First World War Trials & Executions

Britain's Trailers, Spies & Killers 1914-1918

Simon Webb

• Publisher: Pen and Sword History
• Year: 2015
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781473859913
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Between the beginning of the First World War in the summer of 1914 and the armistice in 1918, 51 men were executed in Britain. The great majority, over 80%, were hanged for murder, but in addition to this, 11 men were shot by firing squad at the Tower of London. One traitor and one spy were also hanged. First World War Trials and Executions tells the story of the most interesting and noteworthy of these executions and the crimes which led up to them. Most books about true crime focus upon the crimes themselves and the trials which followed them. In this book, Simon Webb explores in detail the fates of the condemned men, examining what happened to them after their trials and the circumstances of the executions. This makes occasionally for harrowing reading. Trends in murder are also examined. For instance, a third of those executed for murder during the First World War had used cutthroat razors to dispose of their victims, a type of crime unheard of today. Others used pokers and axes, which are also exceedingly uncommon murder weapons in the twenty first century. This is a book which will fascinate and horrify those with an interest in crime and the death penalty.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 An Old-Fashioned Way to Die: The Cut-throat Razor as Murder Weapon
• Chapter 2 Butchers at Work: Two Axe Murderers
• Chapter 3 Another Old Fashioned Murder Weapon: The Domestic Poker
• Chapter 4 Prisoners in the Tower: The Shooting of Spies
• Chapter 5 Suffer the Little Children: Two Cases of Child Murder
• Chapter 6 The Traitor and the Spy: Two Hangings in London
• Chapter 7 A Classic Murder Case: George ‘Brides in the Bath’ Smith
• Chapter 8 Powder and Shot: Guns: Rare British Murder Weapons
• Chapter 9 Beating to Death: The Most Ancient Type of Murder
• Chapter 10 Moving Towards the Modern World: Knife Crime During the First World War
• Appendix I: The Executioners
• Appendix II: The Executions
• Appendix III: The Mechanics of Hanging
• Bibliography
• Plate section