Random Facts You Didn't Need to Know

My Second Favourite Random Fact

 Source: http://thehistorynerd.wordpress.com/tag/george-spencer/

On April 8, 1642, the gallows of New Haven Colony swung for George Spencer, servant and all-around reprobate, if the records of the General Court are to be believed. On the same day, Spencer’s accomplice, as unwitting as she might have been – though Spencer said she, with her beguiling eyes and a touch of evil upon her, tempted him beyond self-control – also faced the ultimate punishment for her part in the crime. An unnamed executioner ran her through with a sword as Spencer watched, his former lover slaughtered, much to the community’s approval.

 Spencer’s unfortunate lover and partner in crime? A sow (yes, a female pig) that farmer John Wakeman had recently bought from Henry Browning, Spencer’s master.

The evidence that gave away Spencer’s guilt, at least in the mind of his Puritan neighbors, was that Spencer had only one good eye; in the other socket, a milky false device called a pearl filled the hole. His alleged partner, the sow, had months before given birth to piglets. One of them looked strikingly like the ugly George. It had just one eye – a cloudy, grayish mass like his pearl!

A few years before, George Spencer started his life of crime when he tried to rouse some other servants to steal a boat and sail to Virginia. (The vessel was called the Cock) He was whipped and sent out of the plantation, but found his way back and came under Henry Browning‘s roof.

Early in 1641, the Wakemans (who'd recently bought a pig from Browning) noticed something odd as they examined the piglets borne by the sow they had recently bought from George’s master. In addition to the telltale single eye noted above, the animal was hairless (George also was, unfortunately, bald), with reddish white skin like a child’s. Yet another incriminating detail was that on its forehead: “a thing of flesh grew forth and hung down, it was hollow, and like a man’s instrument of generation.” If that’s not a sign of devilish interspecies coupling, I don’t know what is!

Forced to confront the monster and the similarity of its deformity and his (the eye: no one’s suggesting George also had a man’s instrument of generation dangling from his forehead), Spencer admitted his guilt. What had made him confess in the first place was the court claiming "There shall be mercy shown, should you be open and honest." Spencer then thought he should pretend to confess and he did, but the court said that it would be God who would show mercy, not them. At one point, according to George, the sow came to him while he worked, after “the temptation had been upon his spirit” for several days. After sunset, he took her in the sty, sealing his fate. However, they still needed one more witness to sentence George to death. Therefore, they called in the pig, who, judging by the trial’s outcome (George was hanged), apparently confessed to the dastardly deed.