Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1882-06-03
His Last LumD.

The execution of Sandy Matthews
yesterday. few minutes after clock
pm, was cleverly done. Sandy spoke
to the crowd twenty-five minutes in
regular backwoods darky preacher
style, jesticulating, swinging his arms,
stepping back and forth, and rolling
out his words in that sing-sOng
fashion peculiar to the illiterate
colored man when exhorting his
brethren in the brush. At the end of
his harangue Sandy stepped upon the
trap door at the edge of the scsffold,
held on one side by iron hinges and on |
the other by a small wooden pin In
beam. While in the act of repeating |
the word Farewell Farewell /" sev
eral times, the pin was pulled. Sandy
dropped -four feet, aud rebounded
perhaps foot, causing tn
kaot Of the rope under bis
right ear to slip a little until
it settled with the strain upon it,
against the protuberance behind the
ear at the base of the brain, and he
died without a struggle, his feet about
four feet from the ground. After
hanging until dead his body was taken
down, laid in a coffin, conveyed under
the supervision of Father Aloysius, Of
the franciscan Brotherhood and
the Dominican Sisterhood, to
st. Mary's church, and was later in
tered in the consecrated grounds Of
Calvary Cemetery. Sandy had re-
pented and died in the faith. In his
earlier life Sandy was for ten years a
Baptist missionary, but he fell from
grace, became hog thief and finally
a murderer. After he had committed
the crime for which he suffered death
yesterday, and while residing in this
city, a few weeks previous to his
arrest on the charge of murder, he
fell into the fangs of the law for
whipping his wife. Upon a promise
to leave the city and emigrate to
Arkansaw Sandy was let off. Sndy's
miserable exit from the world in the
presence of from three to FIVE thousand
people was an event to be remembered.
Hanging entertainments are like mar
riages-very similar to one another, and
they never fail to draw. They afford
a few interesting variations as to de-
tails and in Matthew's case the chief
difference was that he died eour-
ageously, and begging. On his way to
the scafold he stopped at the front
gate of the jail a minute or so and
begged the crowd for money to give to
his wife, and all through the earlier
hours of the day he let no opportuni-
ty slip to gather in few dimes for the
benefit Of the expectant widow. Mat
thews had champagne, choice cigars,
fresh apples and other delicacies dur
ing the forenoon, and he seemed to
relish the good things supplied him
by Sheriff Athy. He also wore a nice
suit of clothes furnished by the same of
fetal and as bespoke to the people from
the scaffold he was not bad locking
darky, however bad he had been in bis
conduct in the past. The crime for
which be suffered was as black and
inhuman as has ever been COM
mitted even by savages, though
it was no worse than that perpetrsted
by his late luckier companion, Bill
Rivers. The latter sharpened his
butcher knife previous to using it as a
weapon of slaughter, and while driv-
ing it seventeen times through the
warm flesh Of his victim exhibited no
feelings of mercy, though her dying
shrieks and screams even now ring on
the ears of people who happened to be
near and overhear them. Like dead
Indian, Matthews is good darky now,
Rivers, however, may possibly be with
us again some day therefore remarks
concerning his reputation had, per-
haps, better be postponed.