Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1888-12-31
WHEN YOUR HEADS CUT OFF.
The Actual Sensation Which Man Suffers
When Decapitated-A Strange Story
From Vienna
Second Paper in Pail Mall Gazette.

Second Paper in Pail Mall Gazette.
In the second part of this interesting
volume which treats of the decapitatiOn
of human beings, DR.. Loye says: "What
passes in the head of decapitated human
being? Is there any fact in the oft-re-
peated story that the head lives for some
moments after it has been separated
from the body, and i'll connection with
this belief DR.. Loye quotes terrible sto-
~ told by NJ. Petitgand about an Anam-
tie who was beheaded by the sword in
1875 at Saigon.
The place of execution was the Plain of
the Tombs, a vast sandy tract serving as
cemetery to the Anamites and the Chi
nese. Four Anamite pirates, taken with
their arms in their hands, were to be be-
headed. The chief of the band, 81 man
i'll the prime of life-energetic, muscular
brave, without Boosting, and firm to the
very last, had attracted my special at
ton, and decided to make my observa-
tiOns on him only.
His head fell down at the distance of
about yard and quarter from where I
stood. 1t did not roll in the usual way
but stood with the surface of the wound
resting on the sand-a position by which
the hemorrhage was accidentally reduced
to a minimum. At this moment l was
terror-struck at seeing the eyes of the
doomed man fixed frankly on my
eyes. Not daring to believe in Il
conscious manifestation, 1 went quickly
to one side of the head lying at
my feet, and 1 found that the eyes
followed me. Then l returned to my
first position; still the eyes went with me
for q short distance, and then quilted me
quite suddenly. The face expressed at
that moment q conscious agony, the
agony of person in a state of acute
asphyxia. The mouth opened violently
as if to take i'll breath of air, and the
head, thrown off its equilibrium by the
motion, rolled over. This contraction of
the maEillary muscles was the last sign of
life. Since the moment of decapitation
from fifteen to twenty seconds had
passed.
As to his own experiences of the gull
lotine, DR.. Loye gives q detailed and
very interesting account of an execution
which took place three years ago at
Troyes, and at which he was present:
"They arrived in front of the guIllo-
tine, the assistants threw the patient
down and his head was fastened. When
the upper part of the boards between
which the man lay was fastened it ap-
peared to us as if he were already be-
headed Alas! 1 shall not soon forget
the man 8 face, 1t was turned down.
ward to the box into which his head
would fall. He looked at this box with
an expression of fear and terror such as
have never seen on any other face.
cat last the knife came down. We
IL E,lI - - .l-l. -
slacken its speed as it neared the neck of
the criminal; we saw the head cut inch
by inch from before the board, the face
being drawn into terrible grimace and
making in its fall kind of bow. All
this seemed to last an eternity. i dozen
times was on the point of calling out to
the executioner to make haste and shsst-
en- our own and the patient 5 agosF %
1 looked at my watch and it appeaAd.
that only fifteen seconds had passed&fnce5
the condemned man arrived u,tf9r the
guillotine. During these fifteeHeFseconaEE
/ had seen every detail of the s4Xecutisa@
had seen the slow descent of the knife,
which falls in the third of a second and
had seen the head slowly severed from
the body.
DR.. Loye also relates the following
strange story, taken from the archives of
the Austrian police Office, and relating to
an execution said to have taken place in
Vienna in 1880: A well known bandit
named Schavenburg was caught, to-
gether with four of his associates, and
they were all condemned to death. They
were already on their knees, ready to
submit to their fate, when Schavepburg
addressed the judge, asking that his four
companions might be ranged in single
file in front of him, at distance of eight
feet from each other. ''If,'' he said,
f'after l am beheaded, I get up
and walk up to the first of my
comrades, will you pardon hin?" The
judge thought he was pretty safe in COM
plying with the request. ''But if walk
up to the second, the third and the
fourth, will you pardon those also?'
The judge replied that he would obtain