DROWNING AS A DEATH PENALTY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 79, 29 April 1909, Page 4

DROWNING AS A DEATH PENALTY.

The revival this year, in France, ol the guillotine, as a method of despatch ing criminals convicted of capital of •fences, recalls the fact that execution by drowning was abolished by Henrj Quatre, only to be revived by one ot hi> successors. It was finally abolished as a statutory method of execution by tin earliest decrees of the great revolutionariees.

As late as the eighteenth century, death by drowning was decreed to a felon in Edinburgh, and in the middle ages it was a common enough mode of doing a convicted criminal to death. That execution of this nature was considered as humane as any other, so far the victim was concerned, is shown by the fact that it was not unknown among the early Jews, who varied the punishment of stoning adultresses by drowning them. Among the Egyptians it was common. The Human Lex Cornelia sanctioned the method by placing it on the statute records. Tacitus tells us that the Germans copied the practice from the Romans. The Teuton termed it the " last baptism," and he did not allow his powers of imagination to sleep when he set about devising additional varieties which should add to the excitement attending upon the doomed {person's departure from life. The convict was sewn up, Monte Christo fashion, in a bag, and with him were enclosed a vicious dog, a hungry cat, a violent rooster, a venomous viper, all very much alive and, presumably, kicking. ' For what reason it is hard to see, but death by drowning was by many peoples considered preferable ior criminal women. In the case of very debased or, even mean offenders lh ( . Romans had <i more or lees pleasant fashion of drowning the doomed ones in marshes, first encasing them in elaborate crates. For refined cruelty in killing oil their female criminals, the earlier Albanians were certainly the most inventive in the matter of ingenuity. It is commonly known, of course, that even the modern Albanian has less respect for womenkiud than any other known male in the humman catalogue, not even excluding the Chinese. The approved method of doing a criminal, or even a displeasing woman, to death prevalent among them up to rather less than a century ago. was to chain her in a tank into which the water was allowed to How gradually. As the water reached her breast, it -was allowed to recede, sometimes back to her ankles, when the refilling of the tank began anew. If the women had children the torture was varied by the drowning or mutilation of them before their eyes. To various parts of her body, was attached such food as attracts rats, of which a number would be let loose.