wiki-illiam #105: q5

[dubdobdee]

i: Where did 13 go to the scaffold on Friday 13th?
ii: Who carried out the last public execution in Britain?
iii: Whose controversial execution by firing squad was alluded to by Voltaire?
iv: Which tailor, under sentence of death, was reprieved and elevated to Headsman?
v: Which sexagenarian was chased around the scaffold and needed 11 blows with the axe?
vi: Which teenager was hanged for rape and murder, but revived while being prepared for dissection in Surgeons' Hall?
vii: Who was burned alive, without prior garrotting, owing to bungling by the executioner?
viii: Which trooper's swollen purple throat and stark and staring eyes were mocked?
ix: How was the poisoner cook from John Fisher's household executed?
x: Who survived three attempts at hanging at Exeter?

The theme is immediately obvious -- which probably makes googling these not that hard, so hold back for people who know or half-know the relevant stories.

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

(i) Puts me in mind of the 13 Burghers (of Calais?) that Rodin made a monument to, but I rather think they weren't executed, merely paraded in rags to intercede for the city against an attacker.
(ii) last public execution was in the 1820s or 30s, so not albert pierrepoint
(iii) is this "pour encourager les autres"? -- a british naval figure, probably an admiral, for losing a battle which it wasn't really his fault he lost?

(x) and was i think then pardoned or repreived...? but i have no idea of his name

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

x) Is it Babbacombe Lee, of Fairport concept album fame?

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i DEMAND that this is the answer!!!

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

ii - are you sure it's that early? istr much mention of public executions in Victorian novels, although I of course cannot think of any specific one one, bar A Tale Of Two Cities, which is not helpful.

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Fagin was publicy hanged.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

he was but the book is set in pre victorian reform times, like a lot of dickens

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

iv is the Inevitable Mikado Question! is it Nankipoo who is the Lord High Executioner?

i am sad that none of these questions are about hartlepool...

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

v. must have taken place when beheadings were still an execution-option. When did they stop? 1700-ish? Which narrows it down a smidge, I guess.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

ix) Poisoners usually be wimmin => a WITCH burned at the STAKE?

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

cooks usually be wimmin!

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

Is it not a bit of a myth that witches were usually burned? Weren't most of them hanged?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

very few indeed were burnt in the UK

viii

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
And gave him to the flies;
They mocked the swollen purple throat
And the stark and staring eyes:
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
In which their convict lies.

I've just read almost the whole squiggly earworming poem looking for that!

ix

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The answer to this is easily found on wiki and is commendably imaginative (er not for the person involved obv but for my gruesome inner 6-year-old who would think up interesting ways of dismembering Gordon The Gopher and send them in to the BBC)(er not that I ever did that ahem um er)