The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1885-10-09
AN EXECUTION.

Tn, table ON which the criminal lies is
not plain board, Lus rises, ridge-like, in
the middle. Upon this ridge the murderer
lies. His neck and back are thu, somewhat
thrown up. He lies upon his face; his f,et
hang over the edge Of the table and are
bound,
The executioner turns lever In the side
of one Of the posts. The ponderous knife,
or cutter, suspended by cord, Is thus lib
Grated, and falls along the grooves upon the
condemned neck The head does not always
drop instantapeously, however, A few sec
ends alapse sometimes, long enough for the
bystanders to hear the cutting. An American
editor witnessed one Of these guillotins exc
cutions In Paris, In the shivering dawn of a
gray morning. He wrote that the cutter,
as il severed the doomel head, sounded like
"dull knife crunching through tough
meat" 1t Is sufficiently tremendous met
aphor.
This terrible ins. rumcnt OF executions was
not invented by the man whose name it
bears. He was merely the member of the
French constitutional assembly in 17S9 who
hrst proposed that this be made the mode Of
official execution. His name was taken up
and affixed to the machine in o satirical
song by a royalist newspaper Of the time
The name has chung TO it ever since. DR..
OF fact, a mode OF execution similar to this
has been known and used since before the
middle ages. 1t il supposed to bs Of oriental
origin and Persian invention. -#a
There In q third chapter In the dispa tchinP
of a criminal by public execution In France,
which cannot be very well illustrated After
the head falls into the basket the law re-
ouires that 1t and the body shall be put to-
eether and buried. That means . mock
burial. The form is gone through merely.
and the bodies are instantly returned TO the
Paris school Of medicine for experimental
purposes But the doctors are anxious to
get hold Of the bodies at the earliest possible
moment, 70 they will be as near TO life a.
possible. There is q good deal of hustling
about the burying 80 that the return to the
dissecting tables Of that medical school
takes place sometimes before the bodies are
cold. Such form Of law h very absurd. It
would be best to hand over the subjects
directly to the doctMG Queer stories are
told OF the medical experimentings Ths
heads are stuck upon the bodies ere yet they
are cold. and the whole II electrified into
CHASTITY semblancs OF lifa For years the
learned have been trying whether IL In not
possible really to bring dead man back to
life. Science, alasi can only learn the So
crets Of life from tho bodies Of tbs dead.
This last August TaIls WiIuosSoo bev0o
which was surprise even for her. There
Wss double execution
Two murderers in ous morning were
brought 20 the Placs Do u Rouquette, OUT
nde the prison OF tho Condemned, and gull
lotined In Paris II Is said that criminals
are kept In ignorance of the day and hour Of
execution till the moment itself arrives,
The exscution takes place between midnight
and daylight.
The hole into which the condemned mans
head h fastened is called the lunetts or littr
moon A striking account Of the recent ex-
scutions Is given in The London Telegraph
| II shows that even tbs French guiliotsne
bungles quite ms much ~ our hangmans
rope. occasionally: Gnspard was tbs nrst
| of this felons led TO death TAN and msiscu-
lar. he walksi firmly betwesn two priesth
WHOSE ministrations he had rejected until
| tie arprs aca OF his term
His fac, was pale, and his features con-
/ tue sI convulsiveIv rs he neAred the gull
ioi1. u,re h. ssoopsi toward the prison
charlatn. tn, Abbe Flurs. aad embraced