Despite promises of money and freedom from prosecution, he did not cooperate with the authorities. He pleaded not guilty and conducted his own defence, but was found guilty, hanged and gibbetted.
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Queen's Head Inn, Perth Tasmania In 1837, five years after the practice ceased in England, the body of John McKay was gibbetted near the spot where he murdered Joseph Wilson near Perth.Pedder C.J., Rex v. McKay and Lamb (Supreme Court of Van Diemen's Land), originally published Hobart Town Courier, 5 May 1837, republished by the Division of Law, Macquarie University and the School of History and Classics, University of Tasmania in Decisions of the Nineteenth Century Tasmanian Superior Courts. Accessed 19 December 2007.
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Gibbet Island is an island of Bermuda. It is located at the mouth of Flatt's Inlet which leads to Harrington Sound. Its name arises from the fact that runaway slaves were gibbetted, or hung here as punishment and a warning to passing maritime traffic. Flatt's inlet was not a major shipping route so the reason for hanging the slaves here was not for the benefit of incoming vessels but instead because locals didn't want to have hangings on the mainland due to superstition.
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In 1636, Nix's Mate was granted to John Gallop, a harbor pilot who lived on nearby Gallops Island and used the then island for grazing his sheep. Ship's ballast was quarried from the island during the 17th century, followed by slate in the 18th century, resulting in today's much smaller island. In 1726, upon the arrest of pirate Captain "Under the Black Flag" David Cordingly William Fly, officials brought him to Boston where he was executed. His body was then gibbetted on Nixes Mate to serve as a warning to sailors not to turn to piracy.
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Of these, 24 were hanged and gibbetted, one was transported, and eight were acquitted or pardoned. To Parker's fury, Admiral Richard Rodney Bligh had issued pardons to several former members of the Hermione's crew; including Pigot's elderly servant and the twelve-year old son of the latter, on the grounds that they at least could not reasonably have been expected to resist armed mutineers. Parker forced Bligh to resign and return to Britain. The Hermione had meanwhile sat in Puerto Cabello until Captain Edward Hamilton, aboard cut her out of the harbour on 25 October 1799.
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British sailors boarding the Hermione in Puerto Cabello by John Augustus Atkinson Meanwhile, news of the fate of HMS Hermione reached Admiral Sir Hyde Parker when HMS Diligence captured a Spanish schooner. Parker wrote to the governor of La Guaira, demanding the return of the ship and the surrender of the mutineers. Meanwhile, he despatched under Captain Henry Ricketts to commence negotiations. Parker also set up a system of informers and posted rewards that eventually led to the capture of 33 of the mutineers, some of whom were tried aboard , and at least one aboard . Of these, 24 were hanged and gibbetted, one was transported, and eight were acquitted or pardoned.
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An original casting is held at the Hunterian Museum (London) His body was not publicly gibbetted after death, contrary to the wishes of King George III. Parker's wife Anne, who had worked tirelessly to prevent his execution, later rescued his body from an unconsecrated burial ground and smuggled it into London, where crowds gathered to see it. After receiving Christian rites, it was buried in the grounds of St Mary Matfelon Church, Whitechapel. An entry in the Burial Register for St Mary's, Whitechapel (aka St Mary Matfelon), dated 4 July 1797, reads: Richard Parker – Sheerness, Kent – age: 33 – Cause of death: Execution – This was Parker the President of the mutinous Delegates on board the Fleet at the Nore.
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In 1560, during the French Wars of Religion, a conspiracy by members of the Huguenot House of Bourbon against the House of Guise that virtually ruled France in the name of the young Francis II was uncovered by the comte de Guise and stifled by a series of hangings, which took a month to carry out. By the time it was finished, 1200 Protestants were gibbetted, strung from the town walls, hung from the iron hooks that held pennants and tapestries on festive occasions and from the very balcony of the Logis du Roy. The Court soon had to leave the town because of the smell of corpses. The abortive peace of Amboise was signed at Amboise on 12 March 1563, between Louis I de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, who had been implicated in the conspiracy to abduct the king, and Catherine de' Medici.
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