CAUSE TO GROWL.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1319, 3 August 1880, Page 2

CAUSE TO GROWL.

; Opinions differ aa to the extent of the service rendered to society by the gibbet lor the guillotine, but there can bo but one opinion as to the very serious incon- | veniences that attend the gibbeting of a ! man or woman in a country where the punishment of death is not regularly jin force. These are being felt in 110 ' little degree in Russia now where capital punishment having been abolished for many years, the machinery of the hangman has got thoroughly out of gear. Waldetsky, who shot at Count Lorria Melikoff, appears to have been executed after an extremely rough-and-ready fashion, a common packing-case haying been kicked from under him at a given signal—an arrangement which kept the wretched man struggling several minutes more than was necessary. The clumsiness of this hanging reminds one of the horrible accident that took place at the execution of the conspirators at the commencement of Nicholas' roigi>On this-occasion tho ropes broke when the aignaj was given, and the cijiou an ® were precipitated into a deep ditch round the glacis of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, on the edge of which the gibbet was set up. Two of the mea were found to have their legs broken* and resigned themselves tamely enough to be replaced under the gibbet. But the third, who was Colonel Pestel, the authpr and soul of the conspiracy, preserved! his consciousness, and cried out, as 1)0' was being pinioned again, with a voice<

was beard above the beating of *T 7< { What a miserable country where gl not even" know how to hang a ——- _ * j