The name of the pub, in Luton, was The Old English Gentleman, but that certainly wasnt an apt description of some of its clientele in the 1860s. Three of them, William Worsley, 45, Levi Welch, 40, and James Day, 22, were drinking there when they decided to attack and rob another regular, William Bradberry, 48. They set upon him as he left the pub, kicked him in the head and beat him with a jemmy after they had robbed him.
When the victim was taken dying into another pub, Worsley called out jeeringly, What a fine corpse!
At the trial of the three men in September 1867, Day, who claimed he had only been at the scene because he was looking for a sixpence he had lost, was acquitted. Welch was jailed for 14 years for robbery and Worsley was hanged on Tuesday, March 31st, 1868, outside Bedford Prison, thus becoming the last man executed in the town.