Very Rare. Only one other recorded copy at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
A rare execution broadside supposedly printed on the day of the execution and at the location of the hanging recording the remarkable and famous case of John Tawell who returned from New South Wales after a previous conviction and transportation for forgery and murdered his mistress by poisoning. Tawell’s case is notable as he was one of the first criminals to be caught via the use of the electric telegraph system.
The broadside consist of three sections entitled,“LIFE OF TAWELL.”, “THE TRIAL.”, and “EXECUTION.”, with the addition at the bottom of two ballad verses written in the first person as though by Tawell lamenting his crimes and fate, each titled “COPY OF VERSES.” : “I, alas! I am doomed to die, On Aylesbury’s fatal scaffold high”.
The first section contains background on the life of Tawell, who was aged 61 at the time of his death. He was notably a Quaker for only part of his life, having requested to join the Society of Friends as an adult. He was later expelled for marrying a non-Quaker but continued to dress as a Quaker and interact with their social circles. He also had a previous criminal history due to a forgery conviction that saw him sentenced to 14 years in New South Wales. After serving only part of that sentence due to ‘good conduct’, he was freed and remained in Sydney as a successful druggist before eventually returning to England, marrying a second wife (the first having passed away), and taking up residence in a fine house where he collected rare specimens in the pursuit of the study of natural history.
The woman, Sarah Hart. murdered by Tawell was formerly his servant and “mistress of the house”, who may have expected to become his second wife but was instead resettled in Salt Hill and provided with an allowance from Tawell.
The bulk of the account of the trial focuses on the witness accounts, which give evidence that Tawell killed Hart by getting her to ingest a deadly quantity of a poison called prussic acid, which he purchased from a chemist claiming to want to apply it externally as a treatment for varicose veins. Also notable is the recounting of Tawell’s last visit with his wife after the guilty verdict and sentencing, which was so emotional that “even the authorities of the prison, used as they are to scenes of the like nature, could not forbear shedding a tear”.
After his death, John Tawell became known as “The Man Hanged by the Electric Telegraph”, due to the role that the then-new technology of the telegraph played in his capture. On the night of the death of Sarah Hart, one of the men that had been alerted to the murder saw a man dressed as a Quaker boarding a train from Slough to Paddington. The station master offered to send a telegraph ahead to Paddington to warn them:
“A MURDER HAS GUST BEEN COMMITTED AT SALT HILL AND THE SUSPECTED MURDERER WAS SEEN TO TAKE A FIRST CLASS TICKET TO LONDON BY THE TRAIN WHICH LEFT SLOUGH AT 742 PM HE IS IN THE GARB OF A KWAKER WITH A GREAT COAT ON WHICH REACHES NEARLY DOWN TO HIS FEET HE IS IN THE LAST COMPARTMENT OF THE SECOND CLASS COMPARTMENT”
After some confusion over the word “Quaker” (spelled as “Kwaker” due to the inability of the early telegraph to send the letters J, Q, and Z), the message was received, allowing the police in London to spot Tawell exiting the train, then follow and arrest him the next day. This story brought a great deal of public attention to the technology of the telegraph as “the cords that hanged John Tawell”. The set of telegraph machines from Slough and Paddington were later donated by their makers to the London Science Museum, where they remain.
