid Sanson would be recognized as the one who guillotined Camille, and would execute Lucile, Madame Duplessis’ daughter, he dashed away from their house, mournful of his vocation. 

Charles-Henri Sanson

Due to the caste system of the time, the offspring of executioners in France were never allowed any other vocation but that of an executioner, and he must marry an executioner’s daughter, thus keeping their grisly profession within a lower social stratum, and within the family. (Everyone must have been related. How many executioners could there have been in France in a given year?)  

They were not allowed to live in town but at its outskirts. One of Sanson’s descendants was a known herbalist. People came to him for cures. Another Sanson, who could not bear a life of executing people, committed suicide. 

Another well-known executioner was Jack Ketch. English executioners were taught several ways to execute an individual; i.e., with fire, the ax, and the rope. I’m not sure if Ketch was very proficient in his vocation or a complete fool. He botched most of his executions.  

Jack Ketch, an ugly dude inside & out

The hanging knot is supposed to be placed on the side of the neck so that when the poor wretch is thrust off the back of a cart, his neck should break, but Jack liked to put the knot at the back of the neck. This meant long strangulation. Family members were forced to run under the Tyburn hanging tree, grab the wretch’s legs and yank down, hoping somehow for a quick end.

When Jack used the ax, he knocked the blade against the person’s neck several times before the head came off.  One fellow he tortured was Lord Russell. It took four strokes of the ax before the man was finally dispatched. Because of his cruelty, a hue and cry reached the king. Jack Ketch was forced to write a note of apology to the Russell family, which was published in 1683. 

The Duke of Monmouth expressly requested Jack Ketch make good use of the ax: “Here,” said the duke, “are six guineas for you. Do not hack me as you did my Lord Russell. I have heard that you struck him three or four times. My servant will give you some gold if you do the work well.” 

The Tyburn Tree where Jack did his job so well

There is no evidence if Ketch took the money, but he disregarded the duke’s request. In a brutal attempt to torture the victim, it took several strokes to finally behead the lad.

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Many thanks to Wikicommons, Public Domain &

Old and New London: A Narrative Its History, Its People, and Its Places, The Western and Northern Suburbs, Vol. V.,  1892, by Edward Walford

Hangman Jack Ketch by Katherine Pym

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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.   

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.

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’. 

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.

Ketch not quite getting it right

Ketch died in 1686 or 1687.

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Thanks to:

Wikicommons, public domain

https://londonhistorians.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/jack-ketch-bodgy-axeman/

https://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/95619/The-vilest-prison-in-Britain

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