Wisconsin herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1846-1849, 1846-04-25
found guilty, punished; ard there is an

GDu.
But criminal under sentence of
death, or in great peril of death upon
the scaffold, becomes, Immediately, the
town talk; the great subject; the nero
of the time. The demeanor IN his
latter moments, of Sir Thomas More
one Of the wisest and most virtuous of
men-was never the theme of more
expressing interest than that of Hooker,
TaweU. Grcenacre, or Courvoisier-
The smallest circumstance in the be-
havior of these, or any similar wretch
e., is noted down and published as a
precious fact. And read too-exten-
sively and generally read-even by
hundreds and thousands of people who
object to the publication of such de-
tails, and are disguised by them. The
horrible fascination surrounding the
punishment, and every thing connected
with it, is too strong for resistance; and
when ain attempt is made in this or that
Jail las it has been sometimes made of
late,) to keep such circumstances from
transporting, by excluding every class of
strangers, it is only formal admission
of the existence of this fascination, and
of the impossibility Of otherwise with
standing it.
Is it contended that the fascination
may surrounded the crime, and not the
punishment !? Let us consider whether
other crimes, which have now no sort
of fascination for the general public,
had or had not precisely the gross kind
of interest which now attaches to Muir
der alone, when they were visited with
the same penalty. Was Forgery in
teresting when Forgers were hanged ?
and is it less interesting now, when they
are transported for life Compare the
case Of DR.. Dodd, or Fauntleroy, or
Rev. Peter Fem. or Montgomery, or
Hunton, or any other generally known,
with that of the Exchequer Bill for
gerry in later times, which, with every
attendant circumstance but death, or
danger of death, to give it a false at
traction, soon dwindled down into a
mere item in Sessions Calendar
Coming, when the coiner was dragged
las have seen one) on hurdle to the
place of execution or Burglary, or
Highway Robbery-did these crimes
ever wear an aspect of adventure and
mystery, and did the perpetrators of
them ever become the town talk, when
their offences were visited with death
Now, they are mean, degraded, miser-
able criminals; and nothing more.
That the publication Of these New
gate court-circulars to which ! have
alluded, is injurious to society there can
be no doubt Apart from their newt
able association with revolving details,
revived again and again. of bloodshed
and murder (most Objectionable as
familiarized peoples minds with the
contemplation of such horrors,) is it
manifest that anything which tends to
awaken false interest in great villains,
and to invest their greatest villaiaies
and lightest actions, with = terrible at
traction, must be vicious and bad, and
cannot be Wholesome reading. But it
is neither reasonable to charge their
publication on the newspapers, or the
cleaners for the newspapers. They
are published because they are read
and sought for. They are read and
sought for, not because society has
causclessly entered into a monstrous
and unnatural league on this theme
(which it would be absurd TO suppose,)
but because it is in the secret nature of
those Of whom society is made up, to
have dark and dreadful interest in the
punishment at issue.
Whether public executions produce
any good impression on their habituai
witnesses, or whether they are calcu-
lated TO produce any good impression
on the class of persons most likely to
be attracted to them, is question, by
this time, pretty well decided. | was
present, myself, at the execution OF
Courroisier. | was, purposeIy, on the
spot, from midnight of the night before;
and was near witness of the whole
process of the building Of the scaHold,
the gathering of the crowd, the gradual
swelling of the concOurse with the
coming on of day, the hanging Of the
man, the cutting of the body down,
and the removing of it into the prison.
From the moment of my arrival, when
there were but a few score Of boys in
the street, and those all young thieves,
all clustered together behind the bar
rier nearest to The drop-down to the
time when / saw the body with IFS
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