"Jack Ketch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of his religious function, His Conscience was both cowardly and callous; No melting Cherub whisper'd to't "Compunction!" But grim Jack Ketch ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... feeling. To my own thinking, it is out of this pain and hatefulness that an execution becomes invested with an ideal grandeur. It is sheer horror to all concerned—sheriffs, halbertmen, chaplain, spectators, Jack Ketch, and culprit; but out of all this, and towering behind the vulgar and hideous accessories of the scaffold, gleams the majesty of implacable law. When every other fine morning a dozen cut-purses were hanged at Tyburn, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... that, you might exclaim at the quack doctor of a fair, and ask, Is this the dignity of medicine?' said Joe. 'There's a head and a tail to every walk in life: even the law has a Chief-Justice at one end and a Jack Ketch ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... such things; or I could grow doleful over the misery of the poor—fellow. But those emotions would be as little profitable to others as to myself. It just happened that I saw the thing in a light of consolation. Things are bad with me, but not so bad as THAT. I might be going out between Jack Ketch and the Chaplain to be hanged; instead of that, I am eating a really fresh egg, and very excellent buttered toast, with coffee as good as can be reasonably expected in this part of the world.—(Do try boiling the milk, mother.)—The tone in which I spoke was ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... lot, "first scholars" and the like, but their business is as unsympathetic as Jack Ketch's. There is nothing humanizing in their relations with their fellow-creatures. They go for the side that retains them. They defend the man they know to be a rogue, and not very rarely throw suspicion on the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... as you cannot have pigs you must take these. You are under bonds to land them in England—how I don't care—only they must have strength enough to stand upright on the gallows, for Jack Ketch must not have too ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... know of Love or feeling?—Wretch! Begone!" she cried, with kindling eyes—"and do My bidding!" Baba vanished, for to stretch His own remonstrance further he well knew Might end in acting as his own "Jack Ketch;" And though he wished extremely to get through This awkward business without harm to others, He still preferred his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... who would now, with peculiar pleasure, have acted in the capacity of hangman in Reilly's case, had that unfortunate young man been doomed to undergo the penalty of the law, and that no person in the shape of Jack Ketch was forthcoming—he, we say—the squire—started at once to the room where Reilly was secured, accompanied also by the sheriff, and, after rushing in with a countenance inflamed by ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... mind much what a man says: many a gay fellow to my knowledge has continued to give the very best character of himself all the way up the ladder of the new drop, and yet after all has been nonsuited by Jack Ketch when he got to the top of it for wanting so little a matter as another witness or so to back ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... world will find it out for him, yet, there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly, was ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... in, constables," said Cleek, with the utmost composure. "Here are your promised prisoners—nicely trussed, you see, so that they can't get at the little popguns they carry—and a worse pair of rogues never went into the hands of Jack Ketch!" ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... bowstring; death chair, electric chair; gas chamber; lethal injection; firing squad; mecate^. house of correction &c (prison) 752. goaler, jailer; executioner; electrocutioner^; lyncher; hangman; headsman^; Jack Ketch. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... these here boots—eleven pair o' boots; and one shoe as belongs to number six, with the wooden leg. The eleven boots is to be called at half-past eight and the shoe at nine. Who's number twenty-two, that's to put all the others out? No, no; reg'lar rotation, as Jack Ketch said, ven he tied the men up. Sorry to keep you a-waitin', Sir, but I'll attend ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... 'pears to be no stint o' hangmen among ye. This chile niver seed so many o' the Jack Ketch kind since he fust set foot on the soil o' Texas. Maybe it's the smell o' these ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid |
