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ESSAY IV.

EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON THE PRISONER

Executions of Boyington-Robinson—A pirate-Two brothers— Thistlewood-Armstrong—Mary Jones.

-Oh! what are these,

Death's ministers, not men, who thus deal death

Inhumanly to men, and multiply ten thousand fold the sin of him who

slew

His brother; for of whom such massacre

Make they but of their brethren, men of men?'

Paradise Lost. Book xi., line 675.

THE moral effect of public executions may be viewed under three aspects:

I. Upon the prisoner.

II. Upon the spectators.
III. Upon domestic life.

It will be seen, even by the most superficial reader, that this division opens a wide field, and that, in a work like the present, only a limited view can be presented.

One would naturally suppose that, when sentence of death was pronounced upon a criminal, and especially when preparation was making for its execution, that he would become very solemn, and that his heart would be opened to any kindly influences that might be presented. Facts prove the contrary. A sort of phrensy seems to pervade the whole mind; the heart becomes callous, and the criminal has no other feeling than that of revenge against that community by whose

laws he has been condemned. This is not always the case; we are sometimes told that the prisoner died penitent! Monstrous law! At the very moment, then, when reformation has commenced, the individual is cruelly put to death! What should we think of the physician who should recommend that, when his patient began to recover, he should be murdered?

We intend to confine our present labor to a consideration of the paralyzing influence of executions upon the prisoner. We cannot do this better than to give a few practical illustrations:

EXECUTION OF BOYINGTON.

[From the Mobile Commercial Advertiser.]

He walked to the scaffold with a firm and unwavering step. His whole soul had been steeled and nerved up till the ministers of the law commenced robing him for death, and fixing the fatal noose. At that moment, he cowered, and sunk into the most abject desperation. A more sudden and fearful transition, perhaps, was never witnessed. Is there no hope? Must I die? were answered in the solemn negative. The blood forsook his cheeks, despair was written in awful marks upon his ashy features, and a scene of horror ensued that beggars description. He dashed from the foot of the scaffold among the military. But he was easily secured. Then followed a scene of horror, which we pray may find no parallel hereafter in the execution of the laws. The hopeless agony of the criminal was displayed in obstinate resistance to the performance of the necessary duties of the agents of the law; and, even when at last suspended from the fatal cord, his desperate clinging to the life he had forfeited, was shown by struggles to free his arms from the pinions, and clutching at the rope. He succeeded in thrusting his hands between the rope and his throat, and thus, resisting and struggling to the last, died despairing, and, for aught that human eye could see, impenitent. The last five minutes of his life were marked by a horror of dying, a prostration of energies, as remarkable as the sternness of nerve and reckless levity of carriage which had signalized him during the

whole of the trial, and in the interval between condemnation and execution, up to that moment.

Such was the end of Charles R. S. Boyington-a dreadful end of a bloody tale. The horror of the punishment with which it closes, compares fitly, in tragic intensity of interest, with the terrible atrocity of the crime. The victim, a gentle and confiding invalid, fell by the hand of an assassin-that assassin his professed friend-in an open thoroughfare, beneath the walls of the graveyard, the busy hum of human voices warning him of the neighborhood of busy life, and the tombs of the dead speaking to the murderer of the end of life-the beginning of eternity.*

SENTENCE OF PETER ROBINSON, AT NEW BRUNSWICK, FOR THE MURDER OF MR. SUYDAM.

[From O'Sullivan's Report against the Punishment of Death. N. Y., 1841.]

After his sentence, the rush was tremendous to see him, the ladies in particular! Smiling to the crowd, he said to the sheriff:

'Remember, you must share the fees with me that you get for hanging me.' And such was his hardened indifference, to the last moment, that, after he was ironed and locked up in his cell, he said to the jailor-As I am a carpenter, I think I ought to be employed to help build my own gallows, and I could make my own coffin, and give my wife the money. All I ask is a snug platform and a strong rope; and if Jakey Edmonds goes to heaven, I don't want to go there. I won't have a d-d priest come near me.'

The court ordered that his wife and child might see him, at all times consistent with the prisoner's safety, and in the presence of some of the proper authorities.

Up to the last moment he jested.

6

'I do solemnly believe,' he once said, that I shall burst out a laughing under the gallows. Oh, if they would only let me have

* It was subsequently ascertained that Boyington was innocent!

the big field to be hung in, and a band of music,-I'd ask no more. When asked by the gentlemen who made such able and eloquent efforts in his behalf as his counsel, how he thought he would feel at the last moment, 'Well,' said he, coolly, 'I've tried to imagine how I should feel under the gallows, but I know how I shall feel; I shall feel pretty much the same as I do now, and the same as I did in the court-house. Did n't I look the judge right in the eye, then? I've always felt the same; my feelings have n't changed, and they won't change; for I can't realize anything so very dreadful about dying, only I should like to have a band of music, the big field, and twenty thousand spectators.' 'I hope,' he said on one occasion, 'that the sheriff won't tickle me with that rope; if he does I shall be sure to laugh. I hope he 'll grease the rope, so that it'll come well down under my ear, and then put a fifty-six under, on to my feet, and so pull my head off at one jerk.' On being asked whether he did not feel sorry that he had killed Mr. Suydam, 'Yes,' he answered, carelessly, but not on my own account, nor on his; but I feel sorry for his wife and children.'

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With respect to his state of preparation for the eternity into which he was about to be plunged, the following extract will convey an idea: 'Here the jailer, who had gone out, again returned. Peter cried out, "Here, Conover, this snow storm makes it dreary and feel cold; pile on the coals, make the stove fire red hot; I'm going to a warm place in the next world, and I want to get used to it." "Peter, Peter," said the jailer. "Oh, well," said Peter, "I know I must put on a sober face, because we're going to have a prayer meeting here presently, and they 'll ask me if I've thought seriously about my latter end, and I shall say, Oh, yes; deeply! deeply!" On being told, on one occasion, that he ought to show less levity, and be thinking of more serious matters, if ever he meant to, he laughed, and said, 'Oh, you know I've got four days to live yet; and the parsons tell me that the thief on the cross did n't begin to repent till an hour before he died, and yet he went to heaven, they say; so I've got plenty of time.' On another oecasion, the following account is given of his language: Some clergymen went in to see him this afternoon, and after he had told one of them how he had been doing, and how he had felt, the parson told him that if that was all, he would go to hell for all that. Peter became very indignant, and exclaimed, “Then what am I to do? I've read that book—(pointing to the Bible)—I 've tried to

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understand it as far as my humble abilities will let me ; I believe what it says; I've confessed my crime; I've confessed that I've done wrong; and I 've prayed to God to forgive me for it; and I know nobody else can forgive me if he does not; I've forgiven everybody that ever did me wrong, as I hope to be forgiven; I owe nobody any ill-will in the world; I have no hard feeling against a human being; I know I must die on Friday next; I know that the sentence is just; I've suffered too much poverty and misery in this life to care very much about leaving it; I know I'm not properly prepared to die, and I pray to God to prepare me before I die; believe in the Bible, and I believe in God; and I believe that he's more merciful than men are. And if, after all this, I am to be sent to hell, why, I think it's very hard, and I shoul I like to know what I am to do, or what you want me to do. At any rate, I don't want any of your prayers, and I don't want you to come near me again. And if heaven be such a place as this Bible tells me it is, why, I'm very sure that you won't go there, and that there 'll be very few like you to be found in any part of it."'

In the case of the execution of Stephen M. Clarke, only seventeen years of age, for setting fire to a building in Newburyport, it was found necessary to force him from his cell, and drag him to the scaffold, amidst a parade of soldiers and martial music! How dreadful! To drag a fellow-being, a mere youth, flush with life, and put him to death in the most cruel manner. Who does not execrate in his heart those laws which require such a horrid spectacle?

The law knows no bounds to its cruelty, for we have an account of the execution of a pirate, in Boston, even after his attempt to commit suicide. It appears that he had been narrowly watched, but the sheriff leaving him for a moment, he seized the opportunity, and attempted to take his own life. But so barbarous and stern is the law, that life must be taken by its own ministers. While the wound was flowing fresh, and while life was almost extinct, he was taken in a chair, placed under the gallows, and cruelly murdered!

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