A HORRIBLE AFFAIR AT AN EXECUTION.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IV, Issue 204, 9 December 1864, Page 2 (Supplement)

A HORRIBLE AFFAIR AT AN EXECUTION.

Two murderers we recently hung at Leeds. An article in a Scotch paper, the Dundee Argus, gives the following particulars of a harrowing and revolting, circumstance attending the execution : —We do not refer to the recently introduced plan—a step towards private executions—of putting up in front of the scaffold a screen of cloth sufficiently high to prevent the culprits from being seen lower than their waists; but that hid the hdrrifile part of tlffi scene from the multitude. The bolt was drawn ! the drop fell; the loose hanging ropes lengthened out and tightened with a jerk, as with a dull sound the strain of the weight of the falling bodies came upon them, and the vast crowd thinking it was all over, dispersed. The criminals had disappeared behind the screen, and their dying struggles, instead of being seen as they would have been some time ago, were taken for granted. What was formerly exhibited to the senses is now left to the imagination, and that is supposed to be an improvement. The screen plan has been adopted to prevent people from seeing brutalising sights, under the very natural impression that the people may be thereby brutalised; but it strikes us that imagination is about the last faculty which ought to be called into action. One good effect, however, the half-screen does produce. It renders it impossible to see tlle bodies while they are hanging the usual time, so the spectators soon get tired of staring at the scoffold, and go away, The Leeds assemblage began to move off in a few minutes after the ropes had tightened, thinking that the lives had been jerked out of two unfortunate wretches ; but that was a mistake, and here comes the extraordinary and hor rible part of the story, which has somehow escaped the Times reporter-. One of the criminals named Sargisson, a vigorous young man convicted of a brutal and treacherous murder on a man named Cooper died after a short struggle. The other, Myers, who lived the life of a drunken Sheffield grinder, able to earn large wages, but too dissipated to do it, had been sentenced for the murder of his wife. He seemed to die immediately the drop fell, but half an hour afterwards it was seen that his breathing was regular. He was senseless no doubt. The ligature round the neck, if not merciful enough to kill, was sufficiently merciful to suspend sensation; but the lungs continued to act, and life remained. The explanation of this phenomenon was as curious as it was simple. After Myers had stabbed his wife with a pair of scissors he cut his own throat with a knife. The cruel kindness of the world would not let the man who was to be hanged die, so the throat he had hacked with a knife was carefully attended to and healed, in order that it might be ready for the rope. There was some apprehension expressed before the execution that, when the strain of that jerk came, the recently-healed wound would open up again, and it was well-founded. It was not the hangman’s fault the man was alive. Myers was breathing through the re-opened wound, and might have continued to do so for hours. If that half-screen had not been up, and the Leeds mob, instead of going away, had stood staring at the suspended bodies, and the whisper had gone forth among them that one of the hung men was alive, we think it very probable that a great black wave of life would have rushed over the grim black apparatus of death, sweeping away officials, clergymen, hangmen, and all, and that Myers would have been cut down. But the screen had justified its use, though in a different way from that contemplated. The crowd was gone, and the surgeon and Jack Ketch were left to do as they could with the surviving culprit. We are not quite sure of the legality, whatever we may think of the humanity of what followed. Myers was sentenced “ to be hang by the neck till lie was dead.” He did hung by the neck till he was dead, but it was not hanging by the neck killed him. The gap through which he was breathing was stopped up, and he was suffocated. First wet cloths were tried to exclude the air, but they failed; then the surgeon got adhesive plaster, and the hangman with s ome difficulty put it on so as to shut the atmosphere out of the laboring lungs. We have seldom heard of anything, more horrible than that scene. We wonder if the surgeon who got the fatal plaster was the surgeon who attended Myers when his throat was wounded, and whether or not he thought of the various uses —preserving and destroying—to which plasters may be put. Myers’ throat was familiar with adhesive plaster used to save, but this time it was used to kill. What healed the wound stopped the lungs. It would almost seem as, if it would have been better to let tlie'qiah 'dieTor’ lack of plasters, than to save

him to die by them. At all events, if men who have cut their own throats are to be hung, if only to avoid out-raging public feeling, care should be taken to delay the hanging process till after the completion of the healing process, so that wounds may not become breathing apertures, nor hangmen have to seek aid from surgeons, and to add plasters to the ropes which form their ghastly stock-in-trade.