Throughout History there have been many executioners who have remained anonymous.
We know of Anne Boleyn’s executioner that he was summoned from calais and that he was
referred to as The Sword of Calais.
But many executioners were know for their botching ways and the fact they performed
their bloody task of taking a life poorly.
For example, John C Woods the executioner who took the lives of those sentenced to death
during the nuremberg trials, he was known for the fact he performed his job not up to
standard.
Many of the Nazi war criminals took dozens of minutes to die, and their death was not
instant.
There was also an account during the Tudor Period of Margaret Pole, the countess of Shrewsbury’s
executioner taking up to 11 swings of the axe to take her head clean off, with the inexperienced
youth making a mess of the proceedings within the Tower of London.
But there is an executioner who has gone down in history for his brutal and barbaric methods,
and for almost causing a riot because he was so bad at his job.
In fact his name is even used as a reference to death or the devil.
Join us today as we look at Jack Ketch, History’s most brutal executioner.
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Little is known about Jack Ketch and his life except for his blunders on the scaffold.
However he first became an executioner in 1663, succeeding London’s common hangman
Edward Dun, who Ketch was his apprentice.
He was mentioned 13 years later in court proceedings, and it’s believed he was imprisoned for
a short period of time inside of Marshalsea prison.
Marshalsea was a prison that had been around at the time for over 300 years, and it was
even torched during the peasants revolt as the uprising entered London.
It became a debtors prison as time went on, and then prisoners were seperated by class.
There was one side for commoners and another for the richer who were allowed a much more
luxurious incarceration even being able to use a bar and a coffee shop there.
But in the poorer side, the conditions were brutal and in the 17th century, one room held
23 women who had no space to lie down and sleep and because of the harsh conditions
rebellion broke out and the prisoners rose up.
Around this time Ketch was imprisoned, and as an executioner in London he would be rather
busy.
Ketch was mentioned in the Old Bailey’s records in January 1676, as in a murder case
it was said that, ‘The July brought the defendant in guilty, and Jack Ketch will make
him free,’ meaning that the defendant was sentenced to death for killing and that Ketch
would bring about the sentence performing the execution.
Ketch was also shown in a woodcut depicting the execution of Edward Coleman, who had been
implicated in the Popish Plot.
He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered for his treason, and Ketch performed this
bloody execution in front of a huge crowd.
The woodcut shows Coleman saying ‘I am sick of this traitorous disease, and Ketch is stood
there holding a rope and an axe and he says ‘here is your cure sir.’
Ketch did write a pamphlet himself called the Man of Destiny’s Hard Fortune, and he
wrote about his time in prison.
However to become an executioner in London was a rather high profile position inside
of the city.
There were a huge number of criminals who throughout the years were executed in places
such as Tower Hill, Smithfield and Tyburn.
He was being paid after all by the state to take the lives of people, and executions were
seen as huge forms of public entertainment within different cities.
This led to executioners developing a significant degree of notoriety and intrigue, and because
of this many became known, but some performed their job anonymously.
The executioner who performed the killing of King Charles I still hasn’t had his identity
confirmed centuries later, and performed the King’s death under disgusise.
However Ketch was paid to do the job, and he did go on strike in the 1680s as he wanted
to get a pay rise, and he did win this dispute getting a raise.
Executioners were not just paid by the state, but families of the condemned would sometimes
bribe them and the condemned would also give them money to perform the office well and
quickly without any botch.
Some people gave jewellery and clothing to the executioner and they could then sell these
on for further profit and of course the condemned would also hand over a bag of money to the
executioner.
But many relics could emerge from executed people, and it was said that strands from
the hangman noose of a famous execution could fetch a hefty sum and were even carried by
gamblers as they were seen as good luck.
But Ketch continued to legally kill inside of London and in August 1681 he executed Stephen
College who was brutally hanged drawn and quartered in Oxford.
It was said that College had hanged about half an hour, then he was cut down by ketch
and quartered under the gallows, with his entrails being burned in a fire made besides
the gallows.’
There were easier executions for Ketch to perform, for example a hanging would be much
more straight forward than a beheading or a drawing and quartering.
There was more that could go wrong with a beheading for example, and it’s in particular
for two executions that Ketch has gone down in infamy as a brutal botching mistake making
executioner.
On the 21st July 163, Ketch was in charge of executing William Russel Lord Russel, a
leading member of the Country Party and a rebel in Parliament following the Succession
of James II as the King of England.
Russel had been held inside of the Tower of London inside a cell for a few weeks before
he was sentenced to death for treason.
His execution took place at Lincoln’s Fields Inn which was one of the largest sites in
London, and thousands flocked to watch his high profile execution in the huge public
space.
However as the public looked on towards the scaffold, Ketch made a terrible mess of the
execution of Russel.
He was later forced to make an apology for his accounts and wrote the pamphlet, ‘The
apology of John Ketch Esquire,’ and he claimed he did not dispose himself as the most suitable
and that he was interrupted and disrupted whilst taking aim.’
Russel was to break beheaded, and his execution was not clean.
It was said by onlookers, ‘On that occasion, Ketch wielded the instrument of death either
with such sadistically nuanced skill, or with such lack of simple dexterity, nobody could
tell which that the victim suffered horrifically, blow after blow, each excruitaing but not
in itself lethal.
Even amongst the bloodthirsty people of society that attended English beheadings, the gory
and bloody display had created such anger that Ketch felt forced to write a public apology.’
Lord Russel’s head was not taken off in one clean strike and it took many for Ketch
to take his life, with each blow not killing him until the last, and Russel was left suffering
on the block.
However yet again Ketch would botch a high profile execution, and it was the Duke of
Monmouth’s death that would almost incite a riot.
On the 15th July 1685, Ketch was taken from the Tower of London where he had been held,
to Tower Hill.
He was walked by guards up the short walk to his site of execution, and thousands were
there to witness James Scott’s execution.
It was said as the duke approached Ketch on the scaffold he said, ‘here are 6 ginueas
for you.
Do not hack me as you did my Lord Russel, I have heard you struck him three or four
times.
My servant will give you some more gold if you do the work well.’
It’s not known if Ketch took this as an insult bringing up his poor work, but he may
have lost focus and his temper.
The Duke of Monmouth was then demobbed, and he touched the edge of the axe that was in
KEtch’s hand, and he claimed that the axe was not sharp enough to take his head clean
off with one strike.
He was reassured that it would, and then he placed his head onto the executioenrs block.
Ketch then struck the first blow, and it only gave Scott a small wound, and then he struggled
on the block as the instinct to escape kicked in.
Ketch struck again and the job still hadn’t been done, and two further blows continued
by James Scott, the Duke of Monmouith’s head had not come off.
The crowd at this were disgusted and outraged.
They were all for witnessing public executions but demanded that it was performed with some
professionalism and decorum, but this wasn’t.
Ketch then saw Scott’s cut neck, and it’s claimed may have tried to give up saying’
I cannot do it, my heart has failed me,’ but then he was forced by the Sheriff of London
to finish the job.
He told him ‘to take up the axe man’ and finish, and it took two more swings of the
axe to kill the Duke, but then his head was still not severed, so Ketch grabbed his butcher’s
knife to cut through the last sinews.
As he held the head up of James Scott the Duke of Monmouth, he noticed that the crowd
had become incredibly angry, and the guard were the forced to usher him to safety as
it looked like a riot would have broken out, and the angry crowd would have killed Jack
Ketch.
It was said that, the crowd were so incensed that had he not been guarded and taken away,
they would have torn Ketch to pieces.
The Duke of Monmoiuth’s execution was considered too much, and following this Ketch was fired
from his job as London’s executioner.
It was said he then was then arrested and was sent to Bridewell Prison, before he was
shockingly reinstated as an executioner.
Ketch even hanged his own trusty assistant who was sentenced to death for robbery.
However Jack Ketch today is remembered for being a brutal executioner who did not perform
his job well, and two executions that went incredibly poorly cemented his legacy in history.
It’s not known how many people Ketch killed during his time in the job, but its assumed
hundreds or possibly even thousands as at the time London was a haven for crime.
Sadistically there was a room inside of Newgate Prison known as Jack Ketch’s Kitchen where
the limbs of those condemned were boiled in pots.
Today Jack Ketch is remembered for being the executioner who was so bad, he almost ended
up on the executioners block himself.
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