He is first mentioned in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey for 14 January 1676,[6] although no printed notice of the new hangman occurred until 2 December 1678, when a broadside appeared called The Plotters Ballad, being Jack Ketch's incomparable Receipt for the Cure of Traytorous Recusants and Wholesome Physick for a Popish Contagion.

[Note 1] In 1679, there appears from another pamphlet purporting to be written by Ketch himself, and entitled The Man of Destiny's Hard Fortune, that the hangman was confined for a time in the Marshalsea prison, "whereby his hopeful harvest was like to have been blasted.

Even among the bloodthirsty throngs that habitually attended English beheadings, the gory and agonizing display had created such outrage that Ketch felt moved to write and publish a pamphlet titled Apologie, in which he excused his performance with the claim that Lord Russell had failed to "dispose himself as was most suitable" and that he was therefore distracted while taking aim on his neck.

"[14] He [the duke] would not make use of a cap or other circumstance, but lying down, bid the fellow to do his office better than to the late Lord Russell, and gave him gold; but the wretch made five chops before he had his head off; which so incensed the people, that had he not been guarded and got away, they would have torn him to pieces.

[18] He is mentioned in the Charles Dickens novels Oliver Twist, Dombey and Son, The Pickwick Papers[19] and David Copperfield and in the C. M. Kornbluth science fiction story "The Marching Morons" (1951).

He is mentioned briefly in the 1951 movie of A Christmas Carol with Alistair Sim, when Mr. Jorkin warns the directors of the Amalgamated Mercantile Society to watch out for Scrooge and Marley, as "They'd skin Jack Ketch alive and he'd never know they'd done it."