THE TEACHING OF THE GALLOWS. .
. .(From the Satio'day Meehio) ..Four murderers were hung on the same scaffold, recently at Liverpool. .That there was nothing Very much out of ' c common way, either in the particulars of their respective Crimes, or in their behaviour, or in the Conduct" of the execution itself, is our reason for asking {Attention to what is ' only accidentally a remarkable event. 1 Apart from the singly, fact t'jat it./ivas v fpur men who were,' hung, and not one,,, the late execution at Kirkdale. Gaol wfeijld have beep tittle noticed. r . The present generation, however, is not accustomed to such a terrible spectacle, though they are now only middle-aged men to whom, in the days of their youth, the -si* lit of six or seven persons executed at oisce was the not uncommon result of even two consecutive assizes at the Old Bailey. Hanging-day at Newgate was needy as much a. matter of routine as the sessions itself. , But the occasion has, of course, been made the most of by the An i-Capi,ta| Punishment Society, or whatever is <t>he title of the body, if 'it" has corporate .existence, which is engaged \ n agitating for the abolition of the punish merit of deafh. All, however, : that they have to s-iy is, that it is especially horrible, that four persons shou'd be " publielv strangled" at once. JV/.uch more horrible it is, though this fact h.as Uot been much r.ei'inonized upon, Uuvt in a single town, and within a single fortnight, three bloqdy and brutal, and, we \vitl r.dd, most* wiTft:! ' ciurde'rs were committed.' A period of two" months covers the wlipie four murdero, and it is only by something libe a miracle that the' murdered per-sons were not e'ght instead of four 1 . As to the gr.i't of the prisoners there is no question, ■ and almost a single line will summarise the Crime of each. Alvarez, a Spaniard, thought he vvaV. insulted by two men in the street. ' 'Carrying a dagger after the manner of hit; countrymen, he instantly stabbed, and. stabbed twice, one of the men, who did not, die ; lie then grabbed, and stabbed twice, the other man, who fell mortaiiy wounded. The second murderer was one tCughPs, a drunken and debauched wretch." His wife on one occasion fetched him home ■from a public-house- this seems to have runkied in his mind, and the next morning, after sleeping over his affront, ,he broke the woman's back and pounded 'hey to death. O'Brien, anoiherof the •eriir.inals, was rubbed "at a brothel. A'ffer an interval df sore time, and a-n 'ineffectual attempt to interest the police 'in his case, he vowed he would "have •satisfaction in his own wav,' 1 After receiving repeated warnings, both from the po ice and a female comjfj.^ion, of tiie danger lie was running, he deliberately purchased a knive, drove in a cab to the brothel, stabbed the woman wl'o had robbed I'.fm or v/ds privy to the robbery, and made 'a 1 niu'rderouS assault ciV an inr.iate of the place. ' The ' pro-vocation of flic fourth murderer, Thomas, was that die woman with whom he J«dg<^) — the -ke per of a sailor's boarding house, to whom he was indebted — bad threatened him with the police court if he did n.jt join the vessel to which he Ind shipped himself. This woman's skull he literally smashed to atoms with a formidable instrument, called a poiatoe-masher - and the murder took place in a celler, to which he had specially decoyed his •victim. He then seems to have run a-inti k ; and, having tasted blood, the whole tiger nature was roused, and he all but murdered -two other women whose sole offence was that they Were on the spot. '"' So much for the crimes of these four murderers'; and the only extenuation offered is the very curious, or rather ihe very mendacious, oue that they had not "planned the" murder of' their victims.". 'As though buying a knife in one case, Or as though inveigling a Woman inlC) a 'celler 'in another, or as though telling a wife'" that he would be li'unj; for hr yet ". in Hughes' . case, ■was not planning, and wilful and deliberate planning! It is admitted by those who stigmatize this four fold execution, that these men were each and all of them ' " monsters of rage and Cruelty, and 'wild blasts in human Shape." And 'yet it is" urged, in the same breath, that it was wrong to hang them, and that " the gallows pro palates the seed that ripens into death." We are told, moreover, that the most strenuous exertions were urged 10 obtain a' commutation of the capital sentence, and in the case of the worst criminal of the fou:' — Thomas, who was guilty of the all but triple murder — on the homicidal-mania plea. And no doubt the fanatics' were right in using their most strenuous exertions on this occasion, for, had one ' of these men escaped his righteous 'fate, the gallows could never again have been erected :n England. There was nothing romantic about the criminals or their crimes. They were simply wilful murderers — the Spaniard, of the four, alone exhibiting little or rio premeditation ; and tbe cases are in this respect typical. The men deserved death neither more nor less than hundreds of those who have gone before them to the f«Ual free," but T iad they escaped it, there could have been no more hanging. These four Liverpool murderers represent murder iv the abstract, and everybody seems to have recognised this feature in the case. "We have no very extravagant sensation pictures of their last hours ; they murdered, were convicted," sentenced, were penitent, and were hung according to the card. They answered to the received type, for the most part. Three, at least, of these wretches seemed to have profited by their crimes ; and, as we are so often told in such cases, the condemned cell became the gate of Paradise. Alvarez, we find, " deiivcd
much comfort from the ministrations" of the priest. O'Brien " believed tha the had made peace with his Maker." Hughes was not only " comfortable in his mind,'* but "felt assured that, he was goinjj to Jesus.*' Thomas alone differed from this saintly triad, and died " perfectly callous and indifferent to his fate." ,^ll .this i 3 of the usunl character of ..prison penitence, and shows that there is a certain repc^nised mattor-of-course'fqrrn j,ti it all. .*nd as it was in the last hours, of the corideinned, so was it at the scaffold. The crowd was reckoned at .lpQ ; ,000 persons. Excursion trains swelled the vast assembly till it included all who at high noon in such a place as Liverpool could get within view, of ..the prison wall ; tnd no extraordinary scenes are related or invented ot" the behaviour of the rnujtit.ude, though, had Mr Dickens been _ pressnt, he might doubtless .j.liave got some grotesque word-painting out of the appalling scene. Indeed , the crowd behaved with what may .be called propriety rather than otherwise. The only innovation was in one particular of the act of execution. A sort r.f screen was erected, behind which tj;e murderers dropped i that is to say,- the act of Lauginir was in public, but the deathstruggle was concealed from the spectators. It seems to be doubtful, however, whether this is an innovation at all ; and it is also doubtful whether the spectacle of the dead body hung out ill terroreni ought to be dispensed with. ]t may be all very well to sp;<re the mob the sight of the death-throes and mortal agonies ; but there seems to be no reason why the screen should not be removed five minutes after " the fata! bult is drawn.'' The suspension for an hour, in the sight of all men, is at least a considerable element in the publicity of the whole action of v public execution, and the advantages of the Liverpool plan are somewhat questionable. Failing, then, in any attempt to disguise or extenuate the guilt of these four brutal murderers, and unable U> extract any special argument from any rvm.a table circumstance either of the crimes, the criminals, or the execution, the opponents of capital punishment are forced to .the monstrous assumption that the gallows acts rather as an incentive to crime than as a preventive and detcrrirsririetruineiit. Here, they say, were four murders s condemned at a ein| r ,le bloody assi:.v, and one cf tho murderers is known to have witnessed an execution. We shall not ntterr.pt to repeat all the arguments wli,:eh we have on r/iore than one occasion urge I in favor of capital punishment, but we must protest against an assumption i which is almost impudent. Executions are, we are told, of no use, because widi executions we have perhaptj fifiy murders a year. Surely, in a case where there is absolutely no experience, wo are as much entitled to say that, we should probably liav a hundredfold more murders v/itpout the galicws as to argue that a public execution deters no possible murderer, because Hughes saw two mun hunu and afterwards committed a murder liirr.s_'Jr. ))ccnu*c, n* a matter of fact, Huu'u-s was not deterred from crime by the sight of a public execution, therefore nobody else ever was, ever will be, or ever can be deterred. Omniscience like this is an attribute we do not pretend to. No", being admitted into the sc-crets of ;>ll hearts, we cannot of course point, out even one among the possible multitudes who daily bridle their fierce passions and murderous appeiiies because the\ know full well that the gallows awaits the murderer. But, ar-uiny; from the familiar facts of human nature, we know that the fear of lesser punish»nent floes dnily defer men from all sorts of minor crimes. This we know, and it remains to be shown why a motive operating every day, and counteracting all sorts of temptations, should not be at least as strong in 'he ca.se of the worst of crimes and the heaviest of punishments as of the lighter ones. To be consistent, the opponents of capical punishment should equally oppose all punnishment. The gallows does not stop murder, nor does the prison stop theft ; therefore, let both be abolished. At the best, they are useless; and in either case the question of cruelly is only one or clc^r^eOn the whole,, we may repeat tint it. is the grossest and most illogical of assumptions to conclude, without a particle of even attempted proof, that public executions in general, or the Liverpool execution in particular, produce only brutalizing effects even on the spectators. It is just as fair to assume' that their results are only remote and indirect, and comparatively unimportant. Public executions are to be justified on ether grounds than their effects on bystanders. They are designed not only to prevent possible murder, but to avenge actual murder. They are great retributive acts ; they represent and embody tha last, and most solemn and weightiest impersonation of Eternal Justice. An execution is retaliatory, and is to be defended as such. As we no longer hang men for other crimes than that of murder, life for life becomes a social necessity. Any other punishment than that of death is incommensurate with the crime ; and wp. cannot afford to place the sanctity of human life and the safety of our spoons under the same sanctions.
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Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 17, 16 December 1863, Page 5 (Supplement)
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1,901THE TEACHING OF THE GALLOWS. . Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 17, 16 December 1863, Page 5 (Supplement)
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