The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-07-25 00:00:00


ware." Afterwards: "Good bye, shentlemens, who are
before me ;" and again—" May we meet again in the
other world." Then his voice sank away, and he said

Lao anti Crime.

nothing that could be distinguished, save such exres.
alone as, " Oh, oh !" " God help me!" and the like.
Payne remained profoundly silent, standing erect as a
spar, and towering above his companions. Harold was
also speechless, but his weeping ceased not. Then,
amidst the murmur of prayers from the priests, the
I sound of the flowing river, the song of the gentle
breeze, the twitter of the birds, the sword of the officer
flashed in the sunlight, the great beams guided by the
executioners were swung against the prop supporting
the platform, and four motionless bodies descended
aimultaneonsly, the ropes flying tent with a whirr and
a thud. Not a quiver was perceptible in the body of
Mrs. Barrett. Her neck wee broken instantly. A few
spasms stirred the limbs of Adzerodt. Harold was
strangled ; the perspiration dropped from his feet, and
his body for a few seconds twitched convulsively. But
Powell, a giant, died as a giant dies. As the drop fell
he gathered the enormous muscles of his breast, neck,
and shoulders into a lamp, and so his neck was not
broken. The knot slipped round to the back of his
head; his great chest worked itself up to his chin, his
knees were elevated until they well•nigh touched
the abdomen. His neck was seen to grow black, the
veins on his wrists and throat stood out like ropes, and
he writhed and twisted for several minutes. At last all
was still; the flesh had become clay; the four carcasses
hung motionless; the expiation was complete. In
twenty minutes the bodies were examined by the
Burgeons, and life was pronounced extinct. A soldier
sprang forward, without orders, and cut the cord which
sustained the corpse of Payne, and the body fell to the
ground with a heavy thump. The other bodies were
then mit down, placed in white pine coffins, deposited in
the pits digged 'before the execution and immediately
fronting the gallows, and into which the condemned had
looked from time to time while awaiting the final blow.
The dirt was thrown in, the soldiers were marched out,
the spectators were expelled, the prison doors were
shut, and the conspirators slept the lest sleep in the
same grave with their leader, Booth, who lies in the
Penitentiary court yard ; conspiracy, assassination,
trial, sentence, and execution—" all was over and
done."

FOKTHOOMING LEGAL CHANGIEL—IS is currently re-
ported in legal circles that changes are in oontemplation
which will place three or four judicial appointments at
the disposal of Lord Palmerston. Chief Baron Pollock,
it is said, will shortly retire, and Baron Martin, his
son-in-law, will follow as soon as his term of Berme is
completed. The two Chief Justices, Sir Alexander
Cockburn and Sir William Erle, are also, it is stated, to
be raised to the Peerage, in order to strengthen the
Courts of Appeal in the House of Lords and in the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

A POISONER'S CONFESSION.—The following is the ma,in
portion of the confession of Lindback, the Swedish
clergyman, who was reeently condemned to death for
murdering several of his parishioners by patting arsenic
into the communion wine:—" I comprehend the pastor's'
duty as a father's. I ordered notice to be given me
every Sunday by appointed persons of where any poor
sick persons was to be found, After such inquiries I
went round with,food and medicine, and became witness
of much misery and hopelessness. When one stands
beside an incurably sick and dreadfully.pained fellow-
creature, one wishes, with all his heart, that he might
be released from his heartrending misery. By those
hungry, cold incurablee in Silbodahl I have often stood
moved by the deepest pity, and thought; Were I in
such a miserable plight I would bless him who hastened
the end of my pain, and God would forgive that merciful
one.' With every renewed visit to these poor people I
was strengthened in this idea. I prepared separate wine
as help in trouble, when this, my misdirected charity,
should urge me to it. I thought also, what none can
deny,that very few human beings pass to the other world
in the course of nature—i.e., when the powers of soul
and body are worn out by age. Some external cause
occurs which God, though He does not advance it, yet
does not prevent, in virtue of the freedom He granted,
the understanding He gave. How many in the prime
of life, in there full vigour, are there own murderers,
involuntarily,yet through misuse of there understanding?
How many have fallen out of the hands of the most skilful
physicians into the grave? The patient's statement is mist
always properly comprehended (yet the statement
determines the prescription, and the prescription
determines life or death), without God's either helping
or hindering, and neither doctor nor patient is thought to
have soy share in the death. How many an illness,
which in the beginning might easily have been cured,
has, through delay in seeking help, precipitated its victim
into the grave? From these incontrovertible facto,
and the many such examples which I have partly heard
described, partly witnessed myself, I have come to the
conclusion and belief that science, as well as ignorance,
otter bears the most decisive part, and that pious faith
is often wrong in saying 'the hour had come.' I
therefore believed that the merciful God would not
condemn me if I shortened the sufferings of a miserable
fellow-creature. This action is certainly in outward
appearance against all law, but in reality it rests upon
grounds of compassion. My God, before whom I shall
finally answer, knows this, and with deep contrition I
feel myself worthy of the sore punishment of the civil
law, for the sinful compassion I exercised towards the
dead persons in the ease. Respecting Lysen, men will
likely reject my assertion of mercy and call it selfish-
ness in its grossest form, but those who know his
dreadful sufferings and our written agreements will
admit my motives of pity. My guilt is great ; my
enemies acted right in their earnest investigations. To
their consciences, however, I put the question, 'Was
it zeal in service, or zeal in persecution, which directed
your course?' Hate the world's demon, is a murderer,
and wants even the poor comfort of having meant well
by its crime. Who is most responsible—be who against
the law frees one from misery, or he who, under pro-
tection of the law, precipitates one into misery ?
God alone will judge! How I have sinned is confessed
before God and man; and now my persecutor, I pray
you be merciful as our Heavenly Father is! Let your
false imputations now cease, and spare my blameless
relatives the heartrending scream of that hate. You
have now enough—my crime confessed, my house des-
troyed, my grave opened. Farewell,farewell, Carlstadt!
That day I was otclainod your pastor I was ordained to
death. 0 God have mercy on me!

Adzerodt made a confession on the night before the
execution, in which he stated that Booth's latest scheme
was to lease a theatre at Richmond, and when the
President visited the city he was to be invited to attend.
Another plot, Adzerodt said, discussed in March last,
was to capture the President as he drove out to visit a
camp, spirit him away into Virginia, and thence further
South, and so gain great renown and secure as well a
general exchange of prisoners.

THE CONVICTIPIIITCHARD. The Dungee Courier
says : "Some facts have come to our knowledge cos•
fleeted with the mysterious burning of the servant in
his house in Berkeley-terrace, calculated to throw a
deeper shade of suspicion over the occurrence than
anything in the account of it contained in the narratives
of the calamity, It is quite true that the door of the
room where the servant was sleeping was locked, but it
is not quite so certain that it was locked from the
inside. The key was not in the lock, but was found by
Dr. Pritchard, in a room full of smoke, lying on the bed,
where the servant lay charred and lifeless. Nobody
saw the key until it was in the doctor's band, and how
he could have so readily found it in so unlikely a place,
amid the dense and almost suffocating amoke, remains
a mystery that, we fear, points to only one solution.
On another matter—via, the motive for the double
murder of which he has been found guilty—considerable
light is thrown by his relations with a wealthy heiress
in Glasgow. The young lady in question had some
£14,000 in her own right. Dr. Pritchard was on
visiting, and generally pretty familiar terms with the
heiress, upon whom, simple and unsuspecting to a
degree, to blame rests. Aware of her resources, the
doctor Bought a loan of some money. Before giving it
the young lady consulted a friend, who advised that the
money should not be lent. The advice was acted upon,
and the refusal broke up the correspondence. The
hiatus in the intercourse thus created rendered it
impossible for the prosecution to introduce this episode
into the trial; but, had matters all gone right, it is easy
to perceive what light it would have shad upon the one
point in the case on which no light fell in court, and no
light has yet fallen in his confession.

•
'
- . . - , . .
4.,,,

' plated a monumeatem mre perennial in the publication
of his papers, he had failed to couple his design with a
definite gift to any definite person for that purpose.
With respect to the various charities, some inquiry
would be necessary for the purpose of ascertaining, in
some instanoes, the precise institutions intended by the
testator.