21 September 2021 - LAST PUBLIC HANGING IN AMERICA

 

LAST PUBLIC HANGING 

IN AMERICA

G'day folks,

A crowd variously estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 gathered at Owensboro, Kentucky in 1936 to watch the last ever public hanging in the United States. 

 

The fact that the prisoner was a young black man and that the sheriff overseeing the execution was a white woman intensified the interest of both the public and the Press. Reporters from across the country arrived to cover the event.

Rainey Bethea, aged 22, had been found guilty of raping a wealthy white widow, 70-year-old Lischia Edwards. A neighbour failed to get a reply when he knocked on her door on a Sunday morning in late June, concerned about her not leaving for church. Mrs. Edwards was then found dead on her bed, the coroner later declaring that she had been strangled and raped the previous night.

Bethea, who had a criminal record for burglary, had worked as a servant for several Owensboro families and had been employed at the apartment building where Mrs. Edwards lived. He became the prime suspect when a cheap ring belonging to him was found in the room.

After being arrested Bethea confessed to the crimes and admitted stealing jewellery belonging to Mrs. Edwards.

Under Kentucky state law at the time, conviction for robbery and murder would result in execution at the state penitentiary, but the prosecution, wanting the execution to take place at Owensboro, proceeded only with a charge of rape. This carried the possibility of public hanging, satisfying the lust of some townspeople for vengeance.

At his trial in a packed courthouse Bethea pleaded guilty. The prosecution still presented the facts to the jury as they would need to decide the sentence. There was no defence.

The judge instructed the jury that their only job was to decide whether Bethea should get between 10 to 20 years in prison or the death sentence. It took them less than five minutes to decide that he should be hanged.

This was not good news for Florence Thompson. She had taken over the job of sheriff from her husband who had died three months earlier. Sheriff Thompson, a mother of four, was expected to become the first woman executioner in United States history because in law it was her duty to spring the trap. But she was repelled by the idea and said so publicly.

She then received death threats and it was agreed she could ask someone to do the job for her. And so retired police officer Arthur Hash was hired by Sheriff Thompson to pull the lever.

Organising the whole squalid affair was an Illinois farmer named G. Phil Hanna who had overseen about 70 hangings. He took interest in the grisly pursuit when he saw a botched execution that caused great suffering for the victim. After studying how to hang someone as humanely as possible he began offering his services.

At Owensboro Hanna adjusted the noose around Bethea’s neck and gave the signal to Hash to pull the lever. But Hash was reportedly drunk and failed to notice. Exasperated, Hanna yelled, “Do it now!” And so one of America's most shameful executions came to an end.

Many newspapers denounced “the carnival of sadism” saying that the crowds enjoyed it too much. But they also carried a large number of indignant letters, the writers telling of their shame that such a thing could happen in Kentucky. Two years later the state abolished public executions.

Clancy's comment: Who would want to attend such an event?

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16 October 2017 - JERRY’S JUNK IN KENTUCKY

JERRY’S JUNK 

IN KENTUCKY

G'day folks,

Here is another hoarder story.

Staring out at you from behind those rusty gates; thousands of tightly packed, unwanted objects from the past sit in an eerie silence, almost as if they might just come alive as soon as you turn your back. Each and every single one has been collected by Kentucky’s King of Junk, who has made a temporary home for them in his wild and tangled fortress.

Most people have heard of Louisville, Kentucky for hosting “the most exciting two-minutes in sports”, aka, The Kentucky Derby. The first Saturday in May, locals and celebrities alike sip on mint juleps and watch the best horses in the world race. But most people don’t venture around Kentucky’s biggest city to find its quirky gems.

Louisville’s Clifton neighbourhood is eclectic. Antique shops, used bookstores, and vintage clothing boutiques line the street along with some of the best restaurants in town. As the road dips down towards the Ohio River, a technicolor junk yard sits on the corner of Frankfort Avenue and Williams Street. Most people don’t actually notice while driving by. Even the locals have become blind to the sight of Jerry’s junk yard of weird and whacky memorabilia.

Jerry Lotz is a retired machinist and iron worker who started his collection in 1946 at the age of eight. Along with his main “display,” he owns four other houses in the neighbourhood, all equally filled with “junk”.

Driving his 1951 Studebaker, he visits flea markets to collect items for his “buy/ sell/ trade” business, though he tends to buy more than sell. “I can’t sell it,” he said. “I wouldn’t know where to get more.”

Jerry is somewhat elusive, and lives on the upper floor of the house; though if you do happen to catch him, he’s friendly and approachable and he can talk for hours. Visitors have reported that this zany old man has approached them while they gawked at his collection and taken them on tours that lasted anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours. One commented that the funniest part of their tour was that he dragged around a rake the entire time, making it almost impossible to hear him!

If you do happen to catch Jerry and he gives you the tour, you may end up with a souvenir like a lucky horse shoe. If you don’t see him hanging around, give a yell, “Hey Jerry!” Chances are, he’ll soon appear, ready to share his story.

  

Clancy's comment: I often wonder what will happen to all this stuff when Jerry passes away.

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7 December 2015 - How Kentucky Became the World’s Bourbon Capital

How Kentucky 

Became  the 

World’s Bourbon Capital

G'day folks,

Do you drink Bourbon? I certainly don't, but here are some facts about Bourbon and Kentucky.

 There’s no law mandating that bourbon must be produced in Kentucky, although it might seem that way given the state’s dominance in distilling the distinctive corn-based, barrel-aged whiskey. According to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association, the Bluegrass State produces and ages approximately 95 percent of the world’s bourbon whiskey.

So is there something in Kentucky’s water that has caused the bourbon industry to flourish? In fact, there is. The state sits atop vast deposits of blue limestone, which filters out hard iron and imparts sweet-tasting calcium and magnesium. “To this day you can go to an open stream in Kentucky, and it will taste better than 90 percent of tap water in the country because the limestone filters out unwanted minerals,” says whiskey historian Fred Minnick, author of “Whiskey Women” and “Bourbon Curious: A Simple Tasting Guide for the Savvy Drinker.”

Kentucky’s wide temperature swings—from chilly winters to hot summers—are also conducive to producing bourbon because they cause the charred oak barrels, which give the spirit its amber color and distinctive taste, to alternately absorb and release the whiskey. “We have the ideal climate to age bourbon probably,” says Wild Turkey master distiller Jimmy Russell, a member of the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame who grew up less than five miles from the distillery where he has worked since 1954. “You need the hot summers and cold winters so that the wood can breathe and the whiskey can move in and out of it.”

Another factor that makes Kentucky fertile ground for bourbon production is literally its fertile ground. The influx of settlers who crossed the Appalachian Mountains in the late 1700s soon learned the Kentucky soil was perfect for growing bourbon’s second main ingredient—corn. Drawn in part by Virginia’s 1776 Corn Patch and Cabin Rights Act, which offered 400 acres to any settlers who built cabins and planted corn in its then-territory of Kentucky, immigrants from Germany, Scotland and the north of Ireland were among those who arrived with the whiskey-distilling knowledge from their homelands in tow. 

The ease of growing corn in Kentucky caused distillers who migrated from the East Coast to change their whiskey recipes. “Rye was the plentiful grain in Pennsylvania and Maryland,” Russell says, “but when distillers came over the Appalachians they found corn the dominant grain so they used corn instead of rye.” 

By the 1780s a distinctive style of corn-based whiskey was being distilled in Kentucky, although Minnick says the story that Baptist minister Elijah Craig invented bourbon by accident after storing his whiskey in barrels charred by a fire is mere legend concocted by whiskey advocates to cloak the spirit in the spiritual. “Craig was a very powerful and important person, but we don’t have any credible records to indicate that he would have been a true inventor of bourbon,” Minnick says.

Whiskey increased in popularity after the American Revolution as the import of rum—which had been the most popular alcoholic drink in many American colonies—slowed with decline of the “triangle trade” with Great Britain. The lingering debt from the war, however, caused the federal government to levy a tax on liquor in 1791. Distillers in Maryland and Pennsylvania, in particular, bristled at the tax and led the Whiskey Rebellion, which was eventually quelled by thousands of federal troops dispatched by President George Washington in 1794. 

Minnick notes, however, that the Whiskey Rebellion did not spark a mass migration of tax-dodging distillers to Kentucky and that an estimated 500 distilleries were already operating in the state at the time. However, he notes that to prevent a similar popular uprising Congress left whiskey largely tax-free until the Civil War, except briefly to pay for the War of 1812. “After the Whiskey Rebellion, Congress decided not to tax whiskey, but they added tariffs onto rum because there was a thought that money from rum would end up getting into the hands of the British.” 

The high levies on rum and its key ingredient, molasses, contributed to soaring whiskey consumption in the early decades of the republic. Kentucky’s whiskey industry, in particular, thrived as slave labor assisted with production and distillers took advantage of the state’s plethora of navigable waterways—such as the Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers—that provided easy access to big cities such as Cincinnati and New Orleans. 

In addition to Kentucky’s geographic advantages, Minnick says the state’s strong families who passed distilling down from generation to generation and sustained their businesses in bad economic times also allowed the bourbon industry to flourish. “Many major areas had significant distilling capacity, but the stronger families were here in Kentucky, and that sustained bourbon through the years. All the historical family names that you see on these old bourbon bottles were passionate. They developed a following, and for the most part these companies have been able to work together for the common good.”

Although the term “bourbon” began to appear in newspaper advertisements for Kentucky’s particular brand of whiskey by the 1820s, its origins are murky. Some historians believe the moniker was inspired by Kentucky’s Bourbon County—itself named after the French royal family in recognition of France’s support in the American Revolution. Bourbon County originally occupied a large section of central Kentucky, and local distillers stamped its name as the county of origin on whiskey barrels transported around the country. Minnick says another theory is the name derived from Bourbon Street in New Orleans, where the drink was popular in the French Quarter saloons. 

“There’s not enough good evidence one way or another,” he says.

There’s one fact about bourbon, though, that can’t be disputed according to Russell. “You can make bourbon anyplace in the country,” he says, “but if it’s not Kentucky bourbon, it’s not bourbon.”

 Clancy's comment: There ya go you Bourbon drinkers. Mm ... I might just slip out and have a cold Chardonnay. Just sayin' ...

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