Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-01-20

wide berth as though it was an object TO
be best admired from affair
One might have noticed, however, that
amongst the people who fingered in the
immediate vicinity of what used to be
called the fatal tree was a knot of some
eight or ten persons, whom the least OBJ
servant eye might have suspected were
present from motive that had bnt little
reference to curiosity. They were most
of them young men, with certain air OF
resolution in their manner; they con-
versed very earnestly; they might have
been observed TO measure the height of
the arm of the gibbet from the ground
the length of the rope, and the space
from where the moose would be when the
END of it had been coiled about the neck
to the sand beneath. Some time before
the arrival of the felon, woman of
slight figure, in deep mourning, her face
concealed by a veil, came to the stead
fast group of men, conyersed with them
for a few minutes, then broke away !,
sobbing passionately, and was
seen to walk hurriedly in
the direction of Sandwich 1t
was whispered amongst the crowd that
she was Jenny Bax, the murderer s
sweetheart; and several females who re-
cognized her as she walked away ex-
claimed that, for all her mourning and
wells, she could not but be an unfeeling
person to come and view the gibbet where
her sweetheart was to be sJrangled, even
if she had not made up her mind to wit
ness the whole scene from. behind one of
those sand hills she was skirting in such
hurry.
A little before IL o'clock, a murmur
ran through the crowd like the cry of a
3
shore. The procession was in viewl n
horse and cart, in which were seated
York, the malefaetor, the chaplain of
the jail exhorting him, and the hangman
sitting behind, with his legs over the
edge, fortifying his spirits with a sly
dram from time to time from a
fat bottle which he drew from his
pocket, for this was a country
pageant, with nothing but rocks, and
here and there farmyard labOrer, as
sightseers; no crowded progress, such as
that from Newgate to Tyburn, or New
castle jail to the town moor. On one
side of the cart walked the sheriff on the
other three constables, one of whom was
Budd, and n small detachment of helpers
after the pattern of the one-eyed man.
Jeremy York sat cold and silent, gray as
tobacco ash, habited i'll the clothes he
wore when taken; he held his eyes bent
downwards; his lips were compressed
into two bloOdless lines; he gave no heed
to the chaplain, who mumbled in his ear;
he had only spoken once since he had en-
tered the cart, and that was to say to the
ordinary: F'Sir, before God [ am in
hocent. - All the while he lay waiting
for the day of execution he had said no
more.
The cart rolled up to the gibbet, and
the cOnstables and helpers drove the
crowd into circle round it. 1t was
thought that York would make a speech,
but he held his peace, never looking up.
His arms were pinioned; the hangman
hitched the end of the rope round his
neck; the chaplain prayed earnestly and
deyoutly; the crowd held their breath,
and not a sound broke the dreadful still
ness saving the dreary sweep of the wind
over the sandhills and the seething and
kissing of the breakers rising and falling
upon the Single. The sheriff then gave
the signal; the driver who held the
horse IS head started the animal, the cart
rolled away, and left Jeremy York hang
ing.
But scarce had he swung to an erect
posture under the gibbet, when it was
observed that the hangman had not
allowed for his considerable stature; his
toes touched the ground; but ere the
crowd could well distinguish this, the
group of men whom the yelled woman in
black had conversed with gathered round
the suspended figure i'll such way as
partly to support it. The sheriff, con-
versing with the hangman, looked away;
no notice was taken of the action of these
people, for it was a common custom in
those days for friends of a malefactor to
gather about him after he had been
turned off to shore him up, and to do
their best to keep him from strangling
during the half-hOur in which he
dangIed. The crowd looked on; what
the group of men were trying to effect
they might have guessed; but whether
the criminal should be ultimately saved
or Immediately throttled was all the same
to the mob, as it was apparently to the
sheriff. 1t was an execution anyway;
this was the sight that the people of Deal
and Sandwich, and adjacent hamlets had
covered the sandhills to witness, and be
the issue of the spectacle what it would,
there was nothing to disappOint them in
the presentation of it.
AT the expiration of half an hour, time
was called by one of the men who crowded
round the motionless body: the sheriff
signed to the executioner, who, spring1ns
forward, severed the rope, and the body
fell into the outstretched arms of those
about it. A minute after, small cart,
containing a shell, was brought to the
gibbett, the body was placed in 1t, five
men of the group who had clustered
about the pendant form spTang into the
cart, and within a few moments the vehi-
Gle was being driven rapidly in the direc-
ton of Sandwich
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