1788: Archibald Taylor, but not Joseph Taylor

ExecutedToday.com ^ | May 8, 2012 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1788, two highwaymen were hanged at Boston Neck: Archibald Taylor, and Joseph Taylor.*

According to a letter later published purporting to be from that Joseph Taylor, however, he and a sympathetic doctor actually engineered one of the most amazing scaffold escapes on record. It all got started when Joseph Taylor found his fellow-condemned Archibald in high spirits one day on death row.

I never, even after my condemnation, realized that I was suddenly to die in so awful a manner, until a gentleman, who I afterwards found was a doctor, came and talked privately with the late unhappy sufferer, and my fellow convict, Archibald Taylor, who, when the gentleman was gone, came to me with money in his hand, and so smiling a countenance, that I thought he had received it in charity. But he soon undeceived me, telling me with an air of gaiety, that it was the price of his body.

This doctor dropped was doing the workaday ghoulishness of procuring imminent corpses for medical cadavers.

Such practices were still highly taboo, viscerally shocking in this case to Joseph Taylor:.....

[HartleyMBaldwin]

He should have had Blondie shoot the rope in two.

[kiryandil]

I don't think it's nice, you laughin'.

You see, my mule don't like people laughing. He gets the crazy idea you're laughin' at him.

[Mercat]

Later