The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-01-01
Calcraft, the Hangman.

The noted executioner, Calcraft, who
for 46 years held the office of hangman
in England, is dead. There is q stream
In the suburbs of London, known to
haunting clerks and holiday-making
school boys as the River Lee, where
cockney youths take their aquatic diver
4 sion on Saturday afternoons during the
summer months. On the days when the
river was deserted, lean, pensive, and
clerical person would frequent the banks,
a book in one hand, fishingrod in the
other. 1t was Calcraft, the hangman.
Where he came from, who he was, why
he had chosen his particular profession,
nobody ever knew. Legend had it that
he was a convict who had been pardoned
on the condition that he would adopt
the executioner's profession. Others
averred that he had embraced it through
/ a certain morbid love of death. Calcraft
never betrayed his secret, and all biogra
phies of the man are fictitious. This
alone is certain, that he has executed,
with pupctuality and dispatch, some of
the most noted criminals in the
country. He entered the business
/ in 1883, about 80 years after the
/ Tyburn tree had been removed, and
the gallows was set up almost every
Monday morning in the narrow passage
between Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill,
known as the Old Bailey. He first
came into public notoriety at the hang
ing of James Greenacre, in 1887. This
man had murdered Hannah Brown-a
woman to whom he had been engaged
! to be married and then had cut the
body into pieces, and hidden portions of
it in various parts of London - the
trunk being placed under a sack, and
concealed behind some flagstones, near
the Pineapple toll-bar, in Edgeware
Road He confessed that Hannah
Brown had deceived him by pretending
to have some property, and that one
night she called at his lodgings and
laughed at her trick. In rage he
struck her with silk roller, and, the
blow proving mortal, he formed the
resolution of cutting up and concealing
the body. No criminal case since the
trial of Dr. Dodd had stirred so much
excitement in London. On the night of
Greenacre's execution hundreds of per-
sons slept on the steps of the prison and
of st. Sepulchre's Church, and boys re-
manned all night clinging to the lamp
posts. The crowds in the streets whiled
away the night in ribald jokes and
drunken brawls. Greenacre, when he
passed to the gallows, was totally I'M
manned He could not articulate the
responses to the Ordinary, and had to
be supported or he would have fallen.
Greenacre's execution brought fame
to Calcraft. He did not rest long on
his laureis.-- Three years later he was
called to carry out the sentence of the
law on Francois Benjamin Courvoisier,
a Swiss valet, found guilty of the muir
der of his master, Lord William Russell.
Lord William, who was in his sd year,
lived alone in his house in Norfolk
Street, Park Lane, with his establish
ment of two maids and of Courvoisier,
the body-servant. On the morning of
the murder the housemaid found his
study in disorder, and entering his bed
room with Courvoisier, saw that his
head was nearly severed from his body.
Two bank-notes, supposed to have been
taken from Lord Williams body, were
found behind the skirting-bOard of the
buffers pantry. Those notes convicted !
Courvoisier. He was hanged on July |
6, 1910. Upward of 10000 people were
present at the scene. Most of them |
waited all night at the debtors door of !
the Old Bailey. High fees were paid .
for house-roofs, and the windows were |
crowded. As the bell began to toll at S |
O'Clock the multitude uncovered, and at |
two minutes past The hour Courvoisier !
assembled the steps leading to the drop, |
followed by the EXecutioner and Ordi- |
nary of the prison. He died without Il |
struggle. The ease of his death was
universally attributed to Calcraft's skill.
A new genius bad arisen in the business. /
Jack Ketch of Tyburn, was outdOne.
For twenty-four years Calcraft contin
ued to win the applause of press and
public. Not combining his exertions to
Newgate, he travelled in the wake of the |
Judges round their circuit. He never
bungled. He has executed seven pirates |
together, and performed his work with /
entire satisfaction. He hanged three
Fenians at Manchester, and showed eX-
treme contempt for the anonymous
threats that were made made against his
life In 1864 he hanged Franz Mueller,
the young German tailor who, to pay
his passage to America, murdered MIR.
Briggs in a carriage on the North Lon
don Railway. On the night that Mueller
died there was disgraceful scene around
Newgate. The house was filled with
spectators, who had paid more than
couple of guineas apiece for place, and
who spent the night playing at cards
and singing choruses. When Mueller
set foot on the scaffold, he looked up at
the chains with perfect self-possession.
Then he murmured confession TO the
attendant clergyman, and the drop fell
instantly. These were the three great
criminals of Calcraft's career: Green
ere, Courvoisier and Mueller. In 1868
public executions were abolished, and
the hangman's glory was departed. The
gallows was henceforth erected in the
of Newgate, and only silence
reigned on the spot which had seen the
OF, Gov. Wall, who flogged
man to death: of Bellingham, Mr.. Per-
eiFal's assassin; of the Cato-street con-
spirators, whose heads were cut off on
the scaffold after they were hanged; of
the banker; and of Bishops
and Williams, the /" burkers." Calcraft
soon retired from business which was
rapidly falling in popular esteem, and
his lieutenant, succeeded him.
~ 7. Herald.
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