Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders Read Online Free PDF Page B

towards the prisoner, he had been found guilty, and rare it was that it was held facing in the opposite direction.
    Carrying the sixteenth-century weapon, its wooden shaft over five feet long, its blade twenty inches wide and ten inches long, the Gaoler climbed awkwardly into the coach, tripping over Balmerino’s feet as he did so, whereupon the nobleman shouted, ‘Look out – take care, or you’ll bark my shins with that damned axe of yours!’
    He was evidently fascinated by the weapon however, for as reported by Horace Walpole, ‘at the bar, during his trial, he plays his fingers upon the axe while he talks to the Gaoler, and when someone came up to listen, he took the blade and held it like a fan between their faces.’
    In his Official Diary , Lieutenant-General Adam Williamson, Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower of London, 1722–1747, described the proceedings:
     
    ‘The two Earles [Lords Balmerino and Kilmarnock] had pleaded Guilty the first day and being now calld to shew cause if they could why Sentence of death should not pass upon them, they spoke their Several Speeches in Mittigation of their crime and to move the Lords to recommend them to the Kings mercie. By the King’s command, however, they were ordered to be beheaded.’
     
    The scaffold on Tower Hill was entered via a house on the site which was draped in black for the funereal occasion,
     
    ‘all at the expense of the Sherrifs, and on 18 August 1746 they [the sheriffs] came at ten o’clock precisely and knockt at the Outer Gate of the Tower and demanded the prisoners. We immediately set out from their apartments and I had the doors Lockt after them and the Keys given to Me, that if any Valuable thing was left in them I might secure it as my Perquisite.’
     
    Then followed details of his arrangements for the actual executions:
     
    ‘By the Lords’ [the prisoners’] direction the block was desired to be two feet high, and I ordered a good Stiff upright post to be put just under it [to reduce the bounce caused by the impact of the axe]; also a piece of red baize to be had, in which to catch their heads and not to let them fall into the Sawdust and filth of the scaffold, which was done.’
     
    The first execution was that of Lord Kilmarnock,
     
    ‘who had his head sever’d from the Body at one Stroke, all but a little skin which with a little chop was soon separated. He [Kilmarnock] had ordered one of his Warders to attend him as his Vallet de Chambre and to keep down the body from struggling or violent Convulsive Motion, but it only flounced backward on the Separation of the head and lay on its back with very little Motion.’
     
    Meanwhile Balmerino had been escorted to a small room in the house adjoining the scaffold, where he sipped some wine and nibbled a piece of bread. He was dressed in his regimental uniform, the blue coat with red facings he had worn in the Pretender’s Army, and beneath the uniform he wore a woollen shirt which, he said, would serve as his shroud. When the officer in charge delivered the usual speech and concluded with the customary ‘God save King George!’ Lord Balmerino immediately contradicted the salutation by exclaiming ‘God bless King James!’, the man he had fought unsuccessfully to place on a Scottish throne.
    Another chronicler described how, on being escorted out of the house, ‘he saluted the company gathered there and hastened to the scaffold, which he ascended with so undaunted a step as to surprise every spectator.’ Once there, he walked around it, bowed to the crowd and read the inscription on his coffin which had been placed at one side in readiness. Then, taking out his spectacles, he read out a paper in which he declared his unshakeable adherence to the House of Stuart, sheer force of habit then causing him to breathe on and wipe them before putting them away in their case. Only then did he turn to the executioner who, dressed in white and wearing a white apron, was waiting nearby. The