Ten Nasty Endings:
1
In 1863 Charles Marsh decided to climb right to the top of the Nelson Monument
in Great Yarmouth and play a tune. But then he plunged 40m to his doom….
2 In 1381 captured Norfolk rebel leader Geoffrey Litester was sent to King’s Lynn. And Yarmouth. And Norwich. In three bits.
3 The Black Death killed thousands of Norfolk people – probably 7000 in Yarmouth alone.
4 In 1708 Michael Hammond and his sister were hanged for theft at Lynn. She was 11 – and he was seven.
5 The crew of HMS Invincible hit a sandbank off Happisburgh in 1801… and now more than 100 of them lie in a mass grave in the village churchyard.
6 Norfolk’s most notorious murderer, James Blomfield Rush, disguised himself as a woman so he could kill two landowners he’d had a row with. Thousands watched him hanged.
7 To make an example of murderers and robbers, courts sometimes ordered them ‘gibbeted’ – their bodies preserved and hung in metal cages outside. Sometimes for years…
8 Great Yarmouth’s Miles Corbett helped sign the order for King Charles I to have his head chopped off. But when Charles’ son won back the throne he got his revenge – he had Miles executed too.
9 Legend says a monk from St Benet’s Abbey sneaked on his fellows by showing William the Conqueror where he could nip in and take over the abbey. His rotten reward? He was hanged.
10 A young French prisoner tried to escape from Dereham church belltower in 1799. But he never made it past the churchyard… he was shot instead.