MikhailT/lj-speech huggingface dataset:
The third convict is a sheep-stealer, a poor ignorant fellow in whose crime are mitigating circumstances,
but who is left to die on the supposition that this is not his first conviction, and still more because a good many sheep have of late been stolen by other people.
He is quite content to die;
indeed the chaplain and others have brought him firmly to believe that his situation is enviable, and that the gates of heaven are open to receive him.
The last of the four is said to have been a clergyman of the Church of England, condemned for forgery, "a miserable old man in a tattered suit of black.
Already he is half dead.
Great efforts have been made to save his life.
Friends, even utter strangers, have interceded for him, and to the last he has buoyed himself up by hope of reprieve.
Now his doom is sealed irrevocably, and he has given himself up to despair.
He staggers towards the pew, reels into it, stumbles forward, flings himself on the ground, and, by a curious twist of the spine,
buries his head under his body.
The sheriffs shudder, their inquisitive friends crane forward, the keeper frowns on the excited congregation,
the lately smirking footmen close their eyes and forget their liveries, the ordinary clasps his hands, the turnkeys cry 'Hush!'
and the old clerk lifts up his cracked voice, saying, 'Let us sing to the praise and glory of God.'
The morning hymn is sung first, as if to remind the condemned that next morning at eight a.m. they are to die.
The service proceeds. At last the burial service is reached.
The youth alone is able to read, but from long want of practice he is at a loss to find the place in his prayer-book.
The ordinary observes him, looks to the sheriffs, and says aloud, 'The service for the dead!'
The youth's hands tremble as they hold the book upside down.
The burglar is heard to mutter an angry oath.
The sheep-stealer smiles, and, extending his arms upwards, looks with a glad expression to the roof of the chapel.
The forger has never moved.
Let us pass on.
All have sung 'the Lamentation of a Sinner,' and have seemed to pray 'especially for those now awaiting the awful execution of the law.'
We come to the sermon.
The ordinary of Newgate is an orthodox, unaffected, Church of England divine,
who preaches plain, homely discourses, as fit as any religious discourse can be fit for the irritated audience.
The sermon of this day, whether eloquent or plain, useful or useless, must produce a striking effect at the moment of its delivery.
The text, without another word, is enough to raise the wildest passions of the audience
For a while the preacher addresses himself to the congregation at large, who listen attentively
except the clergyman and the burglar, the former of whom is still rolled up at the bottom of the condemned pew,
while the eyes of the latter are wandering round the chapel, and one of them is occasionally winked impudently at some acquaintance amongst the prisoners for trial.
At length the ordinary pauses, and then, in a deep tone, which, though hardly above a whisper, is audible to all, says,
'Now for you, my poor fellow mortals, who are about to suffer the last penalty of the law.'
But why should I repeat the whole?
It is enough to say that in the same solemn tone he talks about the minutest of crimes, punishments, bonds, shame,
ignominy, sorrow, sufferings, wretchedness, pangs,
childless parents, widows and helpless orphans, broken and contrite hearts, and death tomorrow morning for the benefit of society.
The dying men are dreadfully agitated.
The young stealer in a dwelling-house no longer has the least pretense to bravery. He grasps the back of the pew,
his legs give way, he utters a faint groan, and sinks on the floor.
Why does no one stir to help him? Where would be the use? The hardened burglar moves not, nor does he speak;
but his face is of an ashy paleness; and if you look carefully you may see the blood trickling from his lip,
which he has bitten unconsciously, or from rage, or to rouse his fainting courage.
The poor sheep-stealer is in a frenzy.
He throws his hands far from him, and shouts aloud, 'Mercy, good Lord! mercy is all I ask. The Lord in His mercy come!
There! there! I see the Lamb of God! Oh! how happy! Oh! this is happy!
Meanwhile the clergyman, still bent into the form of a sleeping dog,
struggles violently; his feet, legs, hands, and arms, even the muscles of his back,
move with a quick, jerking motion, not naturally, but, as it were, like the affected parts of a galvanized corpse.
Suddenly he utters a short sharp scream, and all is still.
The silence is short. As the ordinary proceeds 'to conclude,'
the women set up a yell, which is mixed with a rustling noise, occasioned by the removal of those whose hysterics have ended in fainting.
The sheriffs cover their faces, and one of their inquisitive friends blows his nose with his glove.
The keeper tries to appear unmoved, but his eye wanders anxiously over the combustible assembly.
The children round the communion-table stare and gape with childish wonder.
The two masses of prisoners for trial undulate and slightly murmur,
while the capital convicts who were lately in that black pew appear faint with emotion.
This exhibition lasts for some minutes, and then the congregation disperses,
the condemned returning to the cells: the forger carried by turnkeys; the youth sobbing aloud convulsively, as a passionate child;
the burglar muttering curses and savage expressions of defiance; whilst the poor sheep-stealer shakes hands with the turnkeys,
whistles merrily, and points upwards with madness in his look.
Mr. Wakefield winds up his graphic but somewhat sensational account by describing another religious service, which may appropriately be inserted here.
He says, "On the day of execution there is no service in the chapel of Newgate.
On the following day the capital convicts, whose companions have been hanged, are required to return thanks for their narrow escape.
The firmest disbeliever in religion, if he had not lately been irritated by taking part in such a scene as the condemned service in Newgate,
could hardly witness this ceremony without being affected. The men, who were so lately snatched from the jaws of death,
kneel, whilst the rest of the congregation sit, and the ordinary, in a tone of peculiar solemnity, says,
for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us, and to all men;
particularly to those who desire now to offer up their praises and thanksgivings for thy late mercies vouchsafed unto them.
Could any one, knowing the late situation of the kneeling men, looking as they do at the empty pew,
occupied when they saw it last, but a few hours ago, by their comrades who are now dead;
could any one, not disgusted with the religious ceremonials of Newgate, witness this scene without emotion?
Hardly any one.
But what are the feelings of those who take part in it?
I have been present at the scene not less than twenty times, and have invariably observed
that many of the kneeling men or boys laughed while they knelt, pinched each other, and, when they could do so without fear of being seen by any officer of the prison,
winked at other prisoners in derision of what was taking place; and I have frequently heard men and lads who had been of the kneeling party
boast to their companions after the service that they had wiped their eyes during the thanksgiving, to make the ordinary believe they had been crying.
Although this misapplication of religious services still went on,
the outside public continued to be excluded from the Newgate chapel on the day the condemned sermon was preached.
This very proper rule was, however, set aside on the Sunday preceding Courvoisier's execution.
So many applications for admission were made to the sheriffs,
that they reluctantly agreed to open the gallery which had formerly been occupied by strangers on these occasions.
Cards were issued, and to such an extent, that although the service was not to commence till half-past ten, by nine a.m.
all the avenues to the prison gates were blocked by ticket-holders.
In spite of the throng, owing to the excellent arrangements made by the sheriffs,
no inconvenience was suffered by the congregation, among whom were Lord Adolphus Fitz Clarence, Lord Coventry,
Lord Paget, Lord Bruce, several members of the House of Commons, and a few ladies.
Contemporary accounts give a minute description of the demeanor of the convict upon this solemn occasion.
He sat on a bench before the pulpit, -- the hideous condemned pew had been swept away, -- and never once raised his eyes during the service.
In fact his looks denoted extreme sorrow and contrition,
and he seemed to suffer great inward agitation when the ordinary particularly alluded to the crime for the perpetration of which he stood condemned.
Mr. Carver, the ordinary, appears to have addressed himself directly to Courvoisier,
and to have dwelt with more emphasis than good taste upon the nature of the crime, and the necessity for repentance.
But the chaplain admitted that the solitude of the convict's cell
was more appropriate for serious reflection and profitable ministration than this exciting occasion before a large and public assembly.
So far as I can find, Courvoisier was the last condemned criminal who was thus exhibited to a crowd of morbidly curious spectators.
The atrocity of the murder no doubt attracted extraordinary attention to it.
The crowd outside Newgate on the day of execution has already been described; but there was also a select gathering of distinguished visitors within the jail.
First came the sheriffs, the under-sheriffs, and several aldermen and city officials, then Lord Powerscourt and several other peers of the realm.
Mr. Charles Kean the tragedian was also present,
drawn to this terrible exhibition by the example of his father, the more celebrated Edmund Kean, who had witnessed the execution of Thistlewood
"with a view," as he himself said, "to his professional studies."
But there is little doubt that as executions became more rare they made more impression on the public mind.
Already a strong dislike to the reckless and almost indiscriminate application of the extreme penalty was apparent in all classes,
and the mitigation of the criminal code, for which Romilly had so strenuously labored, was daily more and more of an accomplished fact.
In 1832
capital punishment was abolished for forgery, except in cases of forging or altering wills or powers of attorney to transfer stock.
Nevertheless, after that date no person whatever was executed for this offense.
In the same year capital punishment was further restricted, and ceased to be the legal sentence for coining,
sheep or horse stealing, and stealing in a dwelling-house.
House-breaking, as distinguished from burglary, was similarly exempted in the following year;
next, the offenses of returning from transportation, stealing post-office letters, and sacrilege were no longer punishable with death.
In 1837 Lord John Russell's acts swept away a number of capital offenses, including cutting and maiming, rick-burning,
robbery, burglary, and arson.
Within a couple of years the number of persons sentenced to death in England had fallen from four hundred and thirty-eight in 1837
to fifty-six in 1839.
Gradually the application of capital punishment became more and more restricted, and was soon the penalty for murder alone.
While in London, for instance, in 1829, twenty-four persons had been executed for crimes other than murder,
from 1832 to 1844 not a single person had been executed in the metropolis except for this the gravest crime.
In 1837 the death penalty was practically limited to murder or attempts to murder,
and in 1841 this was accepted as the almost universally established rule.
Seven other crimes, however, were still capital by law, and so continued till the passing of the Criminal Consolidation Acts of 1861.
With the amelioration of the criminal code, other cruel concomitants of execution also disappeared.
In 1832 the dissection of bodies cut down from the gallows, which had been decreed centuries previously, was abolished;
the most recent enactment in force was the 9th George IV. cap. 31, which directed the dissection of all bodies of executed murderers,
the idea being to intensify the dread of capital punishment. That such dread was not universal or deep-seated may be gathered from the fact
that authentic cases were known previous to the first cited act of criminals selling their own bodies to surgeons for dissection.
This dissection was carried out for Newgate prisoners in Surgeons' Hall, adjoining Newgate,
the site of the present Sessions House of the Old Bailey, and the operation was witnessed by students and a number of curious spectators.
Lord Ferrers' body was brought to Surgeons' Hall after execution in his own carriage and six;
after the post mortem had been carried out, the corpse was exposed to view in a first-floor room.
Pennant speaks of Surgeons' Hall as a handsome building, ornamented with Ionic pilasters, and with a double flight of steps to the first floor.
Beneath is a door for the admission of the bodies of murderers and other felons. There were other public dissecting rooms for criminals.
One was attached to Hicks' Hall, the Clerkenwell Sessions House, built out of monies provided by Sir Baptist Hicks, a wealthy alderman of the reign of James I.
Persons were still living in 1855 who had witnessed dissections at Hicks' Hall, and
whom the horrid scene, with the additional effect of some noted criminals hanging on the walls, drove out again sick and faint,
as we have heard some relate, and with pale and terrified features, to get a breath of air.
The dissection of executed criminals was abolished soon after the discovery of the crime of burking,
with the idea that ignominy would no longer attach to an operation which ceased to be compulsory for the most degraded beings;
and that executors or persons having lawful possession of the bodies
of people who had died friendless, would voluntarily surrender them for the advancement of medical science.
Another brutal practice had nearly disappeared about the time of the abolition of dissection. This was the public exhibition of the body,
as was done in the case of Mrs. Phipoe, the murderess, who was executed in front of Newgate in 1798,
and her body publicly exhibited in a place built for the purpose in the Old Bailey.
About this time I find that the bodies of two murderers, Clench and Mackay,
were publicly exposed in a stable in Little Bridge Street, near Apothecaries' Hall,
Surgeons' Hall being let to the lieutenancy of the county for the accommodation of the militia.
In 1811 Williams, who murdered the Marrs in Ratcliffe Highway, having committed suicide in jail to escape hanging,
it was determined that a public exhibition should be made of the body through the neighborhood which had been the scene of the monster's crimes.
A long procession was formed, headed by constables, who cleared the way with their staves.
Then came the newly-formed horse patrol, with drawn cutlasses,
parish officers, peace officers, the high constable of the county of Middlesex on horseback, and then the body of Williams,
extended at full length on an inclined platform
erected on the cart, about four feet high at the head, and gradually sloping towards the horse, giving a full view of the body,
which was dressed in blue trousers and a blue-and-white striped waistcoat, but without a coat, as when found in the cell.
On the left side of the head the fatal mall,
and on the right the ripping chisel, with which the murders had been committed, were exposed to view.
The countenance of Williams was ghastly in the extreme, and the whole had an appearance too horrible for description.
The procession traversed Ratcliffe twice, halting for a quarter of an hour in front of the victims' dwelling,
and was accompanied throughout by "an immense concourse of persons, eager to get a sight of the murderer's remains.
All the shops in the neighborhood were shut, and the windows and tops of the houses were crowded with spectators.
Hanging in chains upon the gibbet which had served for the execution,
or on another specially erected on some commanding spot, had fallen into disuse by 1832.
But there was an attempt to revive it at that date, when the act for dispensing with the dissection of criminals was passed.
A clause was inserted to the effect that
the bodies of all prisoners convicted of murder should either be hung in chains, or buried under the gallows on which they had been executed,
according to the discretion of the court before whom the prisoners might be tried.
The revival of this barbarous practice caused much indignation in certain quarters,
but it was actually tried in two provincial towns, Leicester and Durham.
At the first-named the exhibition nearly created a tumult, and the body was taken down and buried,
but not before the greatest scandal had been caused by the unseemly proceedings of the crowd that flocked to see the sight. A sort of fair was held,
gaming-tables were set up, cards were played under the gibbet, to the disturbance of the public peace and the annoyance of all decent people.
At Jarrow Stake, where the Durham murderer's body was exposed, there were similar scenes, mingled with compassion for the culprit's family,
and a subscription was set on foot for them then and there at the foot of the gibbet.
Later on, after dark, some friends of the deceased stole the body and buried it in the sand, and this was the end of hanging in chains.
After this a law was passed which prescribed that the bodies of all executed murderers should be buried within the walls of the jail.
Although these objectionable practices had disappeared,
there were still many shocking incidents at executions, owing to the bungling and unskilful way in which the operation was performed.
The rope still broke sometimes, although it was not often that the horrid scene seen at Jersey at the beginning of the century was repeated.
There the hangman added his weight to that of the suspended culprit,
and having first pulled him sideways, then got upon his shoulders, so that the rope broke.
To the great surprise of all who witnessed this dreadful scene,
the poor criminal rose straight upon his feet, with the hangman on his shoulders, and immediately loosened the rope with his fingers.
After this the sheriffs sent for another rope, but the spectators interfered, and the man was carried back to jail.
The whole case was referred to the king, and the poor wretch, whose crime had been a military one, was eventually pardoned.
A somewhat similar event happened at Chester not long afterwards; the ropes by which two offenders were turned off broke a few inches from their necks.
They were taken back to jail, and were again brought out in the afternoon, by which time fresh and stronger ropes had been procured,
and the sentence was properly and completely carried out.
Other cases might be quoted,
especially that of William Snow, alias Sketch, who slipped from the gallows at Exeter and fell to the ground.
He soon rose to his feet, and hearing the sorrowful exclamations of the populace, coolly said,
Good people, do not be hurried; I am not, I can wait.
Similar cases were not wanting as regards the executions before Newgate. Others were not less horrible, although there was no failure of apparatus.
Sometimes the condemned man made a hard fight for life.
When Charles White was executed in 1823 for arson, he arranged a handkerchief
in such a way that the executioner found a difficulty in pinioning his hands.
White managed to keep his wrists asunder, and continued to struggle with the officials for some time. Eventually he was pinioned with a cord in the usual manner.
On the scaffold he made a violent attempt to loosen his bonds, and succeeded in getting his hands free.
Then with a strong effort he pushed off the white cap, and tried to liberate his neck from the halter, which by this time had been adjusted.
The hangman summoned assistance, and with help tied the cap over White's face with a handkerchief.
The miserable wretch during the whole of this time was struggling with the most determined violence, to the great horror of the spectators.
Still he resisted.
and having got from the falling drop to the firm part of the platform, he nearly succeeded in tearing the handkerchief from his eyes.
However, the ceremony went forward, and when the signal was given the drop sank.
The wretched man did not fall with it, but jumped on to the platform, and seizing the rope with his hands, tried to avoid strangulation.
The spectacle was horrible;
the convict was half on the platform, half hanging, and the convulsions of his body were appalling.
The crowd vociferously yelled their disapproval, and at length
the executioner forced the struggling criminal from the platform, so that the rope sustained his whole weight.
His face was visible to the whole crowd, and was fearful to behold.
Even now his sufferings were not at an end,
and his death was not compassed until the executioner terminated his sufferings by hanging on to his legs.
When Luigi Buranelli was executed in 1855,
through the improper adjustment of the rope his sufferings were prolonged for five minutes;
his chest heaved, and it was evident that his struggle was a fearful one.
A worse case still was that of William Bousfield, who, when awaiting execution for murder, about the same date,
had attempted to throw himself upon the fire in his condemned cell.
He was in consequence so weak when brought out for execution, that he had to be carried by four men,
two supporting his body and two his legs.
His wretched, abject condition, seated in a chair under the drop, was such as almost to unnerve the executioner Calcraft,
who bad been further upset by a letter threatening to shoot him when he appeared to perform his task.
Calcraft, the moment he had adjusted the cap and rope, ran down the steps, drew the bolt, and disappeared.
For a second or two the body hung motionless, then, with a strength that astonished the attendant officials,
Bousfield slowly drew himself up, and rested with his feet on the right side of the drop.
One of the turnkeys rushed forward and pushed him off.
Again the wretched creature succeeded in obtaining foothold, but this time on the left side of the drop.
Calcraft was forced to return, and he once more pushed Bousfield off,
who for the fourth time regained his foothold. Again he was repelled,
this time Calcraft adding his weight to the body, and the strangulation was completed.
It was stated in evidence before the Commission on Capital Punishment in 1864,
that Calcraft's method of hanging was very rough, much the same as if he had been hanging a dog.
There has never been much science in the system of carrying out the extreme penalty in this country; the "finisher of the law"
has come more by chance than fitness or special education to exercise his loathsome office.
Calcraft, of whom mention has just been made, was by trade a lady's shoemaker,
and before he took to hanging he was employed as a watchman at Reid's brewery in Liquorpond Street.
He was at first engaged as assistant to the executioner Tom Cheshire, but in due course rose to be chief.
He was always known as a mild-mannered man of simple tastes, much given to angling in the New River, and a devoted rabbit fancier.
He was well known in the neighborhood where he resided, and the street gamins cried "Jack Ketch" as he went along the street.
While Calcraft was in office other aspirants to fame appeared in the field.
One was Askern,
who had been a convicted prisoner at York, but who consented to act as hangman when Calcraft was engaged, and no other functionary could be obtained.
It was not always easy to hire a hangman.
There is still extant a curious petition presented to the Treasury by Ralph Griffith, Esq., high sheriff of Flintshire,
which sets forth that the petitioner had been at great expense by sending clerks and agents to Liverpool and Shrewsbury to hire an executioner.
The man to be hanged belonged to Wales, and no Welshman would do the job.
Traveling expenses of these agents cost £15, and another £10 were spent in the hire of a Shropshire man,
who deserted, and was pursued, but without success.
Another man was hired, himself a convict, whose fees for self and wife were twelve guineas.
Then came the cost of the gallows,