exe 1 The horror of three executions at Stafford.
Executions used to be held in public, normally outside the goal gates and here hundreds of people from many parts of Staffordshire would arrive in Stafford to watch such an event and determined to get a good view. Why, perhaps psychologists can explain why you would wish to watch the last breaths taken by a fellow human being creates so much pleasure.
I guess that reading such an article regarding three executions one following the other remains a fascination to people like it did in times past. This one from 1834 refers to a good-looking lad of sixteen, Charles Shaw who was charged with the wilful murder of John Oldcroft, aged 16. For a lad of that age to have committed such a murder for the price of one shilling firstly illustrates the circumstances of poverty which his family lived. The other executions are recorded in full in the article available.
But who knows of his home life, for at 16 he may have been the breadwinner if his mother was a widow and he is perhaps the only one capable of earning anything at all just to survive and not being admitted to the workhouse. All three present a truly sad picture of the early years of the 19th century.
