SAME OLD CROWD.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18413, 20 June 1925, Page 18

SAME OLD CROWD.

LOVE OF A SPECTACLE.

THE SAME SPIRIT IN ALL AGES.

Tho advanced state of our civilisation was brought homo to me tho other day by the gathering of a crowd in Flinders' lane to watch two small hoys fighting (says a correspondent of the Melbourne "Argus"). Two exceedingly small boys and as large a crowd as the part of tho street would hold, with not a. constable about, of course, to disperse the mob and prevent bloodshed by tho arrest of the miscreants. Quite frankly, I _w«9 in tho crowd myself—not in tho forefront of it, for "the affair had started before my aarival. One small, tearful boy was defying tho other equally tearful urchin.' What tho origin of the dispute was I don't know, but the one small bov was challenging the other to hii him" with the little bit of rock clenched in his fingers. "Siring it! <-*« on—sling it, if vou wanter! .Hit llle ■ Go on!" And a'large adult, wiien the opponent hesitated —obviously wanting only to scoot away ns quickly ns Ins litle legs could carrty him —supplemented tho invitation with the cheerful' advice. "Go on, sonny! Give it hiuy So the hesitant opponent did sling the rock at him, and did hit hint, and promptly tho challenger yelled with?, pain, and flung himself tooth and nail upon his assailant. Immediately the two were at it hammer and tongs. Tho crowd was cheering and laughing; windows of offices went up; heads wero poked out; steps offering a reasonable view of the highly diverting spectacle of two verv small 'boys, each doing his utmost to "acquit himself with distinction and destroy the enemy, and each roaring very loudly in evidence of his own punishhment, were fully occupied. Yes, wo were all thoroughly enjoying ourselves, when a misguided person interfered—a young woman. She thrust her way into the ring. She anight one contestant by tho shirt collar', and the other by his shirt collar; and itf'esently was standing between two sobbhlg email boys, each of whom had had mort* than enough of it, and she was addressing herself to them in terms of good advjee and solace. "Wo did not etay to he-ar what she said. She had spoilt opv amusement. We melted away. And tho other day, when tlie disaster' occurred at the British Australian Tobacco Company's building, the crowd was naturally so groat that the efforts of the rescuers were impeded. Rescue work did not matter; satisfaction of curiosity was the solo consideration. Just through sheer thoughtlessness or gross selfishness, lovo of the spectacle, or something new and strange, without concern for the troubles and the sufferings of the principals of the disaster. "We have not progressed so very far after all, many of us, from the folk of tho times when Governments provided a sufficiency and variety of brutal spectacles to meet the tastes of the public. We form—many of us—the same old crowd. Nowadays the State does not hang its malefactors in the full sight of tho mob as a form of popular amusement under guise of a moral lesson. But it did so net so many years ago. Dickens offers vivid descriptions of these crowds—those crowds • assembling the night before the execution, and in the morning watching with fearful pleasure the malefactors swung off intp the next world. Sixty years ago Monday morning was fixed in 'London for the display of the' art of the public executioner 'Calcraft. In 1864 he officiated at the execution of five mutineers and murderers. Vast crowds camped all Sunday night outside Newgate for the of executioner and victims. All five, when. the drop" fell, were left struggling in tho air. "The fall then given was short; necks, were seldom dislocated, and strangulation was the usual l result. "

Morbid Curiosity. But affairs like this shocked the worthy and pious folk of Victoria's j reign. It was not so much tha;fc tho majority of them objected to the spectacle, but they did object to Sabbathbreaking. Here were thousands pf people absent from church or cliapdl.anfl assembling and camping outsido Newgate, so as to have a good viow in the morning. So through the influence' of right-minded folk the Government in 1865 was compelled to change a timehonoured practice. In order that the .Sabbath peace might not bo disturbed it fixed Wednesday as tho day for public executions. Tho crowds might have been content with this, but certain genuine reformers happily were not. Three years later privato oxocutions were instituted, and tho mob of morbid-minded was compelled to satisfy itself - with gathering outside prison walls at the hour of execution in precisely the same way as crowds . have assembled outside- Melbourno Gaol within recent years when murderers have met the penalty of their crimes. Ghastly and morbid this curiosity, of course, and eloquent of tho true state of civilisation of a high percentage in the average community. Though the average person will profess himself shocked at the barbarities of past generations, side prison walls suggest that the reforms instituted havo been attribusomehow these modern gatherings outtable always to the few folk in advance of their age, and that if it were possible for the spectacles of horror, whether in ancient days or in the not so far distant past, to be restaged, they would not lack still a sufficiency of spectators. Tho crowds gathered for the public executions of last century were not so far remote from the crowds assembled to watch the cruelties of tho days of religious persecution, little if at all removed from the crowds along the way to Tyburn watching tho beribboned highwayman driving to the tree of glory."* The expressed sympathy of a crowd out- ■ side a gaol with the wretch hanged for ghastly crime differs little from the spectators' pretended sympathy with the picturesquo gentleman "of the road, driven in tho cart, with his coffin in readiness for him, and the chaplain mumbling his prayers. If tho highwayman had good looks and bore himself gallantly, many might prctned it a pity that so pretty a fellow should be turned off, but they probably did not think so. They did not want him reprieved. His execution was the climarc I of the entertainment.

"Ladies of Quality and Fashion." The mind of the reader of "A Tale of Two Cities" may be stricken with horror at the merciless account of the mob of revolutionaries awaiting the victims of the guillotine. But does the -average reader pay much heed to the ghastly stories told at the meeting of Defarge and his associates? The countryman is telling of the punishment of the poor wretch condemned for the murder of Monseigneur. the whispering among the peasants before the execution: "One old man says that his right hand, armed with the knife, will be burnt off before his face; that into the wounds to be made in his arms, breast, and his legs there will be poured burning oil, melted lead, hot resin, wax and sulphur; finally, that he will be torn limb from limb by four strong horses. All thi3 was actually done to a prisoner who made an attempt on the life of Louis XV." Jacques Three breaks in: "The name of that prisoner was Damiens, and nothing was more noticed in the vast concourse that saw it done than the crowd of ladies of quality and fashion, who were full of eager attention to the last."

Fine ladies and gentlemen in England watched the trial of hapless wretches at the Old Bailey in tho

eighteenth century, as folk of a similar quality attend revolting trials to-day. For sheer amusement —just as the Romans watched the gladiatorial contests, or as they delighted in the horror of the spectacles provided by a Noro. Sienkiewicz, in "Quo Vadis," devotes many pages to tho torments of tho Christians. Ho tells of tho crowds in holiday costume, crowned with flowers, joyous, singing, and sonic of them drunk, going to the new spectacle in Caesar's gardens —tho burning ,of the Christians. Ho tells of their ultimate horror and revulsion —surely a pieco of sheer iiv.rtgination. Lytton, in tho irtngjiificent description of the amphitheatre on the last day of .Pompeii, estimates the crowd more shrewdly. Ho shows them, when the innocent Olaucus is snatched from thorn, demanding that Arbaces be thrown in his place to the lions. Only the awful intervention of "Vesuvius saves the Egyptian—for the time—the vapour pouring from the summit in the form of a gigantic pino tree, the earthquake, the mountain cloud descending on Pompeii—tho "sudden and more ghastly night rushing upon the realm of noon."