Hanging Jokes June 29, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Beach recently pointed out that were you to want to have a joke at someone’s expense it is probably not a good idea to involve poison. Similiarly strangehistory would advise against the use of nooses as these three sorry stories go to show.
20 Aug 1881: Last week a fatal practical joke was perpetrated at the works of Mr. John Walker Hollings, Linthwaite, brickmaker. John Pascoe, 15, of Rhyd House, Linthwaite, and John Diskin, 16, of the same place, both labourers, were engaged in the feeding room attending to their respective hoppers. About five o’clock William Green, who was working in an adjoining room, heard a noise, and, on going into the room where the lads were, found Pascoe being whirled round a horizontal shaft. The engine was stopped, but Pascoe was found to be dead. The other lad had been drawn to the shaft, and his left arm was found to be broken in two places. He was charged by the police with having caused Pascoe’s death, and the explanation he gave was that, in fun, he had made a slip knot, passed it over Pascoe’s head, and then threw the other end round the shaft, without thinking of doing any harm. When he found how serious the matter was he tried to rescue Pascoe, and in doing so was injured.
Give him a medal!
23 Aug 1895: A practical joke has resulted in the terrible death of a man in Paris. Two men, named Jacob and Berril, while engaged unloading main from cart on the Rue Bourdon, indulged in some horseplay in the intervals between their work pelting each other with loose oats. After this had gone for some time, Berril declared he would hang Jacob, the same time playfully running the noose the rope used to hoist grain into the warehouse over his head. Finding the rope taut the engine driver at the top began pull the burden, to the horror of Berril and the bystanders, and when the body arrived at the top it was nothing but a livid corpse. Berril, when saw what had done, tried save his companion, but only succeeded in attaching himself by the wrist to the rope, and himself bad narrow escape from serious injury.
16 May 1891: A lad named Frederick Riding died at Darwen, on Tuesday, under extraordinary circumstances. On Monday, he was passing through a room at Messrs. Potter’s paper staining works, when an older lad seized him, and, saying, ‘Let’s hang him’, passed a rope round his neck. Just then the machinery started, and Riding was draw up to the ceiling, and whirled round amongst the machinery, receiving terrible injuries, to which he succumbed.
Yikes, three from a decade: any other example of hanging jokes gone wrong: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
