The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-04-23 00:00:00

The ASSASSINATION of the LATE CZAR.

EXECUTION OF THE PRISONERS.

The Correspondent of The Times, writing from St. Peters-
burg on the 15th, says :

This morning, at nine o'clock, the judgment of death
was executed upon the State criminals, Risakoff,
Jelaboff, Michailoff, Perofskaja, and Kibaichich.
The execution of the other female prisoner, Hellman,
has been "postponed in consequence of her being en-
ciente. Risakoff and Michailoff petitioned for mercy,
but their petition was disallowed on the ground that
no extenuating circumstances could be taken into con-
sideration in a case so heinous as the assassination of
the Czar.

The scaffold was a rough wooden structure painted
black, consisting of a high platform, upon which were
three posts each with a chain and manacles' and one
long horizontal beam, with iron rings for the ropes,
supported by two perpendicular posts. In front
was a low platform for the officials. The large
plain around is covered with snow and ice, melt-
ing in the warm sunshine. By eight o'clock many
thousand people had collected around the plain and
swarmed in the various streets leading to it. Some
nine or ten thousand troops kept them back and
formed two squares round the gallows; first the Cos-
sacks, with couched lances, and then detachments of
the Guard Infantry massed in deep columns, leaving
one side of the inner square open for the passage of
the condemned prisoners and their escorts.
The cortege was seen entering the 'eastern side of the
plain a few minutes before nine, having passed
through some of the principal streets on their way
from the Fortress. The condemned criminals were
seated high in the centre of two-wheeled platforms,
tightly strapped to iron rods, with their backs to the
horses, and having on their breasts large cards with
the woids Murderers of the Czar " in black and
white. Surrounding them was a strong escort of
Cossacks and Infantry, with drums and fifes playing
a lively tune, and preceded by mounted Gendarmes.
On the first of the black cars were bound Jelaboff
and Risakoff ; on the second, Kibaichich and
Michailoff, with Sophie Perofskaja between them.
They were dressed in the coarse black robe and caps
used only for criminals condemned to death, with their
arms pinioned to their sides. They all looked ghastly
pale, especially Risakoff, who more than once showsid
signs of failing strength. They appeared to be con-
versing with each other as they were driven up to the
scaffold. By the time the executioner, a strongly
built man of the peasant class, had adjusted five ropes
to the cross beam with the aid of an assistant and four
prisoners, in white sheepskin prison coats who had
volunteered far the work,

The cars were brought between the scaffold and the
low platform, on which now stood the various officials,
officers, Senators, the Procureur, Genera/ Baranoff
and the officers attached to him, and the members
of the Russian and foreign Press. The drums and
fifes ceased playing and the troops under General
Driesen commanding the 2nd. Division of the
Guard, shouldered arms. The men were unbound
and led up the steps on to the scaffold by the
executioner and his assistants. With the exception
of Risakoff, who seemed very feeble, they all
showed remarkable firmness and resignation. The
woman Perofskaja appeared the calmest of all, and it
was noticeable that she even retained a slight colour
in her cheeks to the last. All the five prisoners were
then placed in front of the three posts with their heads
bare, Perofskaja being in the middle, while the clerk
of the Senate read the sentences from the platform
below. The civilians uncovered and the officers saluted
during this formality. Five priests in purple caps then
mounted the scaffold and presented a Cross, which all
the prisoners reverently kissed, showing that all sense
of religion had not been obliterated by their subver-
sive theories and crimes. Many of the political crimi-
nals who have been executed during the last few years
have, as your readers are aware, persistently declined
the last consolations of their national Church. The pri-
soners were then allowed to kiss each other. A word
or two passed between them, but the beating of the
drums, which now began and lasted till the execu-
tion was finished, effectually drowned every other
sound. The prisoners were placed under the beam,
and each had his head covered with a white hood at-
tached to a kind of sack. Each one, beginning with
Kibaichich and ending with Risakoff, was led to the
top of a small stool with steps; the rope was then
drawn tight round one of the supporting beams, and
the culprit was left to strangle by the stool being
withdrawn from under him. All the prisoners re-
mained firm and imperturbable till the last moment.
Risakoff alone appeared to faint before the stool was
taken away.

The execution lasted altogether about twenty-five
minutes. The bodies remained hanging another twenty
minutes or half an hour, and were then let down into
five rough shells filled with shavings, and examined
by the doctors. They were then placed in two carts
and taken away, under an escort of
.Cossacks, to be
_ _ . _ .

ignominiously I:niried in a remote part of the sithurbs
of the city.
With the exception of an accident to one of the
ropes, which broke twice, the sad proceedings passed
off quietly, without difficulty, and were watched in
silence by quite 100,000 of the civil and military popu-
lation of the capital.

The St. Petersburgh Correspondent of the Standard
says :—" Some characteristic details are given as to
the manner in which the rest of the condemned pri-
soners passed their last day. Reesakoff asked for
three wax tapers, such as are carried in Church, a
copy:of the New Testament, and one of the small
consecrated loaves that are made and sold by the
monks. When not praying he smoked cigarettes, and
in the course of the day offered his services to thee
Government as a spy. Naturally enough he met with
a refusal, for he belonged only to an outside circle,
and could be of little use.

" Sheliaboff spent his time in writing page after
page about the trial, committing to paper what he was
not allowed to utter in his speech—a vain labour.
Peroffskaya wrote to her mother to waste no time or
trouble in assuaging the wrath of her father, for what
she had done he would never fm give.
"Keebaltchich, the maker of the bombs, and, in
some respects, the most remarkable figure amongst
the condemned, devoted his last hours to drawing up
a memoir on the subject of his specific discoveries,
which he addressed to the High Court of Justice. In
this document he avowed his desire that his name
should be immortalised, and he made a gift of his
inventions to the State, on condition that all profit
should go to the amelioration of the lot of the children
of political criminals."

In commenting upon the execution of the five pri-
soners, The Times remarks in a leader :

No reasonable man can question the justice of this retri-
bution. One of the assassins were taken in the act, and
his accomplices avowed their guilt and gloried in it.
There was no question at the trial of fine-drawn evi-
dence or of a biased Court, for the prisoners them-
selves furnished the evidence which sufficed for their
conviction, and they must have foreseen the conse-
quences of their complicity in a ruthless conspiracy. The
trial was an open one, and its proceedings were described by
independent witnesses. The suspicion, entertained in some
quarters, that the authorities might resort to measures of
violence for the purpose of extorting confession from the
prisoners was amply dispelled by the freedom of speech and
defence accorded to themin open court. It is clear,in fact,that
the agents of revolution in Russia possess the courage of their
convictions and of their purposes. When they plotted
the assassination of the Czar they took theirfives in their
hands, and when they were placed on their trial they openly
gloried in their crime. To criminals of such a type no
mercy could be shown by the laws of a civilized State. Their
lives were forfeit, and they have paid the just penalty of a
crime which has shocked the whole world.

As a matter of retributive justice, the execution of these
murderous conspirators is ratified by the conscience of
humanity. No recognition of the terrible social and poli-
tical discontents which prevail throughout society in Russia
and make Nihilism at once possible and formidable can
abate the horror and abomination felt by all men of ordinary
humanity at such a crime as that which was perpetrated on
the 13th of last mouth, or elicit the slightest compassion for
its authors. The conspirators had no mercy, and they sought
none when their turn came. They plotted and accomplished
a foul murder, and they have suffered a penalty just, neces-
sary, and inevitable. -They have suffered, not because they
were Nihilists, but because they were murderers, and because
the law punishes murder with death. But it is very much to
be feared that their punishment leaves Nihilism and leaves
the Russian Government in relation to it just where they
were before. The punishment of an overt crime will hardly
check, and will certainly not exterminate, a secret, deter-
named, and widespread conspiracy. . . .