American Historical Ephemera & Photography, Featuring Property from the James Milgram, M.D., Collection of Broadsides, Ephemeral Americana & Historical Documents

11 1/4 x 18 1/2 in. printed broadside (some brown spotting, short marginal tears, creasing); framed to 14 5/8 x 21 1/2 in. (not examined out of frame.) With a black mourning border and a vignette of a hanged man before a gathered crowd.

A printing of the final words of Seth Eliot, a man convicted of murdering his own child. An act he attributed to his own intemperance and which he gave a soliloquy recorded here in verse. An article published on 1 March 1825 in the Hartford Courant remarks on the hanging and Elliot's address from the gallows.

The broadside here notes the day of execution as 30 December 1824, but a handwritten note reads "By Reprieve Feb. 3. 1825." Newspaper records corroborate that the execution did occur in early February 1825. In a testimony by Rev. W.A. Drew recorded on 2 October 1852 in Gospel Banner (and printed in Williamson): "We recollect that when Elliot was executed, a parson, Jonathan Fisher of Bluehill, appeared under the gallows, peddling ballads of his own composition, describing the murderer as a Universalist making a dying confession of the error of that doctrine, and of his other sins. After it was printed, the prisoner was reprieved for some time, and the ballad became a little out of season." (3360)

A report from 21 January 1825 from the Sentinel and Democrat (Burlington, VT) records that "Elliot was once a respectable citizen; that he was the owner of a farm containing three hundred acres of land, a well finished brick house, and three barns. But, alas! he became intemperate in the use of ardent spirits and, like too many other deluded victims, buried all that was manly in the intoxicating bowl. He became passionate, and very abusive to his wife and children; and at length committed the dreadful deed for which his days are numbered." Followed by a partial transcript of the sentencing Judge's firey reprimand. The gruesome crime was detailed in an article in the Lancaster Intelligencer (PA) published on 17 August 1824: "A man named Set Elliot, of Knox, (Me.) was lately found lying on a bed with his throat cut and his own child on the same bed with its throat cut from ear to ear, and entirely lifeless. A bloody razor was found on the hearth...The coroner's inquest had found a verdict of wilful [sic] murder of the child by its father. Elliot was afflicted with mental derangement."

RARE: listed in Williamson's A Bibliography of the State of Maine from the Earliest Period to 1891, however, no copies were listed on OCLC or otherwise located. Williamson 3360.