H. W.
HAS EXECUTION BY HANGING BEEN SURVIVED?
(Vol. ix., p. 174.)
Two instances of criminals being restored to life after having been hanged are recorded, on good authority, to have occurred in this town. Henry of Knighton (who was a Canon of Leicester Abbey) relates in his Chronicle (col. 2627), under the year 1363, that—
"One Walter Wynkeburn having been hanged at Leicester, on the prosecution of Brother John Dingley, Master of Dalby, of the order of Knights Hospitallers, after having been taken down from the gallows as a dead man, was being carried to the cemetery of the Holy Sepulchre of Leicester, to be buried, began to revive in the cart, and was taken into the church of the Holy Sepulchre by an ecclesiastic, and there diligently guarded by this Leicester ecclesiastic to prevent his being seized for the purpose of being hanged a second time. To this man King Edward granted pardon in Leicester Abbey, and gave him a charter of pardon, thus saying in my hearing, 'Deus tibi dedit vitam, et nos dabimus tibi Cartam?"
We learn, on the authority of a cotemporary record, preserved in the archives of this borough, and quoted in Thompson's History of Leicester, p. 110., that in June, 1313, Matthew of Enderby, a thief, was apprehended and imprisoned in the king's gaol at Leicester; and that being afterwards convicted, he was sentenced by Sir John Digby and Sir John Daungervill, the king's justices, to be hanged; that he was led to the gallows by the frankpledges of Birstall and Belgrave, and by them suspended; but on his body being taken down, and carried to the cemetery of St. John's Hospital for interment, he revived and was subsequently exiled. Three instances are narrated in Wanley's Wonders of Man, vol. i. pp. 125, 126., and another will be found in Seward's Spirit of Anecdote and Wit, vol. iii. p. 88., quoted from Gamble's Views of Society, &c. in the North of Ireland; whilst in vol. ii. p. 220. of the same work, another restoration to life is stated to have taken place in the dissecting-room of Professor Junker, of Halle: but I know not how far these last-mentioned anecdotes are susceptible of proof.
William Kelly.
Leicester.
There appears to be no reason to doubt the truth of individuals having survived execution by hanging.