Notorious murderer was executed in Wilcox County, Alabama in 1837

Richard I. Manning was South Carolina's
Governor from 1824 to 1825.

This summer marks 182 years since the hanging of one of the most heinous criminals that Wilcox County has ever known, the notorious murderer Luke Manning, whose criminal career was widely reported by newspapers in the early 1800s.

Manning was born in the late 1700s into a respectable and wealthy South Carolina family, but he was a well-known criminal by his late teens. He and a gang of other young men were the “terror and abhorrence” of their community and for good reason. On one occasion, Manning “seized an old man by the loose skin of his throat, drawing the same from the flesh and inserting his knife close to the windpipe and slitting the skin, leaving a large gash.” Back in the old days, this was known as “dew-lapping.”

By the time Manning was in his twenties, he was widely known for carrying a very sharp knife that he frequently used to “gratify his thirst for blood.” Manning “would indiscriminately attack without the smallest justifiable provocation, and cut, lacerate and mark whoever had the misfortune to fall in his way. In this manner, he left monuments of his cruel and seemingly uncontrollable propensity wherever he went.”

On one occasion, during a “country frolic,” Manning secretly cut a woman’s dress in such a way that when she got out of her chair “the shreds fell from her body and left her exposed to the gaze of the crowd.” This incident appears to be the first time that he was prosecuted for one of his crimes, and he received a hefty fine of $5,000. Adjusted for inflation, this would be about $96,000 in today’s dollars.

Around this same time, he and his gang stripped a man and set him on fire after pouring whiskey and turpentine spirits all over his body. The doctor who treated the victim said that the man’s entire body was burned except for a spot on one arm about the size of a dollar. Manning and his gang got out of this by paying the victim $1,000 each.

At the age of 32, Manning shot a man with a rifle during a shootout and was condemned to be hung, but South Carolina’s governor pardoned him. About three months later, Manning attempted to kill another man with a knife, but only severely wounded him. For this, Manning was sentenced to a year in prison. At the age of 38, Manning killed another man, was convicted of manslaughter and was sentenced to another year behind bars.

Two years later, when he was 40, he committed another murder and was sentenced to be hung. When the judge handed down this death sentence, Manning’s brother fainted in the courtroom and was taken home, where he died the next day. Given the death of the brother, the respectability of Manning’s family and the influence of friends, South Carolina’s governor pardoned Manning on the condition that he get the heck out of South Carolina.

About three years passed and Manning eventually ended up in Wilcox County. One fateful day, he found himself at a plantation, “called the Overseer to the fence and shot him without the smallest provocation.” For this offense, he was sentenced to be hanged, and his execution was carried out in Camden in the later summer of 1837.

“His final act was to snatch at a stick while pinioned, to strike one of the bystanders. He met his death with recklessness, and his expiring breath was fraught with execrations against the whole human race.”

The account above was pieced together from newspaper articles that were published up and down the eastern seaboard in late July and early August of 1837, especially in South Carolina, North Carolina and New York. The details above are just a thumbnail sketch of Manning’s exploits, and he was apparently involved in many more crimes than those described above.

With that said, we’re left with a number of questions regarding Manning and his eventual execution in Wilcox County. Why did he decide to move to Wilcox County in the first place? Did he have family and friends in the area?

Who was the overseer that Manning killed and exactly when and where did this murder take place? What was the exact date of his execution and where exactly was this carried out? Where was he buried?

In the end, I’d like to hear from anyone in the reading audience with more information about Manning and his crimes. No doubt he was one of the most notorious criminals to ever call Wilcox County home, and it sounds like he eventually got what was coming to him.