Editing Jack Ketch (section)

== Appointment ==
Ketch took office in 1663, succeeding the late [[Edward Dun]], to whom he had been apprenticed. He is first mentioned in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey for 14 January 1676,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t16760114-7 |title=Killing > murder, 14th January 1676 (t16760114-7)|work=Old Bailey Proceedings Online|access-date=9 October 2011}}</ref> although no printed notice of the new hangman occurred until 2&nbsp;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.''{{#tag:ref|"On the top of the sheet is a woodcut, in which is represented Edward Coleman [q. v.] drawn in a sledge to the place of execution, exclaiming, 'I am sick of a traytorous disease,' while Jack Ketch, with a hatchet in one hand and a rope in the other, is saying, 'Here's your cure, sir.' "<ref name="KetchDNB"/>|group="Note"}}

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."<ref name="KetchDNB">{{cite DNB|wstitle=Ketch, John|volume= 31|pages=71–2}}</ref>

A short entry in the autobiography of [[Anthony à Wood]] for 31 August 1681 describes how [[Stephen College]] was hanged in the Castle Yard, Oxford, "and when he had hanged about half an hour, was cut down by Catch or Ketch, and quartered under the gallows, his entrails were burnt in a fire made by the gallows."<ref name="KetchDNB" />{{#tag:ref|"[Aug.] 31. Wednesday at 11. Stephen College, born at Watford in Hertfordshire, nephew to Edmund College of St. Peter's in the Bayly, suffered death by hanging in the castle yard Oxon, and when he had hanged about half an hour was cut down by Catch or Ketch, and quartered, under the gallows, his entrails were burnt in a fire made by the gallows. He spoke and prayed more than half an hour, his body was, after quartering, put into a coffin, and the same day was conveyed to London, and buried privately the Thursday following at night in St. Gregory's church near St. Paul's."<ref name="Wood1813">{{cite book|last=Wood|first=Anthony à|title=Athenae Oxonienses: An exact history of all the writers and bishops who have had their education in the University of Oxford. To which are added the Fasti, or Annals of the said University|url=https://archive.org/details/b30456903_0002|access-date=23 August 2010|year=1813|publisher=Rivington|page=[https://archive.org/details/b30456903_0002/page/92 92]}}</ref>|group="Note"}}