Posted on 04/12/2021 8:06:21 AM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1749, five men were hanged at Kennington Common.
We wish well the restive shades of Patrick Rena, Thomas Dobbings, Thomas Walker, and Arthur Gibbons; the former two died for a violent robbery upon the roads, and the latter two for a violent robbery upon the Thames.
But our attention for this date is to the fifth man. Richard Coleman also drew the attention of those present, both for the monstrous crime he was accused of, and for his steady assertion of innocence. The minister assigned to salvage these wrongdoers’ souls, which was also a not entirely reputable marketing business in selling scaffold exclusives, knew a lead story when he saw one.
Coleman was executed for being part of a gang of three men who raped to death a woman named Sarah Green on the night of July 23, 1748. He was in no way implicated in this horrific crime for well over a month, a time when the victim lay precariously in hospital.
But by the next April, well … he was the man as far as the law was concerned. Coleman protested his innocence in vain, via Rev. Wilson; the latter’s hanging-day chapbook made Coleman the distinct feature attraction.
The following Paper was delivered to me at the Place of Execution, by Richard Coleman, which he earnestly desired I would publish.
To all Christian People.
The dreadful Sentence passed upon me, I shall meet with Cheerfulness, being in no Degree conscious of the least Guilt of that most inhuman and most unnatural Crime that I have been found guilty of.
I am very sensible that it is not in my Power to make the incredulous World believe me innocent. I leave the following Account with the Rev. Mr. Wilson, who I am very greatly obliged...
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
What a wonderfully upbeat post..../ sarc.
Back in that dark year of 1749, church-going women wrung their hands and lamented “what is this world coming to?”
Doesn’t do to blurt out stuff when one is “in one’s cups”.
#believe all women
July 23, 1748, the day Sarah Green was killed, was 6 months and one day after one of my ancestors died in a shipwreck, and 6 months and one day before Charles James Fox, the noted English statesman and orator, was born. Just a piece of useless trivia.
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