Jack Ketch - Fiction

Fiction

In 1836 a fictitious autobiography of Ketch, with illustrations from designs by Meadows entitled The autobiography of Jack Ketch, was published. Another book entitled Life of Jack Ketch with Cuts of his own Execution was furnished by Tom Hood for the Duke of Devonshire's library at Chatsworth.

Jack Ketch is one of the characters in Giovanni Piccini (d.1835) The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Punch and Judy as dictated to John Payne Collier, in 1828. He is mentioned in the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield. More recently, Jack Ketch plays a role in Neal Stephenson's 2003 and 2004 volumes Quicksilver and The System of the World, the first and last volumes, respectively, in his The Baroque Cycle series. His name is also used frequently in Neal Asher's series of Polity Universe Sci-Fi novels. Ketch's name (The Jack Ketch) is, for somewhat inscrutable reasons, taken by a ship-based AI. The name Jack Ketch, referring to whoever was the hangman of the day, also appears in the children's book series The Gideon Trilogy, written by Linda Buckley-Archer. He also makes an appearance in the Fables series of comic books. In the series Batman Incorporated, a masked executioner works for Talia al Ghul under the name of "Jack Ketch".