Oft hung John Lee and an urban legend June 30, 2010
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary, Modern
Beachcombing has recently had a bit of a thing about human sacrifice and capital punishment. But it is. he promises, a passing phase and has now reached its climax with a reading of Mike Holgate and Ian David Waugh’s superb The Man They Could Not Hang: The True Story of John Lee (2005). This book – a luscious, well-illustrated work [...]
Surviving hanging June 20, 2010
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
Beachcombing has a file on ‘failed executions’: men and women who were sent to meet their maker but whom, thanks to chance, and, more often than not, the stupidity of their executioners, lived to die another day. Of course, survival rates were always small but the odds of making it through depended on the form [...]
