The Life, Trial, and Execution of Josh. Wollard, Who Suffered Death...
Murder in the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Sphere: A Rare Provincial Broadside [Broadside]. [Execution]. Wollard, Joseph [d.1832]. The Life, Trial, And Execution of Josh. Wollard, Who Suffered Death on the New Drop at Stafford on Monday Last, For the Wilful Murder He Committed on the Body of His Wife. Litchfield [England]: Thompson, Printer, [1832]. 9-3/4" x 7-1/2" (25 x 18.7 cm) broadside mounted to 13" x 10" (33.2 x 25.3 cm) backing sheet. Text in two columns below headline, nine-stanza "Copy of Verses at foot of second column." Light toning and negligible light soiling to broadside, small paper residue at its top-edge (from mounting?), moderate toning to backing sheet, which was removed from an album. Rare. $1,850. * This rare survival offers a grim, unvarnished window into 19th-century domestic violence, crime, and the culture of public punishment in provincial England. The broadside details the argument, the fatal assault, the trial, and Wollard's execution via the "New Drop" at Stafford. While historical accounts of the event vary in minor details, this popular street literature piece focuses heavily on the pathos of the victim's condition, noting she was "in a far advanced state of pregnancy." The execution ballads at the foot of the sheet amplify the husband's remorse and the dual nature of the homicide, noting that "two lives at once" were taken. Street literature of this nature from regional presses like Thompson of Litchfield was printed on cheap paper, sold for pennies, and almost universally discarded. Completely unrecorded in OCLC and Library Hub. The only other known copy is housed at the New York State Library; missing from the British Library and Harvard.
Price: $1,850.00
Book number 84391