Lore - Legends 35: A Clean Death

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Some of the most terrifying legends in history come from one place: beneath the shadow of an executioner. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Sam Alberty. ————————— Sponsors: SimpliSafe: Secure your home with 24/7 professional monitoring. Sign up today at SimpliSafe.com/Lore to get 20% off any new SimpliSafe system with Fast Protect Monitoring. Mint Mobile: For a limited time, wireless plans from Mint Mobile are $15 a month when you purchase a 3-month plan with UNLIMITED talk, text and data at MintMobile.com/lore. ————————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ————————— ©2024 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

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you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Welcome to Lore Legends, a subset of lore episodes that explore the strange tales we whisper in the dark, even if they can't always be proven by the history books. So if you're ready, let's begin. There are some jobs that most of us would never want to do, no matter how down on our luck we might be. Honestly, history is full of these unpleasant tasks. Chambermaids, coal miners, street cleaners, there are almost too many to name. And yet, for as bad as most of those jobs were, very few had it worse than the night

soil men. These people were responsible for disposing of human waste, also known as nightsoil. Before the advent of indoor plumbing, the nightsoilmen were the ones who kept the sewers, and therefore the streets and the rivers, clear of excrement. Mostly anyway. To avoid complaints about the stench, the nightsoilmen worked the late shift. In the dead of night, they would lower themselves into dark cesspools filled with waste and they would shovel it out. After collecting it all, they sold the excrement to farmers as fertilizer. But not everyone always made it that far. You see, it wasn't unheard of for night

soilmen to lose their footing and quite literally drown in a pit of waste. Fortunately, they were paid well for their troubles, and the pay is almost certainly what kept them coming back for more, because it definitely was not the smell. But as terrible as all that sounds, there was one profession that made even sloshing through cesspools sound like a walk in the park. Like others, it was an occupation that required a strong stomach, a weak nose, and the ability to look past the horror and see it all as just a job. Because for them, all in a day's work was a nice way of saying they took human lives

for a living. For that reason alone, it's hard to find a more difficult job and one as terrifying as executioners. I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore Legends. In the heart of Prague's famous Old Town Square, there is a change in the cobblestones. Right in front of the Old Town Hall, a scattering of white stones embedded in the ground forms a collection of crosses standing in stark contrast to the dark pavement around them.

These crosses were put there only recently, but they were inserted into the landscape in remembrance of something that happened over 400 years ago. On that very spot, on June 21st of 1621, 27 Protestant rebels were executed. Just a few months earlier, they had all led an uprising against the Habsburgs. This event actually kicked off the 30 Years War, but these men didn't stay alive long enough to see it all play out.

Their execution was an all-day affair. Beginning at 5 a.m. and going until 10 that night, each of the rebels were killed one by one. Some were hanged, but most were beheaded. And from what we can tell, each execution was a terrible thing to behold. And despite that, or perhaps because of it, thousands showed up to gawk at the men as they lost their heads. The leader of the spectacle was a man named Jan Midlar. Known as the master executioner of Prague,

he has gone down in history as one of the most famous executioners in all of Europe, and judging by the bloody scene on June 21st, you can see why. Midlar was a master of his craft. He didn't use a chopping block for any of these executions. Instead, he used open sword swings to lop off their heads, and to ensure that he could cut through the neck in a single blow, he had four sharpened swords so that he could switch to the next one whenever the blade was feeling dull, like a guitarist in a rock band swapping out instruments so his tech can retune them.

And death wasn't the only punishment Midlar handed out. Executioners, you see, didn't just kill, they also tortured and maimed. Before one of the most important rebels was beheaded, a man named Jan Jusenius, his tongue was cut out, and after he was dead, his body was quartered and impaled on stakes for all to see. Still others had their hands cut off before their own deaths. And this wasn't a one-time thing, although it was certainly the largest number of men Midlar had ever executed at once.

No, he did all of this and more in front of a jeering audience for decades. He provided both entertainment for the masses and retribution for the Habsburg Empire, all at the cost of his dignity. But he could never escape the job, no matter how hard it got, and he was likely never properly appreciated for all the work he did. The truth is, very few people in history ever chose to become an executioner. From what we can tell, Midlar was one of the very few who did, and the rumor is that he only became an executioner's apprentice to access the prison where a loved one was being held

captive. Some stories say that it was a lover, and some say it was a cousin. But whoever it was, he wasn't able to save this person before they were put to death, and by then the stigma of the profession had already poisoned his name. He had no other choice but to stay on. Unlike Midlar though, most men were born into the trade. They were usually specific families whose offspring had no option but to take up the axe, so to speak. Even though it was a public office and they were normally upstanding citizens, these families were still shunned from polite society.

The execution or trade itself was considered dishonorable. Their character had nothing to do with it. The tasks they were handed were dirty, and not just executing, but also torturing, interrogating, and even some oddball assignments like chasing lepers out of town and overseeing the town's brothels. Despite the fact that they were providing necessary services, they were still doing things that society deemed abhorrent. It didn't matter that most executioners had been forced to take the job and didn't enjoy beheading or maiming.

That's why Midlar was forced to stay in his job for so long after all. No one would have hired him to do anything else. Executioners could also be denied access to taverns and public baths, and could even be denied an honorable churchyard burial. Even touching an executioner could destroy someone's reputation. There was one memorable instance in 1570 when a group of bakers threw stones at an executioner. The executioner grabbed one of their arms and suddenly the bakers guild was in crisis mode. By touching that baker, the executioner had polluted the honor of every other baker in town.

That man ended up being fired and arrested for the simple act of touching someone who had been attacking him. By the 17th century, even if you were tortured and questioned by an executioner and then declared innocent, you could still be fired from your job and ousted from whatever guild you were a member of, and entering into his home or eating with him, you might as well kiss your reputation goodbye. When we think of executioners today, most of us probably imagine a cold, impersonal room in a prison where a medical table sits and government workers standing by to do the deed.

But centuries ago, the truth was much more nuanced. Executioners were social outcasts, and they were lonely. Very few reveled in the violence, the rest simply doing the job they were forced to do. And whether they were putting down pickpockets or political insurgents, they were never given much thanks. Rather than become famous for their occupation, they practically begged for anonymity. Of course, history is full of exceptions, because if the subject of our next story is any indication, even those who deliver death have a chance to become a legend. He's the most famous executioner in history, and truth be told, he was a bit of a mess. Jack Ketch was the public executioner at the Tyburn Gallows in London from 1666 to 1678, although some sources say that he continued to execute people until his death

in 1686. The Tyburn gallows were a busy place. In a 600-year span, it's believed that over 60,000 people were executed there, meaning that in his decades as an executioner, Ketch probably put hundreds of people in an early grave. The executions at Tyburn happened eight times a year and were highly ritualistic. They were meant to put the fear of God and the law into people's hearts. But I imagine that the fear of Jack Ketch did more to that end. Jack, you see, quickly made a name for

himself by becoming the most sadistic executioner that London had ever seen. Of the hundreds of men he executed, most were probably hanged. But Ketch didn't let something as boring as a noose stop him from adding his own personal flair to the job. Anyone executed for treason were drawn and quartered, and their heads were displayed on London Bridge. That was all very traditional. But everything else he did was very much not. For those who weren't quartered, Ketch would put their corpses in boiling pitch.

It was his way of preserving them and making them last longer, because after they had been boiled, they were put on display in cages along London's roads. Ketch's headquarters at Newgate Prison came to be known as Jack Ketch's Kitchen. One prisoner wrote in his autobiography that he had seen Ketch take a basket of human heads, mock them, jeer at them, and box their ears, all before sticking them in a huge vat and boiling them with, and I quote, basalt and cumin seed.

His methods were twisted to be sure, but he became famous for other reasons too, and very few of them were good. Ketch, you see, was just as disheveled in his personal life as he was creative in his professional one. He was a severe alcoholic. In fact, he was frequently overtly drunk on the job, and he was unpleasantly confrontational,

often fighting loudly with authorities over his pay for drawing and quartering. And if my previous description about the severed heads didn't clue you in, he was pretty disrespectful toward the dead. Just to make an extra shilling or two, he went so far as to sell the clothes of those he had executed and the rope he had hanged them with. He also accepted bribes. Prisoners could pay him to give them a faster, cleaner death, but it only worked some of the time. One of the most famous examples of this was the botched execution of Lord William Russell. Russell had been arrested for planning to execute the heir apparent, James II, before he could ascend to the throne, along with the current king, Charles II. The plan, of course, went sideways, and Russell was scheduled to be beheaded

on July 21st of 1683. Russell paid Jack Ketch off to give him a speedy death, but he definitely didn't get his money's worth. Ketch showed up to the execution completely drunk. With the first swing of his axe, he missed, only managing to wound Russell instead of kill him. At this point, Russell lifted his head and allegedly said, You dog, did I give you ten guineas to use me so inhumanely? His verbal abuse, though, couldn't make Ketch any more sober. The man swung the axe several more times, never fully managing to kill Russell.

He ended up sawing through the last bit of bone, giving Russell a painful, bloody end. And that wasn't his only botched execution. Only two years later he had another, this time for the Duke of Monmouth, who was captured after his rebellion against the Crown was also steamrolled. By then, the story of Russell's terrible fate was common knowledge, so Monmouth paid Ketch off, but he also had a very specific request. He asked that Ketch do a better job on his neck than he had on Russell's. This apparently gave Ketch a bout of stage fright, so with shaking hands, he took aim and failed. Yes, Ketch failed to cut through Mama's neck after three blows.

By this point, he was reported to have cried out, I can do no more. My heart fails me. But even so, he was forced to finish the job and saw through the last of the muscle and bone. The watching crowd apparently got so angry at Ketch for this offense that they rioted. He actually had to be escorted away so that they didn't kill him. The people of London could accept a bloodthirsty executioner, but they could not forgive an

incompetent one who spoiled their fun. Because that's what a lot of these public executions were all about, really, just entertaining the masses. Only the government cared about justice. Ketch was such a brutal executioner and so inefficient that his name was remembered for generations after he died. The executioners who came after him were branded with the name Ketch as a way to further shame them for their undesirable jobs. Criminals sent to the gallows were

called Jack Ketch's Pippin. The noose was labeled Jack Ketch's Necklace and even now the name Jack Ketch is sometimes used interchangeably with the word hangman. Ketch didn't have to be good at his job to be remembered. As it turns out, he just had to be his own miserable self. And that was enough to ensure that his memory could never be killed. You can't talk about executioners without talking about France. Because when it comes to killing criminals, the French have quite the reputation. And all because of a little something called the guillotine.

Now before the guillotine, executions were messy. France didn't have a universal method to use on everyone. The nobility was beheaded with a sword, which tended to give a faster, cleaner death than the alternatives. Peasants, though, were typically hanged, a much longer, more painful process. And criminals like highwaymen and bandits were given the worst fate of all. They were stretched out over the spokes of a wheel, and their limbs were smashed with a sledgehammer.

Then, they were either killed with a blow to the chest, or left out in the elements to die a slow, agonizing death. If given the option, I think most of us would choose the sword. But even then, a quick end wasn't a guarantee. You see, it isn't easy to chop off a head. There's a lot of muscle and bone to get through. And the longer an execution took, the more inhumane it was for the prisoner, and the more traumatizing it was for the executioner.

Even the most skilled executioners couldn't always get it right. Charles-Henri Sanson, the most famous executioner in France, actually botched a few beheadings. In fact, one of the worst incidents actually happened with an old friend of his father's. Sanson, probably shaken up by having to kill someone he had known for his entire life, didn't manage to fully decapitate the man on the first blow. He was forced to torture him, with swing after swing, until the head was fully severed. Which was surprising. Charles Henri Sanson came from one of the most well-known executioner families in history and had been executing criminals himself since he was a teenager. There was

no other life he could have, even if he hated chopping heads. Stuck in an emotionally scarring profession with no way to leave it, Sanson was ready to find a faster, cleaner method. And so he became a very early supporter of the guillotine. While some version of the device had been around since at least the 13th century, the guillotine as we know it today was created by the French physician Joseph Ignace Guillotin. Ironically, he created it because he was against the death penalty. Since that particular punishment wasn't going away anytime soon, he pitched a beheading

machine to the French government in 1789 so that the entire ordeal could be more humane. Sansan himself actually helped with developing the device. Not only did he champion it and demonstrate how it worked for the king, he also tested it himself, trying it out on barnyard animals and human corpses. Three years after it was first proposed, it was finally ready. And in 1792, the very first prisoner was executed with a guillotine. Huge crowds gathered to watch the demonstration, eager to see how this new killing machine would add excitement to their favorite spectacle.

But it didn't add anything. The blade fell so quickly that it was completely underwhelming. The crowd walked away disappointed. But for the executioners in Paris, it was the exact thing they had hoped for. A surefire way to give a clean death. Almost immediately, the device became France's new official method of execution. And it was a good thing too because the Reign of Terror was right around the corner, and Sanson was going to have a lot more heads to chop off. Now, if you know anything about France in the late 1700s, then you know that tensions between the peasantry and the nobility were reaching a tipping point.

The poor had too little and the rich had too much. Something had to give. And that something, as it turns out, was the French Revolution. I won't get into all the gory details here, but between 1792 and 1799, just seven years, a lot of people met their maker at the end of the guillotine's blade. Thousands, in fact. And Sanson was the one who executed most of them. Starting with the King. King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette were arrested and imprisoned in August of 1792.

On January 20th of 1793, he was sentenced to death, and the very next morning, he was brought out to the guillotine. Now, Sanson was a monarchist and was deeply loyal to the French crown. In fact, there are rumors that he tried hatching a plot to save the king, but this was either untrue or it just didn't work out, because no matter what the turmoil he was dealing with in his heart, Sanson stayed faithful to his duties as an executioner. Before he was killed, King Louis offered his last words to the jeering crowd. You see your king is willing to die for you. May my blood cement your happiness. Then he rested his head on the device, and Sansan did what he had to do.

The King's blood may have cemented something in Sansan, but it certainly wasn't happiness. Forced into the cruelest job imaginable just by being born into the wrong family during the most violent period in French history, he had no choice but to execute the king. It's possible that Sansan never fully emotionally recovered from that loss. He had been devoted to the royal family, and killing them for the cause of the revolution appeared to be more of an act of self-preservation than anything else. In fact, it would seem that the more people he killed, the more burdened his soul became. The guillotine might have made his job go faster, but it didn't make it any easier.

Killing for a living, especially for a cause and a government he didn't believe in, took its toll on Sansan. After two more years of mass executions, sometimes beheading up to 60 people a day, Sanson decided he had had enough. He retired from the job in 1795, passing the heavy mantle of executioner on to his son. In the few years between the king's death and his retirement, though, Sanson had become something of a hero for the revolutionaries. He had executed so many enemies of the revolution that some even considered granting him the

title Avenger of the People. Revolutionaries even started sporting the same green suit that Sansan always wore. He hadn't just become an Avenger. He'd become something of a mascot. But he didn't seem to want to be anyone's Avenger. He didn't seem to want to be anyone's avenger. He didn't seem to want to be an executioner. There is nothing in the records to suggest that Sanson enjoyed his job. On the contrary, it appears to have troubled him greatly. He had been shoved into that job by tradition and genetics,

and he was now stepping out of it for the first time in 40 years. So Sanson left. He moved to the countryside and lived another 10 peaceful years before dying in 1806. And when he finally did pass away, there wasn't a guillotine in sight. For the most part, executioners have been given a bad rap. Many of them never asked for the job. They were only doing the best with what they had. But some executioners relished the work. And I have one more story to tell you about one who was born for the gallows. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode of Lore was made possible by Simply Safe.

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There they all stood, 25 criminals shivering in the cold Irish morning air, just waiting to be sent to the noose. But the executioner was nowhere to be found. Now, this wasn't some sort of get out of jail free card. They weren't about to be released just because someone didn't show up to do his job, but the prisoners were hopeful that death had been put off for just another day, or even a few days, if they were lucky. Luck though would not be on their side, because Elizabeth Segru was on the chopping block

with them, and she was more than willing to sell her soul to give the Grim Reaper a helping hand. Elizabeth, you see, was not a nice person. And I know, typically we don't think of nice people on Death Row, but this woman was really unpleasant. She had a reputation for being cruel, especially to her family, and in some ways, her mean attitude was probably warranted. Life had not been kind to her, so she had been unkind right back. It started early.

Her farmer husband had died young, leaving her and her two children impoverished and homeless. Eventually she found a roadside hovel in, I kid you not, gallows town. But soon after getting this leaky roof over their heads, her youngest child died from starvation. And as hard as that would be for any mother, Elizabeth dealt with her grief in the one way that she shouldn't have, by taking her anger out on her remaining son, Padraig. Eventually that vicious abuse drove him away, and for years she had no contact with Padraig.

So Elizabeth lived out her days alone, occasionally renting out her hut to make enough money to live on and growing more embittered every day. One night in November of 1789, a bearded stranger came to her for lodging. He was willing to pay for the room with gold pieces. It was likely more money than Elizabeth had seen in years, but the sum didn't seem to faze him. After all, he had plenty more gold in his pockets. But Elizabeth, ever so bitter, wasn't content with the money he had given her. She wanted all of it, and so while her guest was sleeping, she stabbed him to death.

Now some versions of her story say that she was actually in the habit of killing her guests. Others say that this was the first time, but no matter if he was her first or her 50th victim, she would soon learn that she had chosen the wrong man. After the deed was done, she rifled through his belongings, pocketing his gold and reading his documents, and that's how she learned that the wealthy man she had just murdered was actually her estranged son. Wailing she ran out into the street, confessing her horrible crime.

It didn't take long after that for her to be tried and sentenced to death. Which brings us back to the beginning of our story. On the day that Elizabeth was meant to be hanged, the executioner just never showed up and none of the waiting spectators or guards volunteered to step up and do the job for him. No one that is, except Elizabeth. In exchange for her own life, she offered to play the role of executioner and hang all of her fellow inmates. Her offer was accepted.

So she stepped out of line, and with what was described as callous efficiency, she opened the trap door under the other 24 prisoners' feet, sending them to their deaths. And that is how Ireland's first and only female executioner came to be. Elizabeth, or as she became known, Lady Betty, quickly became the most notorious executioner in all of Ireland. She had a certain passion for the job that immediately convinced officials that she was tailor-made for it. And as both an employment perk and presumably as a way to keep an eye on her,

they gave her a permanent room in the local jail. She soon made the room into a home by hanging charcoal sketches of the faces of those she killed all around the room. Like I said, she was made for this job. And she even took it a step further and made her third floor room a part of the whole execution experience. She had the gallows moved to be right outside her window and made her third floor room a part of the whole execution experience. She had the gallows moved to be right outside her window and made a whole twisted system out of it.

The prisoners had to put a noose around their necks in her room, surrounded by sketches of all those she had killed before them. Once the noose was tied tight, they were forced to crawl out her window and onto the gallows. She would then pull the bolt, open the trap door, and, well, the prisoners would be gone. It's safe to say that Lady Betty had a thing for watching people suffer. In fact, she didn't just execute people, she worked at public floggings, too, officiating the horrific spectacles with, and I quote, relish and zeal.

How much of her story is true has been up for debate. Some of it may have been embellished or even completely made up. Still, her violent reputation held for years after her death in 1807. As if she was some kind of gruesome boogeyman, Irish parents threatened their rebellious children with a visit from Lady Betty so that they would behave. And I would wager that if she knew, she wouldn't mind if the kids believed that she was the monster under their beds. Because based on everything we know about her, Lady Betty loved her job. Very few executioners in history ever showed as much passion as she did. It may sound horrific to us, but for her, it was a dream come true.

After all, with just a little bit of bloodthirst, one person's dirty job can be another's treasure. This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Sam Alberti. Don't like hearing the ads? I've got a solution for you. There's a paid version of Lore on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Plus, subscribers also get weekly mini-episodes that we call Lore Bites.

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