Note 49 — IRISH REBELLION.
Reading edition
It has occurred to me, that the very great difference in the look of the heads might proceed from the following causes:—Messrs. Harvey and Colclough were hanged on the bridge, and their bodies suffered to lie some time before they were decapitated. The effect of strangulation made the faces black; and the blood cooling and stagnating, this black colour remained. Keogh had been decapitated as soon as cut down;—the warm blood was therefore totally discharged from the head, and the face became livid, no stagnate blood remaining to blacken it. If the thing had not been public, it might have been doubted. It is now thirty years past, and I can divine no other reason for so curious a circumstance; and army surgeons in Paris (I suppose the best in the world) tell me that my conjecture is perfectly well-founded.