Whitechapel Murder

Being one of these ghoulish people who has a fascination for historical crime, particularly Jack the Ripper, I was searching on the Internet for up to date information and came across an earlier murder committed in Whitechapel.  In fact this murder took place some 200 years before Jack.  I thought some of you readers out there might like a potted version.

Unfortunately I don’t have the name of the murderer but the trial is documented as having taken place at The Old Bailey in London on 14 January 1676.  The summary of the trial records that a bloody murder was committed.  A bayliff (an old version of our modern day policeman) went to arrest the man but that man, with a strange weapon, stabbed the bayliff in the stomach and then decided to have a go at another bayliff.  Fortunately for the second bayliff, the man missed and just hit the bayliff’s clothing.  The man was then secured.  He was told by the second bayliff that the first bayliff was dead and the murderer, with no remorse whatsoever said that if he hadn’t killed him then he wish he had.

The murderer was sent to Newgate and, even then, the man showed no remorse and boasted to the prison guard that if he hadn’t killed the bayliff then he would have made his journey to prison on foot but, due to the severity of the crime, he’d been taken there in a coach.

The records then, rather amusingly, stated that the murderer was “in a more serious and sensible humour at the Bar and laboured to excuse it with all the rhetoric he had”.  Needless to say, the jury found him guilty.  The records state that “Jack Ketch will set him free”.

Jack (or John) Ketch (also known as Hanging Jack) was the name of an executioner who was employed by King Charles II.  He was an Irish immigrant and became famous for his botched executions.  Either he didn’t have very steady hands or decent eyesight, or he was just downright sadistic as he sometimes had to wield his axe several times in order to complete the job, and in the case of the execution of the Duke of Monmouth in 1685 he had five attempts with an axe and, as he still hadn’t done the job, he took a knife to finally sever the head!

In 1686 Ketch was imprisoned in the Bridewell but was then reappointed after about four months as his successor, Paskah Rose who was a butcher by trade, was hanged at Tyburn for stealing the coat of a prosecutor!  What a lovely, law abiding bunch they sound!!