His efforts in this respect, however, were as unavailing as those which he had made to procure a mitigation of his punishment; for the circumstance having been made known to the sheriff, he took such steps as were deemed expedient and necessary to prevent the success of the project. The wretched companions in guilt of the captain exhibited the greatest hardihood; and when the jailers were employed in putting on their irons, they declared that they had no fear of death.
Captain Goodere’s wife and daughter, dressed in deep mourning, took a solemn leave of him on the day before his death; and he went in a mourning-coach to the place of execution, to which his accomplices were conveyed in a cart.
They were hanged near the Hot Wells, Bristol, on the 20th of April, 1741, within view of the place where the ship lay when the murder was committed.
JOHN BODKIN, DOMINICK BODKIN, AND OTHERS.
EXECUTED FOR MURDER.
OLIVER BODKIN, ESQ. was a gentleman who possessed a good estate near Tuam, in Ireland. He had two sons by two wives. The elder son, named John, to whom this narrative chiefly relates, was sent to Dublin to study the law; and the younger, who was about seven years of age, remained at home with his parents. The young student lived in a very dissipated manner at Dublin, and soon quitting his studies, came and resided near his father’s place of abode. The father allowed him a certain annual sum for his support; but, as he lived beyond his allowance, he demanded farther assistance. The father, however, refusing to accede to his wishes, he determined upon a horrible revenge, and included his mother-in-law in his proposed scheme of vengeance, as he imagined that she had induced his father to refuse him any further aid.
Having engaged his cousin, Dominick Bodkin, his father’s shepherd, John Hogan, and another ruffian of the name of Burke, to assist him in the intended murders, they went to the house of Mr. Bodkin, senior; whose household consisted of four men and three women servants, exclusive of Mrs. Bodkin and the younger son, and a gentleman named Lynch, who was at that time on a visit there. They found all the members of the family at supper on their arrival, and having murdered them, they went into the kitchen, where they killed three servant-maids; and, finding the men in different parts of the house, they also sacrificed them to their brutal and unprovoked rage. The murder of eleven persons being thus perpetrated, they quitted the fatal spot; and, when some persons from Tuam came the next morning to speak with Mr. Bodkin on business, they found the house open, and beheld the dead body of Mr. Lynch, near which lay that of Mrs. Bodkin, hacked and mangled in a shocking manner; and, at a small distance, her husband, with his throat cut, and the child lying dead across his breast. The throats of the maid-servants in the kitchen were all cut; and the men-servants in another room were also found murdered. The assassins had even been so wanton in their cruelties as to kill all the dogs and cats in the house. The neighbours being alarmed by such a singular instance of barbarity, a suspicion fell on John Bodkin; who, being taken into custody, confessed all the tragical circumstances above-mentioned, and impeached his accomplices: on which the other offenders were taken into custody, and all of them were committed to the jail of Tuam.
The shepherd then confessed that he had murdered two; but that thinking to preserve the boy, to whom he had been foster-father, he besmeared him with blood, and laid him near his father. Dominick, perceiving him alive, killed him; and he afterwards murdered five more. John Bodkin owned that he and Burke killed the remainder; that he had formerly attempted to poison his mother-in-law; and that he was concerned with his first-cousins, John Bodkin, then living, and Frank Bodkin, then lately dead, in strangling Dominick Bodkin, their brother, heir of the late Counsellor John Bodkin, of Carobegg, to an estate of nine hundred pounds a year.
When they were brought to trial, John Bodkin, (the parricide), Dominick Bodkin, and John Hogan, pleaded guilty; and they were all condemned, and executed at Tuam on the 26th of March, 1742. The head of the shepherd was fixed on Tuam market-house, and the bodies of the others gibbeted within sight of the house where the murders had been committed.
Upon the confession of John, the cousin of the same name was apprehended for the murder of his elder brother, Dominick Bodkin, and accused of sitting on his mouth and breast until he was suffocated. He was taken in a moss, or turf bog, near Tuam, covered over with straw, and disguised in an old hat and peasant’s clothes, for which he had given his own laced coat and hat. Being examined before Lord Athenry, he said that he had fled for fear of being loaded with irons in a jail, and denied having any hand in his brother Dominick’s death, affirming that he had died of a surfeit, as had been reported. He was present at the execution of his relations, but confessed nothing; and thus (there being no positive proof against him) he escaped justice.
A case in which more cold-blooded cruelty has been displayed than in this, has seldom fallen under our notice. The murder of an indulgent parent must be insufferably shocking to every humane mind: but when we consider, as in the present instance, what a variety of unprovoked murders were added to the first, the mind is lost in astonishment at the baseness, the barbarity, the worse than savage degeneracy of those beings who could perpetrate such horrid deeds.
JONATHAN BRADFORD.
EXECUTED FOR MURDER.
THE details of this case reach us in a very abridged form; and we have been unable to collect any information on which any reliance can be placed beyond that which is afforded us by the ordinary channels. It would appear that Jonathan Bradford kept an inn in the city of Oxford. A gentleman, (Mr. Hayes), attended by a man-servant, put up one evening at Bradford’s house; and in the night, the former being found murdered in his bed, the landlord was apprehended on suspicion of having committed the barbarous and inhospitable crime. The evidence given against him was to the following effect:—Two gentlemen who had supped with Mr. Hayes, and who retired at the same time to their respective chambers, being alarmed in the night with a noise in his room, and soon hearing groans as of a wounded man, got up in order to discover the cause, and found their landlord, with a dark lantern and a knife in his hand, standing in a state of astonishment and horror over his dying guest, who almost instantly expired.
On this evidence, apparently conclusive, the jury convicted Bradford, and he was executed. But the fate of this man may serve as a lesson to jurymen to be extremely guarded in receiving circumstantial evidence.
The facts attending the above dreadful tragedy were not fully brought to light until the death-bed confession of the real murderer; a time when we must all endeavour to make our peace with God.
Mr. Hayes was a man of considerable property, and greatly respected. He had about him, when his sad destiny led him under the roof of Bradford, a considerable sum of money; and the landlord knowing this, determined to murder and rob him. For this horrid purpose he proceeded with a dark lantern and a carving-knife, intending to cut the throat of his guest while yet sleeping; but what must have been his astonishment and confusion to find his intended victim already murdered, and weltering in his blood!
The wicked and unworthy servant had also determined on the murder of his master; and had committed the bloody deed, and secured his treasure, a moment before the landlord entered for the same purpose.
THE EARL OF KILMARNOCK, AND LORD BALMERINO.
BEHEADED FOR HIGH TREASON.