Axe murderers are, on a whole, interesting characters, John Pelley is no different. I came across his name researching each of the towns between Corner Brook and St Anthony, the story of the Cow Head double axe attack piquing my interest and after a quick trawl through the Google-box machine's tangled tentacles of information, I tracked down court documents and at least three different accounts of events surrounding the murder of Joseph Rendall and Richard Cross.
For those worried about the morbidity of my interest to my defence a) I am Australian hence I almost certainly come from convict stock myself and; b) I am a writer who has just found a muse in Pelley for an upcoming piece.
The synopsis of the story is thus (the full story can be found here at the great CanadaGenWeb.org:
Joseph Rendall and Richard Cross were mates, actually they were almost family, Cross's sister, Sarah Cross Singleton was engaged to be married to Rendall.
Pelley was a strange kitten with a shady past, some said he had murdered his wife in Ireland before fleeing across the Atlantic to escape capture. Whether there is any truth to that no-one knows but it adds an extra dimension to the story.
All three men were trappers around the remote Cows Head region. Rendall and Cross worked together and Pelley worked alone and when they all met one fateful day, Pelley was the only survivor, the other two had their heads cleft in twain.
Sarah, who was a maid for ex-Navy officer John Paine, became alarmed when neither men came home so she and Paine travelled 28 miles to find them eventually coming across Pelley who was was camped out at Rendall's lodging.
Pelley denied ever seeing Cross and said Rendall was hunting however the pair found enough evidence to suggest they had met their end in the foulest way possible. A pool of blood next to Cross's shoes were one giveaway, another was Sarah's fiances mittens, which she had knitted, were hanging up to dry. At that time of the year you would have been a fool to brave freezing conditions without mittens, or a head.
Anyway, the maid and her boss fled and came back with a lynch squad who captured Pelley who denied any knowledge of the murders. The lynch mob built a fire and threatened to burn Pelley alive so he recanted his tale and told them where to find the body.
They hauled him back to St John's where he was hanged.
See, what an interesting story. Anyway the story opened up more questions than answers like:
What did your average Newfoundland hangman do when he wasn't readjusting spinal columns, how much did he earn and was his line of work profitable and I even tried to find out the answer to the eternal question: How long is a piece of string?
If you are talking about a hangman's rope it's between 1.2m and 1.8m.
As long as his Mr Hangman's (come on, he deserves an honorific) profession wasn't based on a per head basis, 1809 was profitable with just one customer and as far as I can work out from court documents I traced down, the hooded figure made five pounds and five shillings to end one John Pelley's life.
According to my research five shillings would have purchased 2lbs of refined salt or three tongues or five pounds of marmalade and nine shillings would have got the faceless judicial executioner 10 dozen Portuguese anchovies.
That's a tasty combination right there.
Up until September 5, Mr Hangman had very little to do, he had very little to do the nine preceding years and six years after and while there is an argument hangings were enough discouragement for those who disagreed with those tiny things called judicial norms, it can certainly be argued that the gibbeting of criminals was icing.
The gibbet isn't anything special, just a couple of pieces of timber but it was more of the ornament hanging from it - the dead criminal in chains or a body-shaped iron cage and in some cases when they really wanted to make an example of someone, the authorities would coat the body or its parts in tar.
The man who signed the death warrant was visionary traditionalist, Governor John Holloway, an allegedly compassionate man, and the first Governor of Newfoundland to issue a proclamation against mistreating the native Beothuk people and offering rewards for information about atrocities. He also allowed Newfoundland's first paper to be published.
Swings and round abouts I guess.
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