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| Copper engraving of Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers, 1810 |
Today we greet a singular sort of criminal in the shape of Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers. The scandalous Earl Ferrers holds the dubious honour of being the last member of the House of Lords to be hanged in England.
Ferrers had lived a life of hedonistic excess, fuelled by family money and privilege and his private life was far from happy. Tired of his maltreatment, Ferrers' wife, Mary, succeeded in the remarkable business of obtaining a legal separation from her husband on account of his intolerable cruelty. It was agreed that Mary's maintenance would be provided in the form of rental income from estate properties and the collection of this rent was placed in the trusted hands of John Johnson, a family retainer and steward of no small experience.
On 18th January 1760, which carrying out his usual business of collecting rent, Johnson was summoned to his master's home at Staunton Harold, Leicestershire. Here the Earl accused him of conspiring to defraud him and, as the argument became more heated, Ferrers shot Johnson. The old man survived and though a doctor named Kirkland was summoned, the Earl refused to let his victim leave. Once Ferrers had fallen into a drunken slumber, Johnson was taken home and died soon afterwards.
The Earl assured the unfortunate man's family that he would provide for them on the condition that no prosecution was brought but by now the stage was set. Scandal around the crime was immediate and uproarious and when Ferrers' trial began in Westminster Hall, London was on tenterhooks.
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| Earl Ferrers shooting his steward, from the Newgate Calendar |
The Earl defended himself against Attorney General Charles Pratt and pleaded not guilty on the grounds of insanity. Though it can hardly be doubted that there was insanity in his family, his eloquent defence was hardly indicative of a man of unsound mind and Ferrers was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was held at the Tower of London until the appointed day of execution, which was 5th May 1760.
On the fateful spring day, Ferrers dressed in his wedding suit and travelled in his own, very grand carriage, to Tyburn, where executioner, Thomas Turlis, awaited him and received a £5 tip for his troubles. Although reports of a silken noose were untrue, here the notorious Earl knelt to pray on a black silk cushion before calmly facing his fate. In deference to his elevated status, the scaffold had been engineered so that he might stand on a platform that would descend, leaving him at the end of the noose in an early version of the now-familiar drop method.
Just before noon Earl Ferrers took his place on the platform; his head was covered and the platform descended. It took Ferrers just under five minutes to die and as was his sentence he was eventually cut down and taken to Surgeon's Hall for dissection, his infamous career at an end.
12 comments:
Love these true stories of desperate deeds from the past. Keep them coming!
I certainly will; lovely to see you here!
Glory! What a dismayingly cool customer. Think of the mental gymnastics involved in constructing that 'eloquent defence' to the charge of murder 'on the ground of insanity.' Rigging out the grand carriage and having an ostentatiously generous tip for the hangman shows remarkable sang froid. Thanks for a wonderful post!
Earl Ferrers was definitely a showman to the last, I think! A most cool customer, as you rightly say...
I wonder how CNN, Sky news etc would cover a trial like that these days
With great fanfare, I imagine!
I totally love this. Perfect Gothic novel... he belongs in Dickens.
Oh, he really does!
It has been suggested that Ferrers might have been acquitted of murder if it wasn't for the fact that he was unpopular with his fellow peers who condemned him to death. I even think that Ferrers bungled the payment of the tip to the executioner. Dancing a jig at the end of a rope is a gruesome way to die. I believe it wasn't unknown for friends or family members of the condemned to pull on the legs of hanged men in an attempt to break their necks to hasten their death.
It was not uncommon for those to be executed at Tyburn to be well dressed and to put on a show for the crowds, often stopping for drinks on route. Putting on a brave face was seen as a good death, particularly for criminals who had become public figures such as highwaymen, it all added to the legend. This was not what the authorities would have wanted as the executions were meant to be a deterrent to committing crime.
Thank you for the interesting post on Laurence Shirley. As there is a Shirley Road, Drive, and Avenue in Hove I was prompted to look up the gentleman's antecedents. They seem to have been one of those families who were attached to the royal family for hundreds of years since William the Conquere's time; they started out as knights before getting a barony in Stuart times. They are attached to Ettingham in Warwickshire but scions ended up owning land all over the place, I guess the Hove connection would have developed in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century which is when the parish of Hove started to be developed. No wonder your man Laurence was unpopular, he had a history of flying into uncontrollable rages and beating his servants unconscious.
It seems as though everything was a show to the glorious Georgians!
Not a nice chap to know...
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