George Forster (murderer)

Last updated June 09, 2024

George Forster (or Foster) was found guilty of murdering his wife and child by drowning them in Paddington Canal, London. He was hanged at Newgate on 18 January 1803, shortly after which his body was taken to a nearby house where it was used in an experiment by Italian scientist Giovanni Aldini.^[1]

At his trial the events were reconstructed. Forster's mother-in-law recounted that her daughter and grandchild had left her house to see Forster at 4 p.m. on Saturday, 4 December 1802. Joseph Bradfield, in whose house Forster lodged, reported that they had stayed together that night and gone out at 10 a.m. on the Sunday morning. He also stated that Forster and his wife had not been on good terms because she wished to live with him. Various witnesses saw Forster with his wife and child in public houses near Paddington Canal during the day on the Sunday. The body of his child was found on the Monday morning; after the canal was dragged for three days, his wife's body was also found.^[1]

Forster claimed that upon leaving The Mitre he set out alone for Barnet in order to see his other two children who were in the workhouse there, though he was forced to turn back at Whetstone due to the failing light. This was contradicted by a waiter at The Mitre who said the three left the inn together. Scepticism was also expressed that he could have walked to Whetstone in the time he claimed. The jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to death and also to be dissected thereafter. This sentence was designed not only to provide medicine with corpses on which to experiment, but also to ensure that the condemned could not rise on Judgement Day, their bodies having been cut into pieces and selectively discarded. Forster was hanged on 18 January, shortly before which he made a full confession. He said he had come to hate his wife and had twice before taken his wife to the canal but his nerve had both times failed him.^[1]

A recent BBC Knowledge documentary (Real Horror: Frankenstein) questions the fairness of the trial. It notes that friends of George Forster's wife later claimed that she was extremely suicidal and had often talked about killing herself and her daughter. According to this documentary, Forster attempted suicide by stabbing himself with a crudely fashioned knife. This was to avoid awakening during the dissection of his body, should he not have died when hanged. This was a real possibility owing to the crude methods of execution at the time. The same reference suggests that his 'confession' was obtained under duress. In fact, it alleges that Pass, a Beadle on Aldini's payroll, fast-tracked the whole trial and legal procedure in order to obtain the freshest corpse possible for his benefactor.

After the execution Forster's body was given to Giovanni Aldini for experimentation. Aldini was the nephew of fellow scientist Luigi Galvani and an enthusiastic proponent of his uncle's method of stimulating muscles with electric current, known as Galvanism.^[2] The experiment he performed on Forster's body was a demonstration of this technique. The Newgate Calendar (a record of executions at Newgate) reports that, "On the first application of the process to the face, the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion."^[1]

Several of those present believed that Forster was being brought back to life (The Newgate Calendar reports that even if this had been so, he would have been re-executed since his sentence was to "hang until he be dead") and one man, Mr Pass, the beadle of the Surgeons' Company, was so shocked that he died shortly after leaving.^[1] The hanged man was certainly dead, since his blood had been drained and his spinal cord severed after the execution.

Media

The Galvanism experiment performed on George Forster was explored in the Science Channel's Dark Matters: Twisted But True .
George Forster was noted on History Channel show called, Zombies: A Living History

Related Research Articles

Giovanni Aldini was an Italian physician and physicist born in Bologna. He was a brother of the statesman Count Antonio Aldini (1756–1826). He graduated in physics at University of Bologna in 1782.

Newgate Prison was a prison at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey Street just inside the City of London, England, originally at the site of Newgate, a gate in the Roman London Wall. Built in the 12th century and demolished in 1904, the prison was extended and rebuilt many times, and remained in use for over 700 years, from 1188 to 1902.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Galvanism</span> Early study of the electric properties of animal tissue

Galvanism is a term invented by the late 18th-century physicist and chemist Alessandro Volta to refer to the generation of electric current by chemical action. The term also came to refer to the discoveries of its namesake, Luigi Galvani, specifically the generation of electric current within biological organisms and the contraction/convulsion of biological muscle tissue upon contact with electric current. While Volta theorized and later demonstrated the phenomenon of his "Galvanism" to be replicable with otherwise inert materials, Galvani thought his discovery to be a confirmation of the existence of "animal electricity," a vital force which gave life to organic matter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Marwood</span> British state hangman (1818-1883)

William Marwood was a British state hangman. He developed the technique of hanging known as the "long drop".

Louis Jeremiah Abershawe, better known as Jerry Abershawe, or Abershaw, was a notorious English highwayman who terrorised travellers, mostly along the road between Kingston upon Thames and London, in the late eighteenth century.

Gibbeting is the use of a gallows-type structure from which the dead or dying bodies of criminals were hanged on public display to deter other existing or potential criminals. Occasionally, the gibbet was also used as a method of public execution, with the criminal being left to die of exposure, thirst and/or starvation. The practice of placing a criminal on display within a gibbet is also called "hanging in chains".

John "Jack" Sheppard, or "Honest Jack", was a notorious English thief and prison escapee of early 18th-century London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sawney Bean</span> Legendary 16th century Scottish cannibal

Alexander "Sawney" Bean is a legendary figure, said to be have been the head of a 45-member clan in Scotland in the 16th century that murdered and cannibalised over 1,000 people in 25 years. According to the legend, Bean and his clan members were eventually caught by a search party sent by King James VI, and were executed for their heinous crimes.

William Henry Bury was suspected of being the notorious serial killer "Jack the Ripper". He was hanged for the murder of his wife Ellen in 1889, and was the last person executed in Dundee, Scotland.

Alice Arden (1516–1551) was an English murderer. She was the daughter of John Brigantine and Alice Squire, who conspired to have her husband, Thomas Arden of Faversham, murdered so she could carry on with a long-term affair with a tailor, Richard Moseby. The murder took place on 14 February 1551. She was tried, convicted, and burnt at the stake for her part in the murder.

Elizabeth Brownrigg was an 18th-century English murderer. Her victim, Mary Clifford, was one of her domestic servants, who died from cumulative injuries and associated infected wounds. As a result of witness testimony and medical evidence at her trial, Brownrigg was hanged at Tyburn on 14 September 1767.

Ada Chard Williams was a baby farmer who was convicted of strangling to death 21-month-old Selina Ellen Jones in Barnes in London in September 1899.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Red Barn Murder</span> Murder committed in Polstead, Suffolk, England in 1827

The Red Barn Murder was a 1827 murder in Polstead, Suffolk, England. A young woman, Maria Marten, was shot dead by her lover William Corder at the Red Barn, a local landmark. The two had arranged to meet before eloping to Ipswich. Corder sent letters to Marten's family claiming that she was well, but after her stepmother spoke of having dreamed that Maria had been murdered, her body was discovered in the barn the next year.

The London Burkers were a group of body snatchers operating in London, England, who apparently modeled their activities on the notorious Burke and Hare murders. They came to prominence in 1831 for murdering victims to sell to anatomists, by luring and drugging them at their dwelling in the northern end of Bethnal Green, near St Leonard's, Shoreditch in London. They were also known as the Bethnal Green Gang.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Calcraft</span> English executioner

William Calcraft was a 19th-century English hangman, one of the most prolific of British executioners. It is estimated in his 45-year career he carried out 450 executions. A cobbler by trade, Calcraft was initially recruited to flog juvenile offenders held in Newgate Prison. While selling meat pies on streets around the prison, Calcraft met the City of London's hangman, John Foxton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanged, drawn and quartered</span> Legal punishment in medieval England, Wales, and Ireland for high treason

To be hanged, drawn and quartered became a statutory penalty for men convicted of high treason in the Kingdom of England from 1352 under King Edward III (1327–1377), although similar rituals are recorded during the reign of King Henry III (1216–1272). The convicted traitor was fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn behind a horse to the place of execution, where he was then hanged, emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered. His remains would then often be displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge, to serve as a warning of the fate of traitors. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burned at the stake.

John Smith (c. 1661 – after 1727), also known by the alias John Wilson, was a London housebreaker, most notable for his three evasions of execution. His first evasion earned him the nickname of Half-hanged Smith.

Joseph Wall was a British Army officer and Lieutenant Governor of Gorée, an island near Dakar, Senegal, who was executed in London for the fatal flogging of one of his soldiers. The former colonial administrator, who had previously been arrested for cruelty, was hanged outside Newgate Prison eight days after a one-day trial at the Old Bailey. Thousands of people came to watch the execution because of the notoriety of the case.

William Duell was 17 years old when he was convicted of the rape of Sarah Griffin in Acton, London, England. He was sentenced to death. On 24 November 1740, he was hanged in Tyburn, along with four others, but survived the hanging; his sentence was commuted to transportation to America, where he died at an advanced age following the revolution.

James Pratt (1805–1835), also known as John Pratt, and John Smith (1795–1835) were two London men who, in November 1835, became the last two to be executed for sodomy in England. Pratt and Smith were arrested in August of that year after being spied on through a keyhole allegedly having carnal knowledge of each other in a room rented by William Bonill a friend or acquaintance of one of the men, or possibly both. Bonill, although not present when the men were spied on, was nevertheless transported to Australia as an accessory to Pratt and Smith's alleged crime, where he died.

References

1 2 3 4 5 "George Foster Executed at Newgate, 18th of January, 1803, for the Murder of his Wife and Child, by drowning them in the Paddington Canal; with a Curious Account of Galvanic Experiments on his Body". The Newgate Calendar . Retrieved 21 October 2010.
↑ "Early Nineteenth century electrochemistry" . Retrieved 21 October 2010.

Mark Pilkington (7 October 2004). "Education: Sparks of life". The Guardian . Retrieved 19 September 2013.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[newgate-1] 1 2 3 4 5 "George Foster Executed at Newgate, 18th of January, 1803, for the Murder of his Wife and Child, by drowning them in the Paddington Canal; with a Curious Account of Galvanic Experiments on his Body". The Newgate Calendar . Retrieved 21 October 2010.

[2] "Early Nineteenth century electrochemistry" . Retrieved 21 October 2010.

[1]

[2]