Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-12-27

Oecap1tat1on.
 The term "capital punishment" !" meaning | fatal operation upon that most vital part of | the human frame, the head, is now no mis- 1 homer, but the time was when the death | penalty was by no means directed at the l head alone. Death by stoning was, in all | probability, the earliest method of punishing | crimes, the Jews and other oriental nations l being especially given to this form of su- l preme penalty. From the extremely com l prehensive code of capital offenses which ap- peared in the Mosaic code, it is to be con- cluded that a death by stoning was a very common occurrence, and that the 'young men of the congregation to whom was in- trusted the duties of executioner, must have become quite expert in their office. It is quite possible, however, that personal retail ation antedated punishment by the commu- nifty, and that the eye for eye, tooth for tooth and life for life doctrine was vigorously carried out. For the instantaneous dispatch of an offender the Jews used the sword, but stoning continued to be the set form of cap ital punishment up to the time of the Chris tiaa era. Then crucifixion took its place, a form of death penalty borrowed from the Latin conquerors.
 According to tradition, however, the As syrians were the inventors of this particu- larly unpleasant form of being kept in sus- pense, and it is a woman, Semiramis, who has the doubtful honor of being the first to employ it. The ordinary method of infict- ing it was by mailing the victim to cross, where he was left until dead. Occasionally, however, cheerful innovation was intro duced by setting the cross on fire before the victims death, or by letting wild beasts de- vour him in his defenseless position Both the torch and the jaws of the wild beasts l fangs were really merciful reliefs, for cases are on record in which the victim fingered | in agony for eighteen and twenty days. | Death by crucifixion was inflicted on women as we'll as on men, and such unspeakable | atrocities were practiced under the guise of | just punishment that the cross was abolished
 by Constantine the Great about A. D. 315. | DIFFERENT ROMAN METHODS.
 Though the Romans were greatly given to
 crucifying, it can scarcely be said that they
 had any one national form of capital punish
 ment. They acted largely after the mikado's
 plan of letting the punishment fit the crime
 Christians were burned, torn to pieces by
 beasts, drowned in quagmires and rivers and vivisected. Political offenders, on the other 1 hand, were thrown from the Tarpeian rock. | This was a lofty and precipitous promontory
 on one side of the Capitoline hill. Runaway
 slaves when recaptured were turned adrift | into the deserts or woods overrun by wild
 animals or else bound to rock and left to
 Starye. It was customary for a while in
 Rome to permit capital offenders to select
 the manner by which they would meet death
 and be allowed to inflict the penalty upon
 themselves. This custom also obtained in
 Greece, and when Socrates was condemned
 to death for spreading disbelief in the na-
 tional religion he chose to die by drinking
 hemlock.
 One of the most cruel and unusual of pun
 ishments was that which the Romans in the
 latter days of the republic meted out to
 those who murdered either of their pa
 rents. Luke Owen Pike, M. A., author of
 the History of Crime in England" ," in refer
 ring to this punishment, says:
 Not in the amphitheatre, not at the stake,
 not on the cross was the parricide to perish.
 A sack was to be his winding sheet; in that
 he was to be sewn up alive and venomons Scr
 pents with him. He was to be thrown into
 the sea, if the sea was near at hand, and ii
 not into a river, so that the heavens might be hidden from him while still alive, and the earth deny him grave when dead"
 Often, however, in addition to the vipers there were dog, a monkey and & rooster
 sewed up in the sack with the victim, who
 was naked. The sack was usually of leather
 The oriental nations have always been re msrkable for the ingenious cruelty of their death punishmentS, although it is doubtful whether they have been more cruel than the self styled highly civilized nations of the west. Death has come from slow strangula
 tion from rope, as was ill vogue ill China
 for instance, and at the same time from tho
 use of boiling oil, which was poured on the
 joints after they were dislocated; by mechan
 ical means, as ill France and Germany, iron faying, or stripping the skin off the body, a! was formerly done in England, and iron ~l Hafx yolor
 which great weights were placed, as was alst < in vogue in England at one time
 CRUELTY AIDED BY INGENUITY.
 9 Every method which human cruelty coulc 5 prompt and human ingenuity devise ha ' been resorted to at one time or other in an , cient medieval days, and among nations , protesting to be civilized, to administer tor
 ture and death. It Is true that Japanese of { lenders have been executed by the slow pas l sage of spear upward through their entrails s and that the Chinese criminals have beer gradually beheaded with a bamboo saw, bu at the same time that most barbarous form !. of inhicting the death penalty, the boiling il - a caldron, was 8 European invention.
 r. Decapitation ceased in England in 1745 s but it is still performed in France and som
 of the German states, in the first country b,
 the guillotine and in the second by the sword l the instrument employed in England havini been the broad ax Decapitation with tn [; sword is also capital punishment in China The two handed sword was in use il ? France before the guillotine was intro duced, while for great crimes the victin was broken on the wheel It appears t 2 have come first into use in Germany, wher :, it was employed as early as the Tent d century. Francis I, about 1895, introduce d it into France. It was employed for 8 tim :; also in England. The prisoner designed fo . death by this method was bound to an ir - strument rudely resembling wheel, his leg
 and arms being separated as far as possibl F. and attached to crossbars corresponding t spokes. As the wheel revolved the limbs of tn s victim were fractured by heavy blows fror l. a heavy iron rod delivered below the knee ? and elbows. Sometimes the rod was held d position mechanically, the limbs of th d prisoner, as he whirled on the wheel, comin 2 in contact with it. Usually, however, tn < rod was held in the hands of an executionel ., who administered the blows as rapidly as
 could wield it. In France the torture of tn 5, mode of punishment was lessened in man v cases by heavy blows being dealt on the hea a and chest of the victim, so as to shorten Tiff, D These blows were called coups de grace C