Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1883-09-12

| MARwOoD DEAD William Marwood
the famous English execuliuner, died "A,
Horncaslle, Tuesday, aged g. He wa
boz n in Gouleehy, England, few mile!
flom HorncasIe. From his youth he wa.
an ardent reader, and some years ago WA,
a Wesleyan preacher. He was looked ur
I" by the lower classes as ii man of learn.
ing; they called him the counsel" He
started small shoe shop in Horncastlr
Line lnshlre, England, adj lining III,
churcbyard HIS neighborhool was known
as the "Hangman Corner" He was
soon placed in etfigy in Nine. Tuss.uj s
wax exhibition. owing 10 the notorety he
had gained. His appearance was quite
at variance with his profession. He was
in stature about five feet eight inches
always dressed well and looked to be a
"e.l-to. do tradesman. H. had dark, rest
less eyes ard beetling brow, a high and
expansive forehead. In his career h,
hanged over 100 persons, among them
| four women.
The first execution he assisted at was
that OF one Mr. Horny, who had killed his
wife. One of his jobs was the turning
OH OF four men at once-four sailors at
London for murder on the high seas He
had charge of all the executions in Dublin
of the men implicated in the Phanix Park
murders.
Marwood. in giving his opinion on
banging. claimed for his system supe
riority over any other in the known
world. He asserted that the executions
which he performed were carried out as
quickly as flash of lightning, and alto
gether without pain 10 the condemned.
The culprit, he said, rarely as much as
raised finger; nor was there, save in n
very uncommon case, the least auivering
of the body. He considered his system .
10 be vastly superior to the guillotine, as
by the latter method of death there was
considerable motion of the corpse after
decapitation. BY his SYSTEM" we are
told, the neck is quickly dislocated, the
spinal cord is broken, and the rope is so
adjusted around the neck that the fall
tightens the cord, the air pipes are thus
closed. the action of the lungs ceases and
the apoplexy is produced, SO that the vic
tim is quite insensible. 'and, in fact,
death ls always instantaneous.
The hangman in England gets no kind
of sympathy from the community at large.
The Sansons in France we're hereditary
headsmen. Generation after generation
they piled their terrible calling, ntermar-
rying with the families of provincial exc
cutioners, until at last they formed a sort
of guild, to which the prescription of age
had impaired something akin to respecIa
blity. Similarly in Germany and Hol.
land the executioner's vocation was con-
tinued from father to son; and vocation
it strictly was, since the executioner's
heir was literally born lin the CRIMSON
If not sin the purple" and found his
black patrimony in the axe, the visor and
the block bequeathed to him by his "sire"
In Italy, Spain and Russia executioners
were very often criminals who had been
absolved from cordign punishment on the
condition that they should devote the
remainder of their lives to taking away in
cold blood the lives of tho wretcned
doomed by law to death. In England,
however, the hangman has always been a
free agent,and of his own tree will adopted
his horrible craft.
The selection of their odious office by
the hangmen of England has always been
a matter of deliberate choice, and, with
the exception of the early eighteenth cen
tu,y. Jack Ketch-not by any means the
Dennis in Dickens "Barnaby Rulge,'
who was so unfortunate as to get himself
hanged at Tyhurn for robbery-most of
the London hangnen whose names have
come down to our times have exercised
during long course of years their grim
functions, and have died at ripe old age
without in any way m ,nfesting their
dislike of "a trade which the majority OF
mankind regard as utterly abhorrent and
deteslable.