Yeah, I have been a bit busy so the facts might be coming out a day late but I’ll catch up today!
Today’s Romantic Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
A woman’s honor meant everything to Jereboam Beauchamp, born and raised after the genteel tradition in the antebellum South. Beauchamp would do anything to defend that honor, including murder.
Ann Cooke, an aging belle from Virginia, became engaged to Beauchamp when he was only twenty-one years old (she was thirty-eight). Before she would marry the promising young attorney, however, Ann insisted that her honor be avenged. She had been seduced and made pregnant, she claimed, by Colonel Solomon P. Sharp, a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives, and a former attorney general of the state.
The heated political campaign of 1826 also involved Ann Cooke. Solomon’s political foes used her seduction story against him, openly branding him a scoundrel. The Colonel remained mute on the subject but Jereboam Beauchamp did not. Two years after marrying Ann (there was no child) Beauchamp, no doubt brooding about Ann Cooke’s charges then rekindled in the election, confronted Sharp, demanding that he meet him in a duel. The Colonel declined.
Days later, wearing a red hood over his head, Beauchamp appeared at Sharp’s estate. When the Colonel opened the door, Beauchamp plunged a dagger into his chest several times until the politician fell dead.
Beauchamp, however, was recognized and his apprehension followed almost immediately. He was imprisoned in the Frankfort Jail, a dungeon-like affair with no windows, pitch-black, which had to be entered by letting down a ladder. Here, Ann visited him to pour out her gratitude for effecting her revenge.
After his confession, Beauchamp was speedily tried and sentenced by the Frankfort Circuit Court in May, 1826. He was sentenced to die on the gallows in July. While waiting for the hangman, Jereboam and Ann decided they would commit suicide together. Ann smuggled poison into Jereboam’s cell and both took large doses, but they only succeeded in getting sick.
On July 7, 1826, the day of the hanging, the two ate a final breakfast of chipped beef and tea. Then each took turns with a knife, plunging it into each other’s stomachs. As Ann died in Jereboam’s arms, thousands of people from all over the county gathered outside the jail to await the hanging.
When jailers entered the cell, Jereboam, still alive, dramatically cried out: “Tell my Father that my wife and myself are going straight to Heaven – we are dying.” But, severely wounded that he was, Jereboam was not dying. Angry jailers dragged him from his cell, his dead wife clasped in his arms.
Jereboam’s last moments on earth were intended to entertain the thousands of spectators who had come to the execution, many with picnic baskets, kites, and small children. He had been expected to sit on top of his own coffin in an open cart and be led ceremoniously to the gallows in a nearby field while bugles, fifes, and drums heralded his last ride.
But Jereboam Beauchamp was too weak for that; he disappointed the crowd by riding in a closed carriage, wrapped with a blanket soaked with the blood from his wound. He clung to the body of his dead wife in the carriage, saying to her: “Farewell, child of sorrow! For you I have lived; for you I die!”
Jailers and hangman had to help the weakened man up the stairs of the gallows where the rope was placed about his head with much ceremony. Following the custom of the hangman, jailers, the crowd, and the damned man paused from their ghastly chore. They stood silently for moments, Beauchamp supported in a half-swoon, while a band played a popular air of the day, “Bonaparte’s Retreat from Moscow,” Beauchamps’ last request.
Then the hangman kicked open the door and Jereboam joined his “child of sorrow”. HIs body was quickly taken down and Beauchamp was placed in his coffin. His wife was placed next to him, her head resting on his shoulder.
They were both buried that day outside Frankfort. A giant flat slab of Kentucky River sandstone was placed above their common grave as a marker. On the stone was chiseled a poem Ann Cooke Beauchamp had written in the Frankfort jail:
He heard her tale of matchless woe,
And burning for revenge he rose,
And laid her base seducer low,
And struck dismay to virtue’s foes.Daughter of virtue! Moist thy tear,
This tomb of love and honor claim;
For thy defense the husband here,
Laid down in youth his life and fame.
Culled from: Bloodletters and Badmen
Here’s the alluringly poetic Miss Cooke herself:
And here’s the lovestruck young Jereboam:
And here is the doomed Solomon Sharp:
And here is Jereboam doing the dirty deed!
And here’s the sad execution:
Crime Scene Du Jour!
Deadly Intent: Crime & Punishment: Photographs from the Burns Archive
New York City Police Photographer at Work 1931
A rare photograph of a police photographer at work at a crime scene. William Herman was shot without warning on December 31, 1931 by four bandits who stole the payroll of Brooklyn’s American Sugar Company.