Tag: murderer
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On This Day in 1934, Ethel Lillie Major.
Normally this time of year would be cause for celebration, a time of Christmas cheer and goodwill to all men. That wasn’t the case for Ethel Major who stood condemned for the murder of her husband Arthur. For her the previous couple of days had been spent sobbing and incoherent as she pondered her imminent…
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On This Day in 1901 – Marcel Faugeron at Newgate Prison, Henry Pierrepoint’s First Hanging.
Hangings weren’t unusual at London’s Newgate Prison. In Fact, in 1901 a British prisoner was hanged every few weeks on average. The execution of French Army deserter and murderer Maurice Faugeron, however, was a singular event in British penal history. It was the first time the name Pierrepoint drew attention Not Albert, nor Albert’s…
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I wrote a book.
Originally posted on Crimescribe: ? It’s been quite some time since I last posted ere, but I have been extremely busy with paid work and earning a living. Part of that has been writing my first book. Criminal Curiosities is a collection of crooks, all with something about their crime, trial or punishment that is…
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On This Day in 1953 – Louisa Merrifield, the Blackpool Poisoner.
It’s a fact that, for all their ruthlessness and guile, murderers can and do make the most idiotic mistakes. Louisa Merrifield was certainly one of them. Born in 1906, Merrifield was a liar, a fraudster, a cheat and ultimately a murderer. Today in 1953 her criminal career ended abruptly at the end of Albert Pierrepoint’s…
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On This Day in 1924 – Howard Hinton, Georgia’s first electrocution.
It’s common to find ‘Peachtree Bandit’ Frank Dupre, armed robber and murderer executed on September 1, 1921 with Luke McDonald, listed as the last man to hang in Georgia. He wasn’t. That was Arthur Meyers, a murderer hanged at Augusta on June 17, 1931 for a murder committed in March, 1924. McDonald, despite dying with…
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On This Day in 1963: New York State’s Last Execution, Eddie Lee Mays.
August 15, 1963 was an historic day in New York’s penal history, although nobody involved knew it at the time. New York’s lawmakers didn’t know it. the Warden of New York’s infamous Sing Sing Prison (now the Ossining Correctional Facility) didn’t know either. Dow Hover (New York’s last ‘State Electrician’) was also unaware, it was…
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On This Day in 1964 – The Last Executions In Britain.
As regular readers are aware, I cover true crime here and the death penalty is a regular feature. Being an abolitionist, it’s with some small satisfaction that we’re going to look at Britain’s last executions. To the minute, if you happen to be reading this at 8am. On August 13, 1964 Gwynne Evans and Peter…
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On This Day in 1890; William Kemmler – The World’s First Legal Electrocution.
August 6, 1890 saw the dawn of a new age for criminal history. At Auburn Prison in upstate New York there was the execution.of one William Kemmler, condemned for murdering girlfriend Matilda Ziegler with a hatchet. There was nothing remarkable about Kemmler (an alcoholic vegetable hawker with a vicious temper) or about his crime. There…
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Watching the detectives: The arrest of the inappropriately-named Daniel Good.
With Good safely in his grave, the Metropolitan Police had to reconsider having only uniformed officers in their ranks. Had some officers been working out of uniform, they reasoned, they might have caught him far sooner. With that in mind a permanent cadre of non-uniformed officers. the Detective Department, was set up in August, 1842.…
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On This Day in 1949; Germaine Leloy-Godefroy, last French woman to face the guillotine.
She was the last woman in France to face the dreaded ‘Timbers of Justice.’
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