He then presented his watch to Sheriff Vaillant, as a token of his thanks, and requested that his body be buried at Staunton Harold. He took three steps and mounted the ‘drop’, and was guided to the centre of the raised box where his arms were tied in front of him with a black silk sash. His own neckerchief was removed and the knotted rope – not, as some reports have claimed, made of silk – was placed around his neck.
At this point, according to Walpole, he blanched, but quickly recovered his composure.
As the enormous crowd edged forward eagerly, Turlis asked him if he wished to give the signal for the trap door to be opened. He said that he did not, and it was left to Sheriff Vaillant.
Readying himself, the condemned man said his final words: ‘Am I right?’
The executioner told him that he was, and a white nightcap which the Earl had brought with him, was pulled down over his head.
Vaillant kicked the side of the platform to give the signal.
What followed was horrific.
Turlis pulled a lever which was supposed to open the floor underneath Ferrers’ feet, but it did not function. Ferrers stood there for some time, more than once lifting the nightcap from his eyes to see what was happening. Turlis kept trying, and eventually the floor opened. But it had still not functioned properly, and the hanging man’s feet were still touching the platform – he was able to support himself, just about, on tiptoe, and there he writhed, gurgling and clawing his face, for some time.
He was only dispatched when the hangman stood underneath his and pulled on his legs. Modern hanging kills instantly, the weight of the body and the length of the drop being carefully calculated so that the spinal cord is severed immediately the trap door opens: by contrast, it took Earl Ferrers four minutes to die (a total of only seven minutes had elapsed since he had alighted from his landau, said Walpole, watch-in-hand). He died at two minutes to twelve o’clock.
Lord Ferrers’ body was left turning on the rope for a little longer than the customary hour as Sheriff Vaillant – relieved that his own ordeal was over – ate lunch on the scaffold with friends.
Finally, his body was cut down and placed a coffin lined with white satin, which had accompanied him on the journey. The coffin was carried by six men and loaded into the hearse to take him to Surgeon’s Hall in the Old Bailey to be dissected and displayed to the common man – the final humiliation for this proud and haughty noble. His hat and the rope used to hang him were at the end of the coffin. A large incision was then made from the neck to the bottom of the breast, and another across the throat; the lower part of the belly was laid open and the bowels taken away. It was afterwards publicly exposed to view in a room up one pair of stairs at the Hall where scores of people jostled to see the grisly remains.
Earl Ferrer’s mother, Anne, paid eight guineas for the clothes he was executed in – at that time entrepreneurial executioners made extra money by selling macabre items belonging to those they hanged.
On the evening of Thursday, May 8th, the late Earl’s body was returned to his family and buried – against his dying wish – in St. Pancras church, in a 12 feet-deep trench dug under the belfry. The simple inscription on the coffin plate read: Laurence Earl Ferrers suffered May 5, 1760.
Twenty two years later, it was removed to Staunton Harold to be re-interred in the family vault, as he had wished.
Epilogue
TWO WEEKS AFTER the hanging, Laurence Shirley’s brother, Washington Shirley, a naval officer and keen amateur astronomer, took his seat in the House of Lords as the fifth Earl Ferrers.
During his time in the Tower, the fourth Earl had made a will requesting that £6,000 be raised from the estate and placed in trust for the family of the murdered John Johnson. (To place this in context, using average earnings, £1,000 then is worth more than £1.5 million today.) A further £4,000 in East India Company bonds was allocated to his mistress, Margaret Clifford, and their children. The will was not strictly legal, because it was drawn up after he had been convicted of murder, but it was allowed to stand, and the families were well provided for.
The legacy left to John Johnson’s family enabled them to have a grand headstone made to mark his burial spot in the churchyard of St Mary and St Hardulph, Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire, which ironically also contains the tombs of 16th and 17th century members of the Shirley clan.
John Johnson’s Headstone
Unfortunately, having stood in all weathers for more than 250 years the headstone has deteriorated at the bottom and the last line of the inscription cannot be deciphered, but the rest reads:
Released from the Evils of this frail World
In pious expectation of the reward of his Virtues
JOHN JOHNSON
Departed this Life, Jan: XLXMDCCLX Aged L
He was many years
The esteemed and faithful Servant
of
The Honorable Laurence Shirley Esq.
With unshaken Integrity
He continued in the office of Steward
to
The late Rt Honorable Laurence Earl Ferrers
Till near the fateful period of his Life
Uncorrupted by any views of self interest
No hopes, no fears
Could divert him from the steady pursuit of that path
His duty to God and Man pointed out
He was a worthy example of
The tender Father, the affectionate Husband
The firm and valuable Friend
The sincere and humble Christian
His many excellent Qualities
Rendered him highly Respected
According to Cracroft’s Peerage: The Complete Guide to the British Peerage and Baronetage, Laurence Shirley may have a lasting and more virtuous legacy in the form of a famous scientist as a great-grandson.
On April 2, 1777, Anna Maria, one of Earl Ferrer’s illegitimate daughters by his mistress Margaret Clifford, married John Lewis Pasteur, a Derbyshire hosier nine years her junior. It has since been claimed that a direct descendent of this union was Louis Pasteur, the famous French scientist and founder of the germ theory of disease. If this is true, although he was the son of a poor tanner Pasteur’s grandmother was Anna Maria – meaning he had aristocratic English blood in his veins. Anna Maria died in 1819, aged 73, just three years before Pasteur was born.
Earl Ferrer’s former wife, the Countess, meanwhile, remarried in 1769, to Lord Frederick Campbell, a prominent politician who could not have been more different to the bullying, thuggish Earl.
The following description of him, from Posthumous Memoirs of his Own Time, by N W Wraxhall, describes Lord Campbell when he was in his fifties: ‘His manners, noble, yet soft, dignified, yet devoid of any pride or affectation, conciliated all who approached him.’
The marriage was evidently a happy one, although they had no children. It is said they met when the countess turned to the law to rid herself of the Earl, and Campbell had been her counsel.
Lady Campbell died, aged 70, at her country seat, Combe Bank, in Kent, on July 25th 1807 – as her late first husband had once threatened, she was burned alive in her bed when a reading lamp fell over and set her nightclothes ablaze.
Sources
Sex and the Gender Revolution, Volume 1, Randolph Trumbach
Tales of Our Great Families, Edward Walford
Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, Joseph Cradock
Undertaker of the Mind: John Monro and Mad-Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century, Jonathan Andrews, Andrew T. Scull
A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings ..., Volume 19, Thomas Bayly Howell
Cracroft’s Peerage: The Complete Guide to British Peerage and Baronetage
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The Newgate Calendar
Passages From the Diaries of Mrs Philip Lybbe Powys of Hardwick House, Oxen, Caroline Girle Powys
Tarnished Coronets, Muriel Nelson d’Auvergne
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OUR MAN IN ORLANDO
Murder, Mayhem and Madness in the Sunshine State
FLORIDA: a land of dazzling white sands, sizzling sun... and utterly incompetent British criminals.
Like the English pensioner who hijacked a helicopter to bust her husband out of Death Row, the Scottish gap year student who robbed a bank and tried to escape on a kid's bike and the unlucky Londoner who kidnapped the wrong guy and wound up serving 1,285 years in jail.
As British consul in our nation’s favourite holiday hotspot, Hugh Hunter has seen them all – murderers, small-time conmen and big-time drug dealers (plus ordinary families whose dream vacations turned to nightmares).
Our Man in Orlando is his astonishing true story of a decade spent dealing with clueless, witless and hopeless Brits abroad.
Our Man in Orlando was serialised in The Times and The Week magazine and the book is about to be turned into a major new television drama.
DIARY OF AN ON-CALL GIRL
PC Bloggs is a serving British police office and Diary of an On-call Girl is a true account of her working life.
Diary of an On-Call Girl was dramatised for BBC Radio 4, was serialised in the Mail on Sunday and is currently in TV development.
The tapes are on, the interview begins, and I ask my standard opening question: ‘Do you understand why you have been arrested?’ Believe it or not, sometimes these words alone can prompt a confused confession.
‘I ain't been arrested,’ says Shimona.
Not exactly a confession.
‘Well, you have, because you’re here.’
‘I was never arrested, though. No-one never put no handcuffs on me.’
I put down my pen. Somehow, I don’t think this is going to be the level of interview for which I need to make notes.
‘You actually don’t need to be handcuffed to be under arrest,’ I say.
‘Yeah, I do. Right, Sonia?’
Sonia nods emphatically. ‘You do need it, me Ma said so.’
In an attempt to steer the interview back on track, I look down at PC Cansat’s statement. ‘Look, it says here, “I then said to Shimona O’Milligan, ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of assault and criminal damage.’ I cautioned her to which she replied, ‘Whatever’.” Does that ring any bells?’
Shimona titters. Then she gets serious again. ‘Does he say he handcuffed me, though? Cos he’s a liar.’
‘No, he says he arrested you.’
‘Well, I wasn’t listening.’
‘This may surprise you,’ I say, ‘but you can be arrested even if you aren’t listening.’
‘No, you can’t. Not if you’re inside a house. I know the law.’
If there is one thing I like more than a gobby teenager, it is a gobby teenager who knows the law.
‘Shimona, you are going to have to take my word for the fact that you were brought here under arrest and you are still under arrest now. Let’s move on.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Belle de Jour meets The Bill … sarky sarges, missing panda cars and wayward MOPS (members of the public).’ - The Guardian
‘Part Orwell, part Kafka and part Trisha’ - The Mail on Sunday
SICK NOTES
True Stories from the GP’s Surgery
'We wanted to thank you for all you did for mum over the last 14 years,' said Mrs Cobham.
Excitedly, I peered into the plastic bag. Inside was one small loaf of sliced bread.
'Er...' I stammered. 'Well, that's lovely.'
She nodded and smiled. 'It was the least we could do, doctor,' she said.
Welcome to the bizarre world of Tony Copperfield, family doctor. He spends his days fending off anxious mums, elderly sex maniacs and hopeless hypochondriacs.
The rest of his time is taken up sparring with colleagues, battling bureaucrats and banging his head against the brick wall of the NHS.
If you've ever wondered what your GP is really thinking - and what's going on behind the scenes at your surgery - Sick Notes is for you.
'A wonderful book, funny and insightful in equal measure.' - Dr Phil Hammond, Private Eye’s MD
'Copperfield is simply fantastic, unbelievably funny and improbably wise’ - British Medical Journal.
'A mix of the hilarious, the mundane and the poignant. Dr Copperfield reveals what goes on behind those surgery doors.' - The Daily Mail
Table of Contents
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1 A CRUEL AND WICKED HUSBAND
Chapter 2 MURDER MOST FOUL
Chapter 3 DEATH IN THE MORNING
Chapter 4 SEIZE THE LORD!
Chapter 5 THE TRIAL, DAY ONE – THE PROSECUTION
Chapter 6 THE TRIAL, DAY TWO – THE DEFENCE
Chapter 7 THE TRIAL, DAY THREE – THE SENTENCE
Chapter 8 EXECUTION OF AN ARISTOCRAT
Epilogue
Sources
More from Monday Books
Table of Contents
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1 A CRUEL AND WICKED HUSBAND
Chapter 2 MURDER MOST FOUL
Chapter 3 DEATH IN THE MORNING
Chapter 4 SEIZE THE LORD!
Chapter 5 THE TRIAL, DAY ONE – THE PROSECUTION
Chapter 6 THE TRIAL, DAY TWO – THE DEFENCE
Chapter 7 THE TRIAL, DAY THREE – THE SENTENCE
Chapter 8 EXECUTION OF AN ARISTOCRAT
Epilogue
Sources
More from Monday Books
In the Shadow of the Noose: Mad Earl Ferrers: The Last English Nobleman Hanged for Murder Page 6
