Museum of Angeles City
1901 – EXECUTION OF PRIVATE GEORGE A. RAYMOND
On a day in September 1901, at about 12 noon, Private George A. Raymond, a discharged U.S. Army soldier was publicly hanged at the Angeles town square at Barrio Talimunduc (now the “Apu” chapel area) where 10,000 Angeleños were ordered by the Americans to witness the execution. At the last minute, Pvt. Raymond requested to be baptized in the Catholic faith. Rev. Fr. Vicente Lapuz, town parish priest, performed the baptism at the gallows and named him “Dimas,” in honor of the biblical ‘good thief’ who “stole” heaven at the last moment of his earthly life. Pvt. Raymond was sentenced to death for various violent crimes committed against a fellow-American and some Filipinos. He was the first, the last and the only American to be executed in public in the history of the Philippines. Subsequent hangings of American criminals in the Philippines took place in secret in dead of the night inside the Bilibid prison in Manila.
1901 – EXECUTION OF PRIVATE GEORGE A. RAYMOND
On a day in September 1901, at about 12 noon, Private George A. Raymond, a discharged U.S. Army soldier was publicly hanged at the Angeles town square at Barrio Talimunduc (now the “Apu” chapel area) where 10,000 Angeleños were ordered by the Americans to witness the execution. At the last minute, Pvt. Raymond requested to be baptized in the Catholic faith. Rev. Fr. Vicente Lapuz, town parish priest, performed the baptism at the gallows and named him “Dimas,” in honor of the biblical ‘good thief’ who “stole” heaven at the last moment of his earthly life. Pvt. Raymond was sentenced to death for various violent crimes committed against a fellow-American and some Filipinos. He was the first, the last and the only American to be executed in public in the history of the Philippines. Subsequent hangings of American criminals in the Philippines took place in secret in dead of the night inside the Bilibid prison in Manila.