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Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 256, 4 October 1928, Page 8

“ Why did you leave your wife ? ” asked counsel of a defendant in a maintenance case in the Magistrate’s Court at Wellington (reports the Post). The defendant eyed counsel keenly, leant over the rail of the witness box, and replied : “ Do you think it a fair thing for me to have to do the washing week after week? ” “ But you did not do that often, did you ? ” inquired counsel. “ Oh, didn’t I—just didn’t I ! ” answered the defendant with some emphasis. “ Why, week-end after week-end I have done the washing.” People unacquainted with history talk glibly about the “ good old times,” but it is only a century since Germany had its last execution by breaking on the wheel, a process which has left the world with that much-used phrase the “ coup de grace,” the origin of which few people who use it are probably aware. In this form of torture and execution the victim was bound on to a slowly revolving cart-wheel while his bones were broken by blows from an iron bar. Sometimes it was ordered that at an early stage the executioner should kill outright by blows on the chest and stomach, these blows being termed coups de grace, and in France the criminal was usually strangled after the second or third blow. In Britain Henry VIII. was the nation’s staunchest believer in capital punishment, and by no means confined his favours to his own domestic circle, for he executed 72,000 of his subjects as well. For sixteen years during his reign boiling alive was a legalised mode of execution.