ESSAY V.

EFFECT OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS UPON THE SPECTATORS.

Anecdote of a pick-pocket-Testimony of Dr. Dodd-Effect upon a celebrated banker—Description by an English traveller—Testimony of a witness-Testimony of a convict-Private executions-Execution of Lechler-Conduct of an executioner.

'What must men think, when they see wise magistrates and grave ministers of justice, with tranquillity, dragging a criminal to death, and, whilst the wretch trembles with agony, expecting the fatal stroke, the judge, who has condemned him, with the coldest insensibility, and, perhaps, with no small gratification from his authority, quits his tribunal to enjoy the comforts and pleasures of life?' BECCARIA.

Ir has been remarked, frequently, that the days of public executions, instead of being seasons of solemn reflection and sincere penitence, are seized on as days of obscene jesting, and coarse ribaldry. The loose and the abandoned, who attend, improve the opportunity to commit new depredations upon society. A pick-pocket, being asked by the chaplain of Newgate how he could venture on such a deed, at such a time, very frankly replied, 'that executions were the best harvests that he and his associates had; for, when the eyes of the spectators are fixed above, their pockets are unprotected below.'

In an account of the execution of two persons in England, forty arrests were made for the same crime. 'We constantly,' says the unhappy Dr. Dodd, in his sermon on this subject, himself destined at a subsequent period (1777) to suffer the same fate, 'hear of

crimes not less flagitious than those for which the criminal is to die, perpetrated even at the very place and moment of his punishment.' One of the jury that tried and convicted poor Dr. Dodd, was executed on the same gallows, (Tyburn,) for the same offence, (forgery,) within two years afterward. And so, too, it is said of Mr. Fauntleroy, the celebrated banker, who was executed for the same crime, that the idea of committing it first entered his mind while returning home from an execution which he had witnessed, while passing, one morning, along the street in front of Newgate. One grown man,' says Mr. E. G. Wakefield, 'of great mental powers and superior education, who was acquitted of a charge of forgery, assured me that the first idea of committing a forgery occurred to him at the moment when he was accidentally witnessing the execution of Fauntleroy.' The Rev. Mr. Roberts, of Bristol, England, presents the astounding fact, that he conversed with one hundred and sixty-seven convicts under sentence of death, one hundred and sixtyfour of whom had witnessed executions.*

Read the following description, given by a writer in his travels in England. After describing the usual preparations, he says:

There were present about two thousand persons, of both sexes, and of every age, rank, and character. There was the urchin, who, evidently, had played the truant, to ‘see the man hanged.' There was the aged man, white with a succession of forgotten winters, and furnishing, in his collapsed and wasted exterior, only an index to the vital ebb within-he had come to treat his dotage with what had never blessed the vision of his youth or prime. He had requested his son to attend and protect him; but his son had been a

* See a valuable work entitled, 'Necessity of Popular Education.' Appendix, p. 183. By JAMES SIMPSON.-Boston, 1836.

rover, and had seen many such sights, and the old man wondered at his lack of gratitude and affection. There was the pedlar with his wares; the cake-and-pie man with his quaint cry; the ballad singer, and a blind man with his clarionet. There was the prostitute, with her foul mouth and unblushing flaunt, and troops of drunken sailors, carefully tended by London pick-pockets. Three of the latter class were detected at their trade, and taken to jail from the ground. There were plays and games too-pitch and toss and leap-frog; and anticipations crowning all! Such was the scene around the gallows.

After speaking of the appearance of the prisoner, his chains and his coffin, and the priest, 'with white robes and reverend mien,' he says:

The heart of the reader would sicken at the recital of the particulars; suffice it that I give an instance or two of the depravity exhibited on the occasion. On the floor of the wagon lay the shoes of the dead man. One of the hopeful class, for whose edification the hanging had been done, taking hold of them, observed, ' By they 're clumpers. How I wish I'd seen 'em before he was swung off; I'd a made him a bid at 'em.' 'They 're a perquisite of Jack Ketch,' remarked a second, both of which sallies were hailed with decided approbation. While this was proceeding at the wagon, the body, itself, was not unmolested. A bumpkin, kneeling on the back of the frame, reached out his hand to that of the corpse, swinging it round so as to bring the face towards him. He then seized the wrist, and, after examining the cuff, discovered a pin, which he exposed aloft, exclaiming with an oath, 'This will do to pick my teeth after dinner.' Another, equally eager to signalize himself, twisted the body round, and examined the other hand. A cry of derision added chagrin to his disappointment; while the more fortunate explorator, sticking the trophy in the breast of his coat, was greeted with obstreperous plaudits. The dead man's legs were parted, and his manacles exposed; and one essayed even to lift the cap, but failed to reach it. Altogether, the scene was so disgustingly brutal, that I cannot choose but shudder at its remembrance, even after the lapse of nine years.

Who can read this description, and contend for the moral influence of public executions? A witness was

once asked whether he thought Capital Punishment deterred criminals. He answered:

I do not.

During one sitting, as a magistrate, three persons were brought before me for uttering forged notes. During the investigation, I discovered that those notes were obtained from a room in which the body of a person, named Wheller, (executed on the preceding day, for the same offence,) then lay, and that the notes in question were delivered for circulation, by a woman with whom he had been living. This is, (he adds,) a strong case, but I have no doubt that it is but one of many others.*

notes.

* Another strikingly similar instance is related by Mr. Livingston, on the authority of a gentleman at a public meeting, in Southampton, England, as having been detailed by Mr. Buxton. 'An Irishman, found guilty of issuing forged bank-notes, was executed, and his body delivered to his family. While the widow was lamenting over the corpse, a young man came to her to purchase some forged As soon as she knew his business, forgetting, at once, both her grief and the cause of it, she raised up the dead body of her husband, and pulled from under it a parcel of the very paper, for the circulation of which he had forfeited his life. At that moment an alarm was given of the approach of the police; and, not knowing where else to conceal the notes, she thrust them into the mouth of the corpse, and there the officers found them.' Mr. Rantoul relates, 'that an execution, which took place at Worcester, for the crime of rape, on the 8th of December, 1825, was shortly afterward followed by an attempt, by a brother of the criminal, to commit the same offence for which his own brother had just lost his life. The cases have been numerous, in which the fact that near relatives have perished on the gallows, has not prevented the perpetration of crimes, leading necessarily to the same fate. The notorious Patty Cannon, for instance, who committed numerous murders in Delaware, and, who destroyed herself by poison after her arrest, had had a father who was hung for murder, and a brother for horse-stealing. At the execution of the notorious pirate Gibbs, a few years ago, in New York, a witness was present, who declared, positively, that he had seen him hung on a former occasion, for the same crime, at some port in

We will give the language of a convict who was near being hanged for coining:

Q. Have you often seen an execution?' A. 'Yes.' Q. 'Did not it frighten you?' A. 'No; why should it?' Q. 'Did it not make you think that the same would happen to yourself?' A. 'Not a bit.' Q. What did you think, then?' A. "Think? why, I thought it was a d-d shame.' Q. 'Now, when you have been going to run a great risk of being caught and hanged, did the thought never come within your head, that it would be as well to avoid the risk?' A. 'Never.' Q. 'Not when you remembered having seen men hanged for the same thing?' A. Oh, I never remembered anything about it; and if I had, what difference would that make?' We must all take our chance. I never thought it would fall on me, and don't think it ever will.' Q. 'But if it should?' A. 'Why, then, I hope I shall suffer like a manwhere's the use of snivelling?'

But let us hear the testimony of one who was an inmate of Newgate. He says: 'The numerous chances of escape, arising in great part from the nature of the punishment, and from the nature of the punishment independently of the chances of escape-the calculations of reason, and the delusions of hope excited by fear-conspire to render Capital Punishment wholly inefficient for the sole end of punishment, which is to present to all a stronger motive for abstaining from, than the ordinary motives for

South America. He insisted that he recognized him beyond the possibility of mistake, by certain peculiar marks of identity; and when we consider the not infrequent cases which have occurred of resuscitation after hanging—(a distinguished physician, now in New York, states that he has, in the course of his life, taken part in three such cases)— the story is not incredible. At any rate, there are numerous cases known, in which criminals, who have narrowly escaped death for an attempted crime, have made its repetition the first object of their newlyacquired liberty.'