He cursed the church clock from the gallows...

Beaumaris Gaol and Courtroom - North Wales the clock was removed he was the second and the last one to be hanged there inside the goal walls. I happened to visit it as a child and was told the story.

Marriage unconsummated to the widow…         

Esquire Richard Rowland’s swung from the gibbet             

In 1862 for the murder of his father-in-law         

Life in debit, forfeit, but was he the culprit.

 

People they puzzled “why he slept alone” hurrah!

“We know the score” “why he slept at home” at his old parents.

He killed Richard Williams; he’s not innocent, blah!

“For the farmer; beat to his death good riddance”.

 

Said he, he must have had a fit, on the way home

Never made it, I’m an innocent man!

Oh, yes - maybe he did have some rare kind of syndrome

As the goal officers gazed at the hangman.

 

           It’s said he cursed the church clock from the gallows                       

…It didn’t work again not from them hallows.

He protested his innocence right up to the final moment and legend has it that he cursed the church clock from the gallows, saying that if he were innocent the four faces of the nearby church clock would never show the same time. Indeed for a while they did not, although this has been attributed to the wind buffeting the southern face.

Author's Note

He protested his innocence right up to the final moment and legend has it that he cursed the church clock from the gallows, saying that if he were innocent the four faces of the nearby church clock would never show the same time. Indeed for a while they did not, although this has been attributed to the wind buffeting the southern face.