Some Distinguished Victims of the Scaffold

Not all the wealth of woman’s tears can move authority to greater mercy on behalf of the red giant. The smug and closet-petted doctor, who cares naught for military matters, is bent on his French peace in spite of all that patron Pitt may say, and it seems a small matter to hang a mob-detested officer. “Soldiers a drug in the market – we are going to be friends with the good Buonaparte,” think Farmer George and his Council when they confabulate on Wednesday afternoon. The Caledonian pencil-notes are consulted, and cobwebs gather fast around the bewildered royal brain. Kingly thoughts dwell lovingly upon the royal prerogative of the gallows – a truly English pastime, worthy of a British prince whose blood has run itself clear of all Hanoverian coagulations. Chancellor Eldon, being interrogated, finds his load of learned lumber ill-digested for the moment, and doubts, and doubts, and doubts. Then some brave and discreet statesman – oblivion shrouds his illustrious name – mentions the mutineers of the ‘Fighting Téméraire’ a dozen or so of whom a few days before had ornamented the yard-arms at Spithead, and King and Council ponder deeply. Newgate howls have been ominous, Newgate cries have been eloquent, and the time-honoured platitude, “One law for rich, another law for poor,” has often ended in window – sometimes royal window – smashing. Mercy seems a great risk, far greater because of the ‘Téméraire’ yard-arm business than the unpopular pardon of Kenneth Mackenzie. On the other side there is the alluring picture of the great triumph of British equity – the balance of justice – ‘Téméraire’ rebels hanging on one side of the scale, and mob-hated Joseph Wall on the other. “Foreign nations please observe and copy!” A notable triumph for an English-born German prince. Like the peace that was to be, it seemed an experiment worth the while. Farmer George and Doctor Henry prove to have most forcible willpower in the Council, and when his Gracious Majesty posts off to Windsor at five o’clock, to drink tea with his Princesses, the Governor of Goree has been left for execution.

In the condemned cell that same evening the devoted wife and husband hope still for the reprieve that never comes. Keeper Kirby has promised the grief-stricken woman that she shall remain in the gaol till the last possible moment, and while the clock slowly beats its march to the hour of eleven the heart-rending tragedy unfolds its agonies.

“God bless you, my dear,” cries the giant in their last embrace. “Take care of the children. Let them think as well of me as you can.”

Then, while the Governor of the prison escorts the poor lady along the cold, dark corridors, she sobs forth her one piteous question for the hundredth time:

“Is there no hope?”

“Madam, I trust your wishes may be fulfilled,” replies Kirby. “But it is now a late hour, and I have received no orders.”

Sister Howard, who also has borne this terrible vigil, supports the fainting woman from the portals of the charnel-house, and their carriage rumbles away over the stones of Old Bailey. Even these loving friends have failed him, and the red giant must bear his last dismal journey alone. Two turnkeys watch over him, lest he may do himself injury, for he wears no fetters.

“It is a long night,” he exclaims about two o’clock, as he tosses wearily upon his couch.

Still, his voice is strong and resonant with its military ring, though his mighty form has sunk beneath a weight of torture into a mere gaunt framework of bones. Bread-and-water has been his diet since the sentence, and Sheriff Cox, although assiduous in his visits to the unhappy man, will not relax his stern rules. In a little while, as if he looked for sleep, he asks whether the scaffold will make a noise when it is dragged out into the street. With compassionate lie, they answer that it will not, but his thoughts dwell morbidly upon his destiny.

“I most earnestly request,” he tells his attendants, “that I may not be pulled by the heels when I am suffering.”

They attempt to appease him by the promise that it shall be done as he wishes, but he has seen hangings in plenty, and he knows what may happen.

“I hope that the fatal cord may be placed properly,” he persists, “and that I may be allowed to depart as fairly and easily as my sentence will allow.”

At last he falls asleep, and when the huge wooden machine lumbers between the prison doors with a sound that reverberates through the whole building, he is unconscious of what has happened. Also, it is not recorded that he heard the dread chaunt of the bellman outside in the Old Bailey:

“You that in the condemned hole do lie,Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die;Watch all, and pray, the hour is drawing near,That you before the Almighty must appear.”

About half-past five he awakes with a start as a mail-coach rumbles along Newgate Street.

“Is that the scaffold?” he demands, and they tell him no.

Once more he makes anxious inquiries about the methods of the hangman, and they satisfy him as well as they can. Shortly before seven he is led to the day-room of the Press Yard, where he is joined by Ordinary Forde, who, robed in full canonicals, with a great nosegay beneath his chin, seems prepared for a wedding day. A fire is smouldering on the hearth, and a nauseating smell of green twigs fills the chill stone chamber. Gaunt and terrible is the aspect of the red, untamable giant, who is meek and penitent, but with soul still unbowed. A yellow parchment-like texture is drawn tightly over his sunken features, and through their hollow sockets the piercing eyes shine as though in ghastly reflection to the glance of death – not the triumphant glitter thrown back by Death Magnificent, but the stony, frightful stare imparted by the Medusa of Shame. A suit of threads and patches hangs loosely upon his emaciated limbs – an old brown coat, swansdown vest, and blue pantaloons – a sorry garb for one who has worn a colonel’s uniform in his Majesty’s army. For a moment his piercing gaze falls upon Ordinary Forde.

“Is the morning fine?” is the strange, eager question. “Time hangs heavily,” the hollow far-away voice continues. “I am anxious for the close of this scene.”

As if in response to the wish, Jack Ketch’s lackey, a dwarf with face of a demon, draws near with his cords and binds the giant’s wrists.

“You have tied me very tight,” is the weary complaint.

“Loosen the knot,” commands absolute Forde, and the sulky wretch obeys with low mutterings.

“Thank you, sir,” murmurs the giant. “It is of little moment.” The green twigs upon the hearth crackle in a shower of sparks up the wide chimney, and a shovelful of coals is thrown upon the burning mass. Death’s piercing glitter flashes from the eyes of the dying man while his brain paints pictures in the flames. Then his lips move slowly:

“Ay, in an hour that will be a blazing fire.”

Ay, and you are thinking that in an hour, you poor, red, untamable giant will have finished your long torture, and be lying cold and still – while that fire blazes merrily. In an hour one loving, great-hearted woman will have entered upon the agony-penance that she must endure to the grave. In an hour your little ones will be children of a father upon whom his country has seared the brand of infamy – and these green twigs will have become a blazing fire! Sad – yea, saddest of words that could fall from human lips!

Then the demon of suspense torments the poor giant once again, and he turns to the Ordinary appealingly:

“Do tell me, sir – I am informed that I shall go down with great force; is that so?”

Ordinary’s thoughts cease for a moment to dwell lovingly upon his breakfast-gorge with the Sheriff – the epilogue to every hanging – and professional pride swells his portly soul. With reverent unction he explains the machinery of the gallows, speaking of ‘nooses and knots’ with all the mastery of expert, for Jim Botting and his second fiddle ‘Old Cheese’ are no better handicraftsmen than Ordinary hangman Forde. Presently he in his turn grows curious.

“Colonel Wall,” he inquires, “what kind of men were those under you at Goree?”

The haunting glance of death-shame fades from the piercing eyes, and through the portholes of his soul there flashes the living spirit of defiance.

“Sir,” he cries, “they sent me the very riff-raff!”

Suddenly the reverend Ordinary bethinks himself of his holy office, and plunges headlong into prayer; a contrast that must compel the tear of recording angel – smoke-reeking, unctuous, ale-fed Forde and contrite, half-starved, but invincible giant. Sheriff Cox and his myrmidons enter as the clock is striking eight. A look of eagerness passes over the cadaverous lineaments, a gaunt figure steps forward, and a firm, hollow voice murmurs:

“I attend you, sir.”

Although his head is bowed, his tread is that of the soldier on parade as they pass out into the keen winter air. A crowd of felons, destined soon for the gallows, is huddled in groups, here and there, within their courtyard den, and as the procession passes through the quadrangle they hurl forth curses of hell against the man who is marching to his death. The giant head falls lower, and the martial tread beats faster. “The clock has struck,” he cries, as he quickens his step. There is a halt in another chamber beyond the Press Yard. An ingenious law-torment is demanded – the Sheriff’s receipt for a living corpse. A legal wrangle follows; the red giant’s body is not described in good set terms, and there is much quill-scratching, while the giant gazes calmly. Then the march is resumed down the loathsome passages, and the soul of Greatheart warms as eternity draws nearer.

In another moment, the most wondrous prospect of his life opens before his eyes. High upon the stage, with back turned to the towering wall, as befits a soldier, his vision ranges over a tossing sea of savage faces, a human torrent that fills the wide estuary, surging full and fierce to the limits of its boundaries. Then a mighty tumult rises from the depths of the living whirlpool, the exultant roar of a myriad demons thirsting for blood. At last the giant limbs tremble, as the shouts swell fiercer and louder still – three distinct terrific huzzas – unmistakable to trained ears; they come from the angry throats of a thousand British soldiers, the fierce war-cry learnt from the cruel Cossack long ago. The red tyrant is delivered to the mob at last. Some say it is the shout of punters delighted to have won their bets, and loudly press the strange apology; but reason, giving preference to comparative methods, calls to mind the savage exultation that hailed the atonement of skipper Lowry and Mother Brownrigg, of Burke and Palmer, and muses thoughtfully upon this balance of justice.

The gnarled, bony fingers of the red giant grasp the hand of Sheriff Cox, while the foul-odoured beast fumbles with the halter around his neck, withdrawing the noose and slipping it once more over his head. The victim turns to the plump Ordinary with a last request:

“I do not wish to be pulled by the heels.”

The priest deftly draws the cap over the gleaming, shrivelled face, and mumbles from his book. No clanging bell disturbs the peace of the sufferer, for he is a murderer, and this blessed torture is not for those of his class. The bareheaded crowd gazes with rapture upon the wooden scaffold, shorn of its appalling garb of black – another mercy vouchsafed to him who dies guilty of a brother’s blood. Suddenly there is a second mighty shout of triumph. The rope hangs plump between the two posts, and the tall, gaunt form is swaying in empty air. In another moment there are cries of horror, but of horror mingled with applause. The noose has formed an even collar around the giant’s neck, while the knot has slipped to the back of his head, which is still upright and unbent. Horrible convulsions seize the huge, struggling frame. It is a terrific scene – most glorious spectacle of suffering that a delighted crowd has ever gazed upon – Jack Ketch has bungled! Minutes pass, and still the hanging man battles fiercely for breath. Minutes pass, and not a hand is stretched forth to give him relief. Sheriff’s eyes meet eyes of Ordinary in mutual horror. Sheriff’s watch is dragged from its fob, and when the little steel hands have stretched to a right angle, at last a hasty signal is made to the expectant hangman. Two butchers beneath the scaffold seize upon the sufferer’s legs, and soon his agony of more than a fourth of an hour is brought to a close. A fierce shock, indeed, to reason and the balance of justice argument – a fiercer shock still to those that cling lovingly to the tenets of Hebrew mythology.

With a sigh of relief Sheriff and Ordinary hurry away to coffee and grilled kidneys in Mr Kirby’s breakfast-room, leaving the crowd to watch the victim hanging – which crowd does with gusto, scrambling fiercely a little later for a bit of the rope, which Rosy Emma, worthy helpmate of Jack Ketch, retails at twelvepence an inch, and, furthermore, gloating with delight upon the cart that presently takes the wasted form of the dead giant to the saws and cleavers of Surgeons’ Hall dissecting-room, Saffron Hill. Tight hands at a bargain, these bloodletting, clyster-loving old leeches! They demand fifty, some say a hundred, guineas from the giant’s friends, and they pocket the ransom before they surrender their corpse. Devoted old leeches: sic vos non vobis– we are the learned legatees of your dabblings in anatomy. A few days later – it is a Thursday morning, numbered the 4th of February in the calendar – a few merciful friends bear the giant’s coffin to a resting-place in St Pancras Churchyard. Epitaph does not appear, for cant refuses to superscribe the true one – “England did not expect him to do his duty!”

As we look back upon the glowing perspective of our history, there are few scenes that stand out in fiercer grandeur than the flogging of Goree. Foul-smelling, Lilliputian picture, it shines, nevertheless, with the same unconquerable spirit of genius that clapped a telescope to the blind eye at Copenhagen. One untamable hero, armed merely with a crimson rope, faces a hundred cut-throats, and, within view of the ramparts of the enemy, cows them into licking his shoes, declaring that an insult to himself is an insult to his King. Truly a David and Goliath picture.

“Wrong,” cry Farmer George and Doctor Henry, glancing timidly, as with mystical prescience, down the vista of ages to Board School days, and quaking at swish of cat and clank of triangles, guilty of as deep anachronism as he who hurled a shell at the tomb of the Mahdi, to the great disturbance of bread-and-milk nerves. For birch twigs and cat – essential forerunners of Standards Six – had much Peninsular and Waterloo work in front of them, and it was just as easy to chain red giants as to hang them.

“Wrong,” cry Farmer Merciful and Doctor Justice, busy with knife and steel, getting ready a keen edge for the grey, gallant head of poor crazy Despard, and eager to paste the town with balance of justice placards – “‘Téméraire’ insubordinates, and red giant of Goree – both hanged. Let foreign nations please copy.” And, doubtless, a burst of inordinate Gallic laughter hailed this jeu d’esprit, for Gallic neighbours had other things for the encouragement of red giants – a field-marshal’s baton and the like.

There is no place for the musings of modern milksop. The deeds of the parents of his grandfather are for him merely a tale that is told, and as he closes the family record his bread-and-milk soul must only give thanks that his lot is cast in more pleasant places. Modern eye can but discern the red giants of a bygone world through a glass darkly. Cruel, crimson, unscrupulous – they were all that: children of murkiness even as we are children of light, and thus let comparison end. One hundred years – as great a barrier as a million miles of ether – has divided our ages, et nos mutamur. A thousand pencils – Saxon and Caledonian – have banished with Dunciad scorn the birchen wand that used to betwig merrily the tender fifteen-year-old flesh of ribald lad and saucy maiden. Triangle and cat, rope’s-end and grating, ceased years ago to terrify the hearts of rolling Jack and swaggering Tommy. Good Mr Fairchild no longer takes little Harry and little Emily to view the carrion of the gibbet, exempli gratiâ, for the modern Mr Fairchild does not remember that such instruments ever had their proper places in the land. Red giants, too – only to be let loose when occasion required – had their proper places in the good old times of birch-rod and gibbet, of Farmer George and Doctor Henry, who found much use for them in the taming of the Corsican ogre. Modern milksop, however, will scarcely concede that such times were good, or, at least, most wrong when inconsistent! Be that as it may, the cat and rope’s-end of the crimson giant were a portion of Britain’s bulwarks, in spite of inconsistent headshakings of Farmer George and Doctor Henry, of Brother Bragge and Brother Hiley – all of which, fortunately, is as repulsive to the soul of modern milksop as the dice and women of Charles Fox, or the two-bottle thirst of the Pilot who weathered the Storm. Lucky, perhaps, for bread-and-milk gentleman that he had fathers before him.

No other case bears the same resemblance to that of Joseph Wall as the incident of Kenneth Mackenzie and his cannon-ball execution. Some, indeed, have a certain affinity, and exhibit the national conscience overwhelmed by periodical fits of morality – a hysterical turning-over of new leaves. A few days before the red giant of Goree passed through the debtor’s door, Sir Edward Hamilton of the ‘Trent’ frigate was dismissed from the navy for an act of cruel tyranny, only to be reinstated in a few months. Thomas Picton, England’s “bravest of the brave,” was shaken by the same wave of humanity. Yet, after all, the guilt of the Admiral or the innocence of the hero of Waterloo were of little moment to a nation that continued to mutilate its enemies in the fashion of a dervish of the desert, under the sacred name of high treason. For, years later, the bloody heads of Brandreth and Thistlewood stained an English scaffold. Luckily for their oppressors, the victims of Hamilton and Picton – officers who did not stand in the desperate position of the Governor of Goree – survived their punishments, not having a leech-Ferrick to reckon with, else Farmer George and Doctor Henry, in the face of those dangling ‘Téméraire’ seamen, would have been in an awkward dilemma.

The case of George Robert Fitzgerald, often held forth as a parallel by contemporary pressmen, has little similarity to that of Wall. Both belonged to the 69th Foot, they were antagonists in a Galway duel in ’69, and both ended their days on the scaffold; but here comparison ends. The retribution that overtook ‘Fighting Fitzgerald’ at Castlebar was the fitting penalty of a vendetta murder, brutal and premeditated, and wrought without a semblance of authority.

Fifty years before the death of Joseph Wall, the London mob was able to indulge its fury in like fashion against another black-beast of its own choosing, one James Lowry, skipper of the merchant ship ‘Molly’ compared to whom the Governor of Goree appears to have been a mild and merciful commander. At different times, three sailors expired beneath the terrible floggings of Captain Lowry, who was wont to salute his dying victim with the cry, “He is only shamming Abraham.” And as the cruel seaman was carried in the cart to Execution Dock, the furious mob howled forth this ghastly catchword, just as they saluted Wall with the echo of the phrase which they supposed he had uttered while Benjamim Armstrong was being flogged to death, “Cut him to the heart – cut him to the liver.”

Nor was the cruel tyrant only to be found in the merchantman, or was Edward Hamilton a solitary exception. Captain Oakham of the British navy is more than a creature of fiction, as is shown by the trials of Edward Harvey in August 1742, and of William Henry Turton in August 1780, which cast a lurid light upon the conditions of life in our ships of war. Midshipman Turton was a butcherly young gentleman, who turned his sword against a disobedient sailor in a sort of Captain-Sutherland-and-negro-cabin-boy fashion, but, owing to a Maidstone grand-jury petition and the absence of ‘Téméraire’ mutineers, there was no hempen collar for him.

The story of Joseph Wall has no exact parallel in our history, for the Mackenzie incident differs in two essential particulars – the dour Kenneth meant murder from the first, and did not pay the penalty of his crime. Lowry, Turton, and Sutherland were guilty, like ‘Fighting Fitzgerald,’ of common homicide, and the malice prepense, as law-givers understand the phrase, was clear and unmistakable. Even the lax morality of Doctor Henry’s days was compelled to take cognisance of giant Wall’s offence, just as it punished very properly – or tried to do – the sins of Picton and Hamilton; and a verdict of manslaughter, though delivered by a tradesman jury, would not have been an illogical conclusion. However, it remains a judicial murder – one of the most disgraceful that stains the pages of our history during the reign of George III.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WALL CASE

I. Contemporary Tracts

1. An Authentic Narrative of Joseph Wall Esqr. By a Military Gentleman. J. Roach, Britannia Printing Office. Russell Court, Drury Lane (1802). Brit. Mus.

Except in the tract published by A. Young – a transparent plagiarism – there is no corroboration of the statement that Wall flogged to death a man named Paterson on the voyage out to Goree. As no reference is made in any contemporary newspapers, it seems probable that the ‘Military Gentleman’ has confused his materials. George Paterson, a soldier, received eight hundred lashes the day after the punishment of Armstrong, and died soon afterwards, which may have caused the mistake. If Wall had done another such deed in 1780, it is probable that it would have obtained greater publicity.

2. The Life, Trial and Execution of Joseph Wall Esqre. By a Gentleman. A. Young, Vera Street, Clare Market (1802). Brit. Mus.

3. The Trial at Large of Joseph Wall Esqre. Also an Account of his escape in 1784. John Fairburn, 146 Minories.

4. The Trial of Lieut. Col. Joseph Wall. Taken in shorthand by Messrs Blanchard and Ramsey. London (1802). Brit. Mus.

5. Life, Trial and Execution of Joseph Wall Esqre. (with a full length portrait). E. Lawrence, C. Chapple, and H. D. Symonds.

This tract is advertised in the Morning Chronicle, February 9, 1802.

6. The Trial of Governor Wall. With particulars of his escape at Reading in 1784 and his subsequent surrender in 1802. Fred Farrah, 282 Strand, (The Only Edition Extant). Brit. Mus. Copied from earlier accounts.

II. Contemporary Newspapers and Magazines

In the Morning Post of August 13, 1783, there appears the report of the court-martial held at the Horse Guards on July 7 and following days, which practically acquitted Wall of the charges brought against him by Captain Roberts. The Gazette of March 9, 1784, contains the King’s Proclamation, dated March 8, describing the personal appearance of the escaped prisoner, and offering a reward of £200 for his apprehension. To those who consult contemporary journals for a first time there will come a surprise, for they will learn that Governor Wall on July 10 and 11, 1782, flogged to death not one man but three. No account later than the Espriella Papers, and not one of the many Newgate Calendars, gives this information. Surgeon Ferrick’s letter appeared in The Times, February 5, 1802.

15. The Gentleman’s Magazine (1784), part i. p. 227; (1802), part i. p. 81.

The January number, 1802, endorses the statement that Augustine Wall, the brother of the Governor of Goree, was “the first person, who presumed to publish Parliamentary Reports with the real names of the speakers prefixed.” This evidence is important, as Sylvanus Urban might have grudged such an admission. His own claims, however, are set forth very modestly. “Dr Johnston (in our magazine) dressed them (i. e. the speakers in Parliament) in Roman characters. Others gave them as orators in the senate of Lilliput. Mr Wall laid the foundation of a practice which, we trust for the sake of Parliament, and the nation, will never be abandoned.”