The Express.
London, England, 1853-11-23 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR Or THE DAILY NEWS.

SlN—The great practical sermon put forth by
the Old Bailey Moralist—the hangman—and re-
ported
in the Daily News of yesterday, attracted
a large congregation; although, let it be noted
with satisfaction, not so numerous an assemblage
as usual. Yet, so ardent was the desire of some
among the crowd to attend his solemn public warn-
ing, that, as long ago as the night of Sunday week,
groups of eager ex pectants ranged themselves round
the site of his awful pulpit, in order to secure the
best places within seeing and hearing distance on
the morrow; and, so bitter was their disappointment
when the poetponemelit of the rite became
known, that some of them vented it in the
hisses and groans with which they would have
greeted a manager who had cheated them of an ex-
pected performance. Last Monday, however, faith
was kept. Barriers were erected to keep iu cheek
the irrepressible enthusiasm of those pupils of the
great moral teacher who never min • single lesson
that it may be his duty from time to time to give.
The Old Bailey harvest was again reaped by the
letters of windows "commanding a good view;" by
vendors of eatables and drinkables, whose minion it
is to recruit exhausted yearners after the good that is
dropped—like crumbs from the rich man's table—at
the foot of the gallows ; by pickpockets, on whom
the example of a fellow-creature strangled out of
life is so extremely powerful that it incites them to
more plunder; and by numerous other dependents
on the finisher of the law, who spring up around the
gallows-tree in a single night like a rank and
hideous fungus.
The salutary dread struck—according to the few
lingering advocates fur the hangman that still exist
—into the souls of the dangerous classes by public
executions is well illustrated in the accounts of that
which took place in the Old Bailey on Monday, and
in the police reports printed in the journals of
yesterday. The wretched criminal who passed from
the world for having murdered his wife would,
if there be anything in the logic of the hang-
man's friends, occasion the crime for which he was
executed to be greatly decreased. It is their argu-
ment that the terror of his fate would arrest the
action of brutal passions, and make men dread a
similar fate if led away far enough to deserve
it. But on the very page in which the terrible
doom is recorded we find at least one . instance
in which, instead of a deterrent, the fate of the cri-
minal appears as an exciting cause. A tailor, amidst
a paroxysm of fiendish rage, declared to his wife that
he would be hung for murdering her, as the man that
was sentenced to be hung on that morning would be
hung; arid proceeded to cut open the woman's skull
with his sleeve-board, adding that he had already
murdered one wife, and that his present victim should
be murdered next. So far from the sufferings of his
predecessor in a similar crime having a salutary
effect upon him, it manifestly formed a part of his in-
citement. The bravado and eclat spurred him on, as
hundreds of others have been prompted, to crime.
It is a psychological fact, however difficult
to reason upon or to account for, that the retribution
for a particular crime upon any celebrated criminal,
operates on bad and passionate natures as incentivn
to the same crime. We have proof of this in
the results of the recent measure for the protection
of women : the more punishments which are ad-
ministered for assaults upon them, the more candi-
dates for punishment are brought forward. In nearly
every case it comes out in evidence that the culprit
prefaces his brutality by some such exclamation as
" Here goes for six months." The glory of braving
that duration of imprisonment and hard labour
exalts the imagination of a coarse-minded ruffian,
and offers a sort of pre-justification for any excesses
he may commit. The number of these eases which
has been brought forward since the passing of the act
referred to, the refinements of cruelty, the varieties
of brute force, the stolid indifference both to the
sufferings inflicted and to the legal consequences of
inflicting them, are simply appalling. It is a kind of
tradition in France that Englishmen drag their
wives, with halters round their necks, to Smithfield,
and sell them there ; but this is a harmless pleasan-
try compared with the revolting reality as displayed
in the treatment of wives which has been recently
brought to light. It is vain to assert that the new
law has ferretted out such cases, and that men who
formerly ill-used their wives in secret are now more
generally exposed and prosecuted ; women, in giving
their husbands in charge, do not estimate the amount
of punishment they are handing them over to-
Indeed, in most cases, they do not give the offenders
in charge to the authorities; but, the brutality has
been so gran, that the police have been attracted by
it, and, catching the offenders in the fact, have
dragged them off without any charge being made.
Punishment, as an example to others, appears to
fail utterly. On the very day after the execution of
Mown for murdering his wife, we find details of two
of the most brutal eves of wile-beating that have
yet appeared io the police court reports. A third
case is highly illustrative of the moral influence exer-
cised by the public scaffold. One art the spectators
was standing in fruut of it, whet', to quote the'
evidence :

1 felt something at my pocket, and then missed my
watch. The condemned moan feu jag rominy on the
scaffold; and, before he was hung, I the prisoner
moviug from my side. 1 followed him ; hut, perceiving
um behind vim, he ran up Clement's lun-yard in the Old
Bailey, and thtew himself on some ma tin,e. The watch
produced by the officer is mine. It is tngraved with my
own name.