Edward Heppenstall "The Walking Gallows," was a giant of a man. His massive stature and brute strength, were matched only by his psychotic cruelty. Hempenstall was born in 1765 in Newcastle County Wicklow to a rich Anglo-Irish Ascendancy family. Ironically, his first occupation was as a healer working as an apothecary before his privileged background secured an officer's commission in the local militia. During the dark years following the failed 1798 Rising he was judge, jury and executioner. When he sentenced his victims to death, he killed them using his technique a 'trotting execution". Heppenstall wrapped a noose around the condemned persons neck and strangled them hanging over his shoulder, back-to-back, hence his sickening nickname "The Walking Gallows." Heppenstal revelled in savagery, as he terrorised parts of Dublin and Wicklow for years, dishing out arbitrary on the spot executions. He was never punished. In fact, authorities encouraged him to torture and kill with impunity as his sadistic skills were headhunted by the local governors. This kept his murderous activity on the right side of the law. His infamy really took off whilst he was a lieutenant and then commander in the Wicklow militia starting in 1796. Heppenstall's Wicklow militia had a well-earned nickname; "The Terrors of West Meath". Their sadistic reputation came from massacring rebel prisoners they encountered and giving no quarter or surrender when attacking largely civilian groups. During the 1798 Rising local militias like the Wicklow regiment were employed like mercenaries to brutally put down local rebellions. However, they seldom confined their violence to rebels. They routinely plundered villages, raping women and girls and burning innocent people's homes to the ground. A particular brand of terror employed was publicly humiliating men from the areas, flogging them through the streets. It's reported that Heppenstall's goons regularly flogged people "until internal organs protruded." The gruesome vile method called "pitch-capping" was a cruel variation on tarring and feathering. "You basically scalded the scalp of victims by making them wear a conical "cap" of hot sticky pitch or tar. It was agonising and disfiguring, and when the tormentors pulled it off, it scalped the person. Heppenstall's unique brand of brutality meant you could extend the period of interrogation over several losses of consciousness, making the desperate dying captives confess anything they are charged with and making up false accusations and testimony against others in the hopeless bid to end their suffering. Torturing seldom produces truthful confessions, innocent people get blamed, creating a perpetual cycle of persecution and punishment. The human gallows Hepenstalls was generating a neverending workload for himself. Every torture might end with a death, but it also created more falsely accused criminals to pursue from the extracted confessions. Evil bastard. As an added humiliation and terror tactic, he often had the recently hung bodies dragged through the streets of their hometown behind his cart, the victims' loved ones forced to watch. The beast's brutality came to an end in 1800 when he died aged 35. He got a taste of the suffering he caused to countless souls. Parish reports state he was "stricken with a terrible disease, a tropical complaint, his massive body was devoured by vermin". The Walking Gallows was buried in an unmarked grave in the middle of the night at Dublin's Andrews Churchyard. A newspaper obituary read "Lieutenant Heppenstall of the 68th Regiment, A gentleman whose intrepidity and spirit during the Rebellion rendered much general good, and himself highly obnoxious to traitors." His neighbours suggested another epitaph. "Here lie the bones of Hempenstall Judge, Jury. Gallows, Rope and All"