Joseph Wall (colonial administrator)
Joseph Wall (1737–28 January 1802) was a British Army officer and Lieutenant Governor of Gorée, an island near Dakar, Senegal, who was executed in London for the fatal flogging of one of his soldiers.
The former colonial administrator, who had previously been arrested for cruelty, was hanged outside Newgate Prison eight days after a one-day trial at the Old Bailey.
The stifling heat made the climate oppressive, disease was rife and the military garrison was notorious for being composed of mutinous troops.
Wall, without holding a court martial, ordered seven men flogged with a rope one inch in diameter by black slaves.
On 28 October 1801, he wrote to the British Home secretary, Thomas Pelham, 2nd Earl of Chichester, offering to stand trial.
Soon afterwards he was arrested at a house in Upper Thornhaugh Street off Bedford Square, London where he had been living with his wife under the name of Thompson.
On 20 January 1802, Wall was tried for the murder of Sgt Armstrong at the Old Bailey by a special commission presided over by the Chief Baron, Sir Archibald Macdonald, 1st Baronet.
Although Wall addressed the court, he had the assistance of lawyer Newman Knowlys, a future recorder of London, and Sir John Gurney, in examining and cross-examining witnesses.
The chief evidence for the prosecution was given by garrison surgeon Peter Ferrick and orderly-sergeant Evan Lewis, who were on duty during Armstrong's punishment.
On accounting as to why he fled, Wall stated that he had left the country in 1784 because he felt the prejudice against him at the time assured him he would not receive a fair trial.
Great efforts to obtain a pardon were vainly made by his wife's relative, Charles Howard, 10th Duke of Norfolk, and the privy council held several deliberations on the case.
The British establishment feared it would be unwise to spare any officer condemned for brutality against his soldiers after many sailors had been executed following the Spithead and Nore mutinies in 1797.
[5] Wall, who at 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm) tall, was described as a man of "genteel appearance", left several children by his wife Frances, fifth daughter of Kenneth Mackenzie, 1st Earl of Seaforth.
He is described as "a very polished gentleman of great literary acquirements", whose productions in prose and verse were "highly spoken of for their classical elegance and taste", but his chief title to remembrance was the fact of his having been the first who published parliamentary reports with the full names of the speakers.
In one case a drinking horn had on one side a carved representation of the punishment of Armstrong; with a label of barbarous exhortation to the flogger from Wall's mouth, and on the reverse a descriptive inscription.
