Six Miles to Charleston by Bruce Orr Page A

subsequently hanged. Margaret Hatch’s execution precedes Lavinia Fisher by 187 years.

C HAPTER 9
    The Allegations
    C OLONIAL J USTICE VERSUS C RIMINAL J USTICE
    Now the fact that all three proclaimed their innocence all the way to the gallows and the fact that John Fisher blamed someone is an intriguing notion. The next two chapters will explore the possibility that the three were telling the truth. It will also explore what others may have had to gain by framing them.
    We have already seen that there were problems in the trials and in the colonial justice system as a whole. Now let’s take an opportunity to look at a few more issues. Let’s start with physical identification.
    Lavinia Fisher was said to be gorgeous. That is how she has lived on in legend. By the time she spent a year in jail and reached the gallows, she was described as woe worn and not a handsome woman. In David Ross’s statement, he identified Lavinia but also states there was a second woman involved in his assault, quite possibly Jane Howard, the other female arrested in Colonel Cleary’s raid. In John Peoples’s statement, he was attacked by “a tall, stout woman.” This was two hours after the Ross assault. Remember that he did not know any of his assailants. When Cleary arrived the following day, he arrested both Lavinia and Jane Howard. Could Jane Howard have been the tall, stout woman that assaulted John Peoples? Surely if Lavinia was as beautiful as was said then that would have been an identifier.
    John Fisher was twenty-eight years of age. He was described as six feet tall, tall, slim, fair-skinned with dark hair and eyes. In one account, he was said to be knock-kneed.
    In the 1800s, diseases such as rickets were common. We now know that left untreated this disease can cause the legs to turn inward to where the knees bend toward each other, and in severe cases, touch. In some cases being knock-kneed is hereditary. Braces can be used to correct these deformities, but they were not available then.
    Knock-kneed adults are more susceptible to injury. Since they have lived with the problem most of their lives without treatment, they would have developed osteoarthritis. In severe cases, the person may have even had trouble walking. So our notorious, vicious murderer and butcher may have been handicapped. If this was indeed an identifying characteristic, wouldn’t Peoples have used it as a descriptor?
    Without knowing the suspects by name, how did John Peoples identify them then? Well that actually ties in directly with whom John Fisher was accusing.
    In the previous chapter, you read many accounts of the execution of the Fishers. There is record that John Fisher publicly blamed someone for the couple being wrongly accused. The Charleston Gazette gives record that prior to his execution, John Fisher protested his innocence and made that claim.
    In his final letter, read moments before his execution, John Fisher states that in mere moments he will be standing before God. Even in that final judgment he will profess his innocence and indeed be found innocent before the throne of God. In his address he also gives reference to his accusers, “May the Redeemer of the World plead for those who have sworn away my life.”
    Who was John Fisher accusing and what were the accusations? Those questions can be answered in a series of letters printed in the Charleston Courier on February 22, 1820.
    T O T HE E DITOR OF THE C OURIER.
    Sir,—A Bench Warrant, against a certain gang of highway robbers, who had infested the neighborhood of the Six-Mile House, having been put into my hands some time ago, by the Attorney General; and the Governor of the State having particularly requested me to attend to the execution of the same; I went, accompanied by a vast number of the citizens of Charleston and its precincts, to execute the unpleasant duty assigned under the authority aforesaid; and succeeded in taking, among others, the