Life, Trial, Confession & Execution of Thomas Corrigan

Execution broadside printed with an account of the crime, trial and sentencing of Thomas William John Corrigan (aged 29), an employee at India House, convicted of the murder of his wife Louisa. The broadside includes a woodcut engraving of the gallows with the crowd of spectators and recounts the crime in both text and verse. The case resulted in deep public sympathy for Corrigan due to the belief that he suffered under 'delirium treminas' at the time of the murder. Although due to be executed by public hanging, as indicated on the broadside, his sentence was commuted to transportation after a royal pardon. Once settled in Australia Corrigan remarried and had five children.

Until 1868 public hangings were a popular form of entertainment for the London crowd. Such occasions provided an opportunity for cheap printers and street vendors to 'turn a penny on the street' by selling accounts of the crimes, trial and 'dying speeches' of executed criminals as souvenirs to the baying spectactors. As soon as the trap fell the street vendors began running amongst the crowd selling the broadsides. Execution broadsides were published by a small number of printers many of whom, such as Thomas Birt, James Catnach and James Pitts were based around the Seven Dials area of London. Spelling and grammar was often poor and the details not always accurate. As the broadsides were printed between the end of the trial and the date of the execution (usually a gap of a few weeks) they were often published, as in this case, for condemned prisoners who were subsequently reprieved through royal pardons. The printers often used battered woodcuts, and, for the gallows scene used a stock block with a pierced central section to allow the sex and required number of hanging figures to be changed as required. Female criminals were depicted by using a block for a male figure, cut square at the knee to represent a skirt.