execution - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1793: The Queen Who Apologised to Her Executioner: the Execution of Marie Antoinette

Nine months after her husband Louis XVI went to the guillotine, Marie Antoinette followed him, tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal for treason against the new French Republic. Her hair had been cropped and her wrists bound behind her back; she rode to the Place de la Revolution in an open cart, not the closed carriage that had carried the king. Witnesses recorded that climbing the scaffold she stepped on her executioner’s foot and murmured an apology, a small, almost absurd courtesy moments before the blade fell on 16 October 1793. The crowd that had once cheered a queen watched in silence.

Marie Antoinette's execution in 1793 — Marie Antoinette’s execution in 1793

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Europe Execution France Political Crime Trial

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1794: The First Free Settler Murdered in the Colony: Hanged at Sydney for a Parramatta Stabbing

John Hill, a butcher, had spent the day drinking with Simon Burn at Parramatta on 5 October 1794 when he turned on the woman he lived with, beating her until Burn stepped in to stop him. Hill stabbed Burn through the heart; dying within the hour, Burn had just enough strength left to name his killer before witnesses, declaring that the butcher had done it. Burn, a First Fleet convict who had earned his freedom and settled his own farm, was reportedly the first free man in the colony to be murdered by another colonist.

Hill tried to set up an alibi at his trial, but the wound and Burn’s own dying words undid him. He was hanged at Sydney on 16 October 1794, his body handed over for dissection as his sentence required.

Bloody Halloween killer dressed as butcher on dark blue background

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Australia Colonial Crime Execution Murder NSW Parramatta Sydney Trial

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1826: The Gun That Misfired Twice: Three Bushrangers Hanged Outside Sydney

At a settler’s hut near Burwood, outside Sydney, bushranger Thomas Mustin levelled a loaded musket point-blank at a visiting neighbour, and pulled the trigger. It merely flashed in the pan; he drew a pistol, and that misfired too, and in the scuffle that followed Mustin and his companions escaped briefly into the bush.

Mustin, Daniel Watkins and John Brown were convicted over this attack and a string of armed robberies around Burwood and the Liverpool Road, including one household where the terrified wife recognised Brown as a former constable but was too afraid to say so.

On 16 October 1826 the three were marched from Sydney Gaol under military escort. All three acknowledged the justice of their sentence on the scaffold and prayed for mercy, offering no claim of innocence. They hanged together on a temporary gallows at Burwood, and their bodies were left on display throughout the day.

Bushrangers holding up coach passengers illustrated scene

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Australia Bushranging Execution NSW Robbery Sydney Trial

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1826: Sullivan Gang Bushrangers Hanged Near Parramatta, One Sobbing to the Last

Matthew Craven and Thomas Cavanagh rode with a bushranging gang led by Patrick Sullivan that terrorised stations around Bathurst for half a year, robbing homesteads, stealing horses and holding settlers at gunpoint. Captured after a shootout at a bark hut, the pair pleaded guilty at trial to burglary and theft and were sentenced to hang.

On 16 October 1826 they left Sydney Gaol with three other condemned men bound for Burwood, where they were hanged before a large crowd that morning. Straight afterwards, the two men, Craven and Cavanagh travelled further on on to the Western Road near Parramatta, arriving about noon to face their own gallows.

Witnesses said their contrition was conspicuous; Craven, described as barely twenty, reportedly hung his head and sobbed bitterly as the ropes were fitted.

Bushrangers in action: Water colour drawing created by George Lacy 1867

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Australia Bathurst Burwood Bushranging Execution Gang NSW Parramatta Robbery Sydney Trial

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