A CRIME AND ITS EXPIATION.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2572, 5 January 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

A CRIME AND ITS EXPIATION.

I'uK.siDKNT fiarnot does not take quite so long to examine a eondemncd's petition for pardon as M. Grevy did. Still there is room for improvement. Miithelii), .vho has just her.! guillotined, was ltH .">0 days iu a state of anything but glori oils uncertainty as to his fate. He was a xtom; mason, married, anil father of a girl aged thirteen. Uu led a bad life, and wanting money, he bamboozled m> iild granger of scavengers to draw his .-■avingd. 500 fi\, out of the bank, to pay the right to suco-r-ed i;i a vacant gifvportership of a surburban castle, in the Marue. En route to conclude the affair, Mathelin strangled the scavenger,, robbiid tne victim, ami attached the body to a tree, to simulate st.icide. He confessed his crime, and feigned consumption, in order to be scut co New Caledonia. The doctor reported he was in a lit state of health to be decapitated. The culprit divined by a dream, he was to bs executed on the day that it actually took place ; he rose early, dressed himself, aud sat, on the side of his bed, awaiting the visit ot the executioner. He offered no resistance, but ou marching to the seall'old, his tall statue enabled him to look over the heads of the cortege, and so to behold the awful knife glistening aloft in the rising sun. His head was locked in the bull's eye, and in forty seconds, it was in the coffin basket with the trunk. After the simulated burial, the body was whisked of to the College of Surgeons, and by noon was in morsels, niirl lectured int , ) nothing. Like all murderers, he had enormous hands. His body was tabooed with fancy designs of horses, cannons, landscapes, ladies seated in arm chairs fixing their chignons and playing with their fans. He was in his life time, the beadle of his parish church during five years.