The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-10 00:00:00

PETTED MURDERERS.

In referring to the proceedings preliminary to
the execution at Bedford of Joseph Castle, for the
murder of hiS wife, the Hertford Mercury says .
We publish the details for the purpose of entering
our protest against the treatment which this pro-
foundly egotistical murderer experienced at the
hands of those in whose custody he was placed. It
is long since we have read anything so thoroughly
disgusting as the record of the daily life of this
petted inmate of a condemned cell. We have always
been opponents of the punishment of death, on the
ground that it is unauthorised, brutal, brutalising,
useless ; but if we had ever looked with favour on
the gallows as a social defence or a moral teacher,
our faith in its efficacy would have been shattered
by the arguments which are presented in the treat-
ment of Castle. Here was a man convicted of the
murder of his wife under circumstances of extreme
atrocity. The crime was not the result of sudden
passion ; the murdered woman was not struck down
by an angry blow, which did injury beyorpl the in-
len t of him who delivered it, nor was the crime re-
gretted. The murder was deliberate, premeditated ;
and from the time of its commission to the last mo-
ment of life the law allowed him the murderer had
no thought except for himself. While he had yet days
to live, he was only intent on what he should eat
and drink, and selfishly and morosely sensitive if
the pleasures his sensual appetite demanded were
not furnished on the instant, and without objection.
Even when his sands were nearly run out, and
while the hammer was yet ringing upon the bolts '
of the gallows, he was solicitous only about himself.
He had no regrets, and experienced no repentance,
so far as the report discloses. For his wife, sleep-
ing the sleep of death in the bloody shroud he had
wrought for her with guilty hands, he had no sor-
row. She seems rarely to have occurred to his mind ;
and the heinousness of his guilt appears to have been
wholly unfelt. He grew restless towards the
last, but gave utterance to the language of terror
rather than of grief and self-abasement. But this
phase passed away, and when the hour appointed
for the execution drew so near that the unexpired
minutes might be easily counted, and the decent
feeling of the officials suggested that the man who
was appointed to die should be aroused from his
slumbers to confront the awfulness of his position—
the murderer petitioned for a little more sleep,
which "he thought would ease his mind." It is
not for us to question that in his latest moments
better thoughts were given to him ; or that hope,
who never bars her golden gates, opened them to
him in his extremity—if perchance the self-seeking
roan, in the dread tumult of the death-hour, sought
peace through repentance. Our object is—without
repeating the recital which appears elsewhere—
to indicate the fact that throughout his imprison-
ment and after his condemnation, Castle was
brutally sensual, and selfishly indifferent to every-
thing except the gratification of his appetite, and
to his own personal danger; and that it was upon
this man the officials of the gaol lavished their
sympathy and regards in such a manner as to
make condemnation to death rather a thing to be
desired than avoided by that class of morbid
egotists which furnishes us with murderers and
suicides. It naturally suggests itself to one's mind
as most proper in the case of a murderer that, after
his condemnation, whether he be sentenced to be
hung or to be imprisoned, as little notice should
be taken of him as possible. He should receive the
prison allowance of food, and the visits of the
chaplain. For all else he had better be kept out
of sight and out of mind. It is utterly revolting
that a man convicted of the worst of crimes should
be feasted and petted till his mind is overwhelmed
with a sense of his own importance. There is no con-
ceivable reason why we should feel more interest in
the murderer than in the pickpocket, whom we re-
lentlessly consign to hard fare, the treadwhcel,
and forgetfulness—really nothing, except the fact
that he is doomed to die. That probably is the
explanation, and in itself constitutes a strong argu-
ment against a punishment which dcvelopes, even in
a gaoler, the kind of sympathy which boarding-
school girls used to feel for the villains of the sickly
romances they read. But while the penalty of death
remains, let us summon to our assistance enough of
common sense, if not of hardness, to carry the law
into effect with as much dignity and decency as is
possible under the circumstances. Let us cease to
fatten murderers for
the gallows as oxen for
market
the
and to conciliate their humours by giving them
option of roast fowl, or beef and plum pudding.
Justice should be stern, though not cruel; and she
makes one doubt whether she be not a counterfeit
when she unites the functions of the restaurateur
with those of the executioner. Certainly much
harm is done by the imprudent sympathy of her
ministers for those whom she has doomed to die the
death ; and perhaps the Beechwood tragedy, so
closely following on the heels of the disclosures of
the discipline observed in the county gaol at Bed-
ford, may to some extent have been caused by them.
To desperate men, foiled in their unlawful pursuits
and with the fear of a renewal of vulgar imprison-
ment before, them, the honours accorded to Castle,
and the observation concentrated upon him, may
have been too powerful a provocative to crime,
which being as heinous,
and to a similar
titling them to equal indulgence
might be regarded as en-
ovation.

M. Philip Taglioni, the author of many ballets
applauded by the Parisians, and father of the celebrated
danseuse, has recently, notwithstanding his advanced age
of 83, undergone the operation of couching for cataract.
On the third day after, on removing the bandages, the
patient had the happiness of again beholding the counte-
nance of his daughter,