New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1888-02-08
HOW ARD ON HANGING.
a Plea for the AboIisilment of the
ssoose and for Electrical Execu-


ssoose and for Electrical Execu-
tons.
From the n. Y. Ora phic.
q always gives m'man q push in
the throat with m thumb" said Mar
wood. 1T helps him wonderful"
Ten men in prison soon to be hang
ed, and a town full Of people soon to
DE flooded with extras, are brought
face to face with the question of capt.
tai punishment and how it can best
be accomplished. Recently in Cali
fornia an incisive rope nearly severed
the doomed mans head from his
struggling body. Within a compare
lively brief period the italian Cornat-
ii was carried to the scaffold by
main force, fighting, contesting,
screaming like wild beast, and bun
glingly choked to death. Ashort time
before that the ''privileged" spectators
OF an execution in the corridors of
Washington jail saw, but a. moment
after the fall, g. CHASTITY head roll one
way and q. disfgured body fall an
other.
We need public executioner. ~
AS long as our statute books de-
clare that death by hanging is the
punishment for murder it behooves
US as q sober minded, not to say O.
civilized community, to see that this,
like all things, be done decently and
IN order. A trades O. trade the
world around, and as with vessels
some go to honor and some to dis
honor, SO with men; all sorts and
conditions are needed to make asym-
metrical whole. Inexplicable as it
m ay be, the fact remains that GER
tain men in all times have been found
to whom it was q pleasure to WELD
the headsman's axe, TO apply the
torch to the martyrs faggots, to
draw the bow string, to turn the
button, to adjust the moose, to cut
the rope, to draw the bolt; yet in this
great country, 100000 of people,
with three score OF independent sover-
eighties, with hundreds OF cities where
criminals abound, where murders are
of daily occurrence and hangings are
common, there is absolutely no regu-
lated custom, still less any law, max
ing 1t the duty OF any specified indi.
vidual to personally conduct the aw-
full ceremonies of judicial killing.
Approaching death very rarely ter
rifles the victim.
have seen men shot in the chill
gray of morning. [ have seen them
hanged in patches and turned off soil
tary and alone. I have seen men
march through a crowd of New Jer-
sey toughs, eminently respectable |
dare say in the calm of domesticities,
but brutal in their bolsterousness,
and lnhuman in their insults and
jeers. as calm, as dignifed, as un-
rut11ed, nay more So than any bride
en- route to the altar; and from the day
when poor little Captain Gordon ex-
plated the crime of South street mer-
chants and Boston deacons as a
siave-trader in the city prison, down
to the dramatic taking off Of the An
archists in Chicago with the exception
OF terrified Italian in White Plains,
| have never seen a coward. Not one
OF them, white, black, men or women,
Indicate the faintest suggestion OF
fear during the walk to the place of
execution, while on the scatfold, or
after the dread cap concealed all that
Was human from the observing eye.
They arc all right.
1t is the executloner who is general
ly all wrong.
The two men who doomed before
the general public as executioners par
excellence were Marwood, the English
hangman, and Isaacs, who from time
to time has experimental in the
Tombs. / have Marwood's own word
for it that at the last moment. after
the cap is pulled over the face, under
pretence OF arranging the moose more
carefully, he presses with his thumb
quickly and with great force just be-
low the Adams apple, with the in
tent successful, as he claims, of depriv-
ing the condemned OF consciousness.
Whether that is desirable feature or
not | leave to hangmen. The ordinary
mind revolts from any personal aid
to glory, preferring to, leave all literal
killing to the appliances OF a physica
nature provided for that purpose.
Marwood was q voluptuary in his
calling, and in moments OF inebriety
found great pleasure in toying with
the necks and throats of his compan-
ions. On one occasion when an actor
we'll known and highly esteemed in
this city,Was on a grand tour through
the English provinces, on going to his
dressing room he found a party
OF convivialists, who had called to pay
him their respects. There was the
Sheriff, quite a dignitary abroad. 9TH
er officials and Marwood, the hang
man. Clad in the classic garb OF Ham
let, Prince Of Danes, the actor was a
picture OF manly beauty, and Mar
wood, who had been drinking freely,
placing his hands upon the actors
bust, said, "what superb neck you
have. How | would like to put the
rope about your throat" Conversa-