The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1879-01-12
Our Bungling Executions-The Need
of u Reform.

performed Of all in this country is that of
the executioner. Public servants of indif-
ferent quality are common enough in every
sphere, and from the highest to the lowest
every function of public life exhibits
In some degree the slovenly indifference of
the functionary to all that nicely and excel
lence which is to be observed where men
take some pride in what they do, where
their enthusiasm is enlisted, where the
artistic sentiments of thoroughness and
propriety govern the workmans thoughts.
In the distinguished duties of the hang
man this slovenliness is more glaring than
in many other functions, because while
there is hardly man in the United States
who can hang another with artistic elegance
and completeness, there is certainly not
one who is not a competent Judge whether
a man has or has not been well hanged.
One may be an exceedingly poor Presi-
dent and the people never know it, especi-
ally if he is possessed of trickery enough
to close the mouths of the party that might
clamor against him, and to open enor-
mously that of the party disposed to chaunt
his praises. Sometimes we have had, in
this metropolis, exceedingly good Mayors,
and sometimes very poor ones, and the
people have hurrahed over the achieve
ments Of the poor ones and decried the
worthlessness of the others. One may be
very poor parson, as Talmage is said to
be, and even his own congregation will not
discover it, Perhaps it is possible, in sober
city like this, for man to be even q poor
concocter of mixed drinks and the public
not find it out if he fourishes his right
hand with grace and style and CRATES his
nutmeg impressively. There are four or
five thousand Chinese laundrymen in this
city, and the public has not yet discovered
that the Chinaman can neither wash nor
iron, and is incapable of comprehending
the true significance of the term clean shirt.
In all these functions, more or less familiar
to everybody, the public seems to admit
that it is an incapable judge, and its ver-
diets are uncertain but the momen. man
is poor hangman everybody finds it out,
and the clamor of indignation is raised
against him as one whose incapacity ruins
the public enjoyment of an important
judicial festivity
Nobody has ever more grievously disap-
pointed the expectations of confiding pub
lie than the hangman, Calhoun, at Camden
on Friday. Hunter, We are sure, would, at
any moment Of his life, have hanged Calhoun
with far more grace, dignity and thorough
ness than he was hanged by Calhoun; and,
indeed, we cannot remember q murderer
who would not have done on the Sheriff in
a superior style the Office that it Glanced to
be the fortune of the Sheriff to do on him.
One of these days, when we determine to
reform this thing, it may be worth our
while to consider whether the ends of
justice would not beas completely answered
and the requirements of good taste more
fully met if we should change the law so
as to make it the duty of a man who has
been found guilty of murder to hang the
Sheriff of the county, rather than Of the
Sheriff Of the county to hang him; for
every murderer with any human sympathy
in him, compelled to do this service with
the present apparatus, will suffer far more
at doing it on another than if it is done on
him. But it was precisely on this point of
improved apparatus that we had some
hopes of the mechanical skill of the Cam
den hangman. His scheme for hanging
Hunter without the ordinary gallows ma.
chinery was represented in the HERALD on
Thursday, and it seemed to augur result
different from that we were compelled to
record.
But the Camden official, though distin-
guished instance of bad hangman, per-
haps the worst in the United States, is not
the only bad one we have got, for there is
one in every county in the country almost.
Effective and instantaneous infection of
death by the rope is so rare as to be almost
unknown, while the record Of deaths inflicted
in this way that are overcharged with cruel
and barbarous details due to unskilfulness
is spread before the public every day. On
the same day on which the culprit at Cam
den was drawn up on the pulleys by the
superior weight of the men at the other end
of the rope another wretch in Canada,
fighting for his life, was able to seize with
his hands the fatal moose and thus painfully
extend the awful infection of death on the
gallows. Not less than five hundred men
are hanged every year in this country, and
perhaps great many more; and that a duty
SO often performed should be always done
so badly implies that the system is radi-
cally defective, or that it requires more
skill and intelligence to do it well than is
found in the Jack Ketch of the period.
Hanging, however, when well done,
answers to the theory, and the theory is
good. Properly hanged men have the
spinal marrow cut off at the base Of the
brain. They are decapitated essentially.
but without the bloody demonstration of
the guillotine. But they are not we'll
hanged by the present apparatus, because
it is departure from the original and cor
rect method.