THE WORST AND TERRIBLE EXECUTION OF MARTIAL FAUGERON FOR A ROBBERY MURDER.

THE WORST AND TERRIBLE EXECUTION OF MARTIAL FAUGERON FOR A ROBBERY MURDER.

artial Faugeron - a robbery murder.

French born 23 year old Martial (also given incorrectly as Marcel) Faugeron (or Fougeron) was a deserter from the French army who stabbed 64 year old Hermann Francis Jung to death at 4, Lower Charles Street, Clerkenwell in London in the course of robbing him on Tuesday the 3rd of September 1901.  

Mr. Jung was a watchmaker and also a member of the Swiss Benevolent Society which helped foreigners in England and had given Faugeron money.

The murder was discovered by Mrs. Jung who saw her husband lying on the floor with the blade of a clasp knife embedded in his neck and Faugeron running out of the shop door.  She gave chase and two policemen were able to arrest him nearby and bring him back to the shop where Mrs. Jung could positively identify him.

Faugeron was tried at the Old Bailey on the 21st of October 1901 before Mr. Justice Bigham.  He claimed that Mr. Jung was an anarchist and had tried to persuade him to assassinate the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Chamberlain, which he had refused to do.  The two then got into an argument over money that Mr Jung had lent to Faugeron and in the ensuing fight Faugeron claimed he killed Mr. Jung in self defense.  This story was not believed and he was convicted. 

Faugeron was hanged in the execution shed at New gate at 8.00 a.m. on the 19th of November by James Billington, assisted by a new man, Henry Pierrepoint.  This was to be Henry’s first job as an assistant.

  Billington set a drop of 7’ 6” and death was reported as “instantaneous”.  A small crowd had gathered to see the black flag flown and the bell of St. Sepulchre’s was tolled for 15 minutes after the execution.

Henry Pierrepoint recorded how he was given the second condemned cell to sleep in the night before the execution and how he could see Faugeron through the peep hole, counting off the hours by the tolling of the bell of St. 

Sepulchre’s church.  As it chimed for the eighth time, he would point upwards, as if to Heaven.  He continued to assert that the killing was in self defence.

The photos are of the exterior and interior of the execution shed at Newgate.  Only one more man, George Woolfe, (6th of May 1902) would die on this gallows before the closure of Newgate and the transfer of the gallows to Pentonville where London and Middlesex executions commenced on the 30th of September 1902 with the hanging of John MacDonald.

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