I purchased this book from Amazon. It's a horrific case about two depraved and fiendish men who raped and murdered young girls in the 1980s. They were called the Railway Murders because of their location near railway stations. However it's a good read. I recommend it to anyone interested in true crime. A Dangerous Place by Simon Farquhar is published by History Press.
In 1684 William Carstares became the last man in Britain to be tortured with thumbscrews. He was tortured because he was suspected of being involved in a plot against the king.
On 18 August 1634 a French Catholic priest named Urbain Grandier was burned to death after being convicted of witchcraft. He was supposed to have caused a group of nuns to become demon posessed. In 1971 a movie called The Devils was made about it.
On 17 August 1962 Peter Fechter became the first person shot by East German guards at the Berlin Wall.
Mary Blandy was convicted of murdering her father and was hanged for the crime. Mary was born in 1720 into a middle-class family. Her father, Francis Blandy, was a well-to-do lawyer and the town clerk of Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire. Mary was, by all accounts, intelligent and well educated.
Keen to see his daughter marry well, Francis offered a dowry of £10,000 (a huge sum at that time). However, Blandy's entire estate was only worth about £4,000, and he could not have honoured the bargain. Still, the offer attracted a man named Captain William Cranstoun in 1746. Cranstoun was the son of a Scottish nobleman. In 1747, he asked to marry Mary. Francis agreed, and even invited him to move into the Blandy home.
However, Cranstoun was already married. When Francis Blandy found out, he was naturally enraged. However, Cranstoun managed to persuade Mary and her mother that his marriage was invalid and would soon be annulled by the Scottish courts.
Cranstoun moved to London to await the court's decision. However, the Scottish court ruled that his marriage was legal.
Cranstoun persuaded Mary that he had a 'love powder' that, if she mixed it with her father's food and drink, it would change his attitude. He would start to like Cranstoun. The 'love powder' was actually arsenic. It's not clear if Mary naively believed Cranstoun or if she realised what the powder actually was. In any case, her father fell ill and gradually worsened. He died on 14 August 1751.
Nevertheless, Mary was not arrested till the following year, 1752. Cranstoun heard of the arrest, and he fled to France. Mary Blandy was convicted of murder, and she was hanged on 6 April 1752.
On 16 August 1819 the Peterloo Massacre took place. A big crowd held a peaceful political meeting at St Peters Fields in Manchester, England. The magistrates sent in troops who killed 11 and injured about 400.
The last person to be executed in the Tower of London was German spy Josef Jakobs on 15 August 1941. He was shot by a firing squad. This is a video about the case.
