Governor Wall's Ghost!
The perpetrators of gruesome murders and heinous crimes received their fair share attention from the press in the 18th century just as they do today. And then as now, they retained the ability to arouse horror or fear (as in the case of the fisherwoman in this print) even after their death. The brutal and sadistic Joseph Wall is a case in point.
Wall was a career military man, having served in Havana during the Seven Year's War, in Bombay with the East India Company, and as a Clerk of the Council in Senegambia West Africa before becoming Lieutenant Governor of a military garrison on the island of Gorée near Dakar, Senegal. By then he had already had several run-ins with the law each of which had some element of violence and cruelty. On his way out to Gorée, for instance, he had a soldier under his command flogged " so severely that his bowels protruded from his flesh." And a few days before he was scheduled to leave the garrison for health reasons a drunken Governor Wall ordered a horrendous series of floggings upon seven men whose only crime seems to have been requesting the back pay they were owed. It was the death of one of these, Benjamin Armstrong, after the administration of 800 lashes that led to Wall's eventual apprehension and execution for murder nearly 20 years later.
© Trustees of the British Musuem
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The trial took place on January 20, 1802 in a marathon session that lasted from 9:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night. Details of the trial and execution eight days later were reported as they happened in numerous contemporary publications, including the Morning Chronicle, London Star, Courier and Evening Gazette, and the European Magazine and London Review. A separate follow-up publication, Life, Trial, and Particulars of the Execution of Governor Wall. . . appeared in February, and in March, the Monthly Magazine published yet another retrospective of the entire sordid history.
[February, 1802]
© Cornell University
Gillray's print appeared in July, and, according to both Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, is based upon a man who strongly resembled Governor Wall and who frequented the Cyder Cellar in Maiden Lane. According to the Life, Trial, and Particulars of the Execution of Governor Wall. . ., the Governor himself was tall (approximately 6 feet four inches), of genteel appearance, and, at the time the trial, 65 years of age though looking much younger. There was a considerable crowd at his exceution, so it is not unikely that a curious fishwife could have seen him executed in February and hence been understandably startled by his apparent resurrection in July before the subterranean entrance to the Cyder Cellar.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on Governor Wall's Ghost!.
- "Joseph Wall (colonial administrator)," Wikipedia
- Life, Trial, and Particulars of the Execution of Governor Wall
- "The Trial of Joseph Wall, Esq for Murder," A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings Vol 28, pp. 51- 177.
- "title," Wikipedia
- Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #521.
- Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. 290.
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