Execution: A Guide To The Ultimate Penalty - Plot & Excerpts
Cases did occur, however, where confinement in a gibbet was itself the sentence which ultimately brought death, mainly from exposure and starvation. This was the fate suffered by Andrew Mills, a farm servant who, on 28 January 1683, murdered his master’s three children, John, Jane and Elizabeth Brass. The parents were away from home, and the two youngest children were asleep in an inner room when Mills broke into the house. The eldest, a daughter, had her arm broken when she used it as a bolt across the door to bar his entry into the room, and was the first to be killed, the other children being murdered soon after. Captured by troopers some time later, he was tried at Durham. Despite his obvious mental instability – during his confession he insisted that the devil had urged him on, saying, ‘Kill all, kill all’ – he was condemned to be gibbeted near the scene of the crime. It was asserted that he survived for several days, his sweetheart keeping him alive with milk. Another source, however, tells how a loaf of bread was placed just within his reach, but fixed on an iron spike that would pierce his throat if he attempted to alleviate his hunger.
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