FORCE OF HABIT.

Kumara Times, Issue 810, 6 May 1879, Page 4

FORCE OF HABIT.

In days when the sayings and doings of criminals condemned to death were reported more fully than now, opportunities were afforded of adding considerably to the general stock of curious psychological lore. We had full and particular details of the culprits’ behaviour, and marvelled at the trifles which often engrossed their attention at a time when, it was easy to suppose, only one thought could have been present. Thus we are told of the fastidious care with which Maria Manning arranged her satin dress and made her toilet before appearing on the roof of Horsemonger-lane Gaol; of Rush’s anxiety lest his roast pork should lack “plenty of plum-jam;” and of Palmer's eagerness to know the result of a race decided only a few days before his execution. We heard, too, and not unfrequently, how indulgences connected with the last breakfast were eagerly taken advantage of, with what earnestness malefactors almost at the foot of the scaffold pleaded for a pipe, and in what manner others, about to suffer the “ pains of death,” shrank from being bound, and begged the executioner to avoid hurting them. Details of this kind are not so plentifully supplied now, and it is perhaps well that there should be surcease of information which chiefly ministers to the morbid tastes of the public. Across the Atlantic, however, the old practice continues in full force. There the “ interviewer ” never takes his eyes off the criminal, nor moves out of hearing of his words. The last days of the condemned are, in fact, spent amid a blaze of publicity, and all that acute watchers can see of the workings of his mind is carefully made into “ copy.” To this we owe our knowledge of, perhaps, the most curious incidents in prison records. A man named Oostafloraz was executed at Quebec, on December 13, for murder of a pedler. He heard mass in the morning, and expressed perfect resignation to his fate ; he preserved his firmness when pinioned, and during the reading of the death-warrant, and was calmly setting out for the scaffold when official suggested that he should remove his collar. The culprit’s answer, given with perfect seriousness, was “ No ; lam afraid of catching cold.” Was this a case of “ unconscious cerebration ?”