Age: unknown
Sex: male
Crime: murder
Date Of Execution: 1 Jan 1743
Execution Place: unknown
Method: hanging
Executioner: unknown
Source: http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/ely.html
John Bell reports this as “In 1743 a local poacher, John Williamson, was convicted of the murder of gamekeeper Albert Partridge. He was sentenced to be gibbeted alive. Records describe how the man, slowly starving, was taunted by locals who threw bread at the gibbet.”
It would be useful to know what these “records” are. I suspect they are local tales. A highly coloured account is in Geoffrey M Dixon’s “Folktales and Legends of Cambridgeshire.”
