TWICE HANGED. How it Feels to be Swung From the Gallows..

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 210, 9 July 1887, Page 3

TWICE HANGED. How it Feels to be Swung From the Gallows..

Theodore Baker, who was hanged af> Springer, N. M., for the murder of Frank Unruh in Colfax county, wishes to be remembered as the one American who was hanged twice for a single crime. In conversation with the " Sun " correspondent a short time after he had received word from Governor Ross that there was no hope for him, Baker said : "It is not the pain I fear at all. I have been hanged, and I know what I am talking about. What ails me is that I don't want; to die, and I don't think I ought to. Probably if you knew that in an instant you were to be blown to nothingness^ so that you would experience no suffering whatever, you would appreciate how I feel about it. As for the mode of death, you can say it is as good as any > other, and it don't need to be too artistically done, either. Why, when they hanged me first down here by the railroad track I was scared half to death. They had no modern appliances, and I made up my mind that they were going to give me a, terrible struggle of it, but it was nothing of the sort. The mob swung me off from a telegraph pole like they would a log, and then one or two of them pulled my legs. That isn't so almighty nice, but still it don't hurt as you might think it would. I must have hung there ten or firteen minutes before the Sheriff and his posse found me and cut me down. Of course by that time I was unconscious, but I remembered enough of what occurred to banish any fear that I might have of death on the gallows. It's death in whatever form it comes that I object to. If I have got to go I had just) as soon go by the rope as by the bullet, and I had a good deal rather go by the rope than by the knife or by poison. You can say this much for the information and comfort of all the poor fellows who will have to swing when lam gone. Toll them to brace up and take it easy. They are going to die easier deaths than three- fourths of the fat old judges who sentence them and who expect to die in their beds. There lias been altogether too much writing and talking on the subject of the barbarity of the gallows. I'm in favour of abolishing capital punishment myself, but if a man must die, what's the use of being too particular about the mode so long as you have got a good enough scheme now ?" Baker had several warm friends here who laboured earnestly in his behalf , and who regard his punishment as unjustly severe. He went to the rope unflinchingly, and just before the trap was sprung, when the attendant shifted the knot a little, he heard Baker say : " That's right ; I have been in the habit of having it a little higher up."