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Jack Ketch, The Worst And Most Feared Professional Executioner In History
No condemned criminal was safe when their sentence was to be carried out by the bloody and incompetent Ketch
Serving as a professional executioner is dark business. Dispatching criminals as a result of their sentences requires a certain set of values, a steely resolve and a level of skill when it comes to killing. Unfortunately, Jack Ketch, a 17th century British executioner, did not hold those standards, as he became infamous for his botched and bloody executions.
Ketch only came to public consciousness as an adult. Nothing is really known about his youth, but he was believed to have been born in England and served a term in Marshalsea Prison for an unknown crime. Professional executioners was often a vocation for those with criminal pasts, and such was his case, as he took that job in 1663 after apprenticing under Edward Dun.
One of the first mentions of Ketch at work came in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey in January, 1676, where he helped execute a man who had not only committed murder in White Chapel, but also offed the constable who had come to arrest him.
Regardless of whether or not one agrees with the death penalty as a suitable punishment, the majority of people over time have least favored being humane when criminals are legally dispatched. Unfortunately, the repeated ineptness of Ketch created a resume of horrific and botched executions that gave him a reputation that has persisted through the years. Some of his worst work included:
Attempting to hang Stephen College for a half an hour before giving up on that method killing him. He then resorted to quartering the doomed man before throwing his entrails into a fire.
Lord William Russell was a member of the Country Party who was sentenced to die for his part in a failed plot to murder King Charles II and his brother James. On July 21, 1683, Russell was to be beheaded, but it took four swings from Ketch to finally get the job done. Each swing appeared to land in a different area of the body, causing the prisoner great suffering. After the first axe swing landed on his shoulder, he was said to have looked up and asked why he was being hurt…
