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Extract: - The Execution

The Execution On Monday 16 April Rush's nine children were ushered into Norwich Castle to see him. For most of them it was for the last time, although his two eldest children did see him again in the next few days. The Times of 21 April 1849 says that 'on being informed that the universal opinion throughout the country was that he was guilty he appeared angry. He wrote a letter asserting his innocence which he wished to be signed by his daughter and sent to the editor of the Times but Mr Pinson declined forwarding it. In two years, he asserts, the real murderer will be known'.

"A grand place for a scoundrel's exit" - Dickens

The execution took place on Saturday 21 April. The Norwich authorities asked that it be postponed so that a smaller crowd would gather but this was denied. Charles Dickens described Norwich Castle as 'a grand place for a scoundrel's exit' and the scene on 21 April must have been a dramatic one. A crowd of between 12,000 and 20,000 gathered in the Castle bailey: the Eastem Counties Railway Company even ran a special train from London for the execution. However it appears that the train was not a quarter full and many of the passengers were plain clothes officers 'the remainder being of the lower class members of the swell mob and Whitechapel pickpockets'. Many were turned off the train at Attleborough.

8,000 came by train

A total of 8,000 people were recorded as traveling to and from Norwich by the railway on that Saturday and there is no doubt that interest was country-wide. The Blackburn Chronicle records that parties from Blackburn and Preston went to see the execution. In London 21 year old Thomas Sutton had been given three sovereigns to make some purchases for his employer, a coal-dealer on the Walworth Road. On impulse he spent the money on a trip to Norwich to see the hanging. According to the local papers 800 people traveled from Great Yarmouth: the Jermys of course were Yarmouth people.

20,000 assembled to see the hanging

The County Herald of 28 April describes the scene: 'from an early hour on Saturday morning... every avenue to the city was crowded with carriages of every description and thousands of pedestrians. The early trains from Yarmouth and other places were loaded with passengers At 12 o'clock there could not have been less than 20,000 assembled. The scaffold was erected on the west side of the Castle and stood on the bridge which spans the moat. Its position and effect were very striking from the battlements behind it having an immense black flag which by the order of the High Sheriff was placed there to mark the extraordinary guilt of the criminal about to expiate his offences on the scaffold. This great banner swung slowly in the wind, giving a solemn and funereal look to the whole scene'.