Cautionary tales for Christmas

Take care on the ice. On 12 December 1829, John Lansing, one time chief justice of the New York Supreme Court, disappeared. He was last seen around 5 pm, walking from the City Hotel at 115 Broadway to Cortland Street to send letters on a boat going to Albany. It is possible that he slipped and drowned but there have been cogent suggestions that he was killed on behalf of political rivals.

A warning to carol singers everywhere. Do not stay too long and too late in one place. Around 2 am on Christmas Day 1886 Robert Jannaway and friends, one armed with a clarinet, two with flutes and the fourth with a drum, turned up at the Rising Sun Public House in Clapham. They broke into the back yard and played for about 15 minutes until Jannaway’s friend of 20 years, the landlord James Gardiner, shot him from an upstairs window. 

In a statement a distraught Gardiner said, ‘I fired the shot. At the time I fired it I did not know any one was in my yard, I thought they were all in the street. There was a knocking at the door; they were all my friends. I fired in an opposite direction to the street.’

Don’t give halfpennies to little girls and then decapitate then. Alton solicitor’s clerk Frederick Baker did just that. On 24 August 1867 while picking blackberries with children, he gave a coin to eight-year-old Fanny Adams and took her to a hop field. Her head was found that evening with other parts strewn locally. Baker, still bloodstained, was arrested at his desk at 9 pm, presumably making up for lost time. In his diary he had written: 'Killed a young girl. It was fine and hot'.

He was hanged on Christmas Eve. She gave her name to the phrase ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’ meaning sweet nothing. 

Although the other prisoners sentenced to death at Maidstone’s winter assizes in 1833 were hanged before Christmas, a kindly judge deferred the execution of George Cropper until Boxing Day so he could contemplate his imminent death and repent his abominable crimes of an unnatural offence. The Maidstone Journal thought Cropper’s offence precluded him from ‘all hope of mercy’. 

At least the New Year 1887 started well for James Gardiner. On 10 January he was acquitted of manslaughter. Justice was swift in those days.