The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1890-07-02
HOW CRIMINALS DIE.
Eminent Frenchmen Say Killing by Flee
tricity Is Barbarous.

Eminent frenchmen Say Killing by Flee
tricity Is Barbarous.
From the London Telegraph.
Those who are in favor of he execution
of murderers condemned to death by
means of electricity, as being the quickest
and least painful method Of sending them
out Of the world, have been led to this
conclusion by motives of humanity which
do them the utmost credit. Strangely
enough, however, il is precisely on hui
manitarian considerations that NJ. Beau
quesne, the governor, and the Able
Faure, the chaplain of the Roquette Jail,
are opposed to such an innovation. II is TO
the Roquette that prisoners sentenced to
death are invariably transferred after their
condemnation by a jury sitting in the
Seine assize court, and none are more
competent than the governor and the
chaplain to pronounce an opinion OH the
subject, perhaps, monsieur de Paris" as
the chief executioner Is called, and even
then his views might be regarded as
based, i'm a certain measure, oil motives
of a personal character-for the man who
has gone about the country chopping off
heads with his g~uillotine could scarcely
be expected TO deliver a thoroughly inn
partial opinion.
We're he TO express a preference for the
electric system he might lay himself open
to the reproach that he was not quite as
skilful as he ought to be. The Able Faure,
who for the past five years-with o
single exception, that of Schumacher. wi o
as a Protestant received ghostly counsel
and advice from n pasteur of his reli-
gion-has accompanied TO the scafiold
all the criminals executed on the square
in front of the Roquette, expresses
the utmost horror Mt the idea of such n
change. The worthy ecclcsiastic says
that he has the utmost sympathy for all
scientific inventions, but he refuses to be-
lieve hat French Legislators will be so
cruel as to protract by preparations which
require a certain amount of time the suf-
ferings of ever murderers.
The Able Faure has attended during
their last moments upward of sixteen
criminals. n he says that scarcely two
seconds elapse from the time when. after
a farewell embrace. he gives up the pris-
n to the executioner TO that at which
the head of the murderer rolls on the
ground. He remarks Indignantly hat he
never can admit that men, however de-
based they may he, ought TO be placed
like common animals IN a glass apparatus
and struck dead with an electric spark.
This is opposed to every principle of
humanity. The chaplain of the Roquette
is, after every execution, in the
CHASTITY scene which he has just wit
messed. and he declares that not once dur
ing the whole of his experience has the
condemned man offered the slightest re-
sistance. This he attributes in a great
measure 10 his own presence on the scat
| fold, and he says that IL the electric sys-
| TEN were introduced he would be unable
To offer the prisoner the consolation Of re-
| ligion up to the last moment,
OF Prado the Abbe relates that although
he was generally regarded as a brazen.
faced and hardened s~coundrel, he spoke
earnestly with him during his Lac I minutes,
and then his confidence in him was 80
great that he begged him TO save his body
from dissection at the School of Medi-
cine. OF Geomay, the murderer OF Nine.
Roux-Couloumy, he wrote that he had
died like a soldier, a Breton and a Christ
ian. A few minutes before he was exc
cuted he asked the Able to convey his
last farewell to his old mother. The Able
Faure says that at the Roquette every
thing is done to render the last moments
of criminals al easy as possible, and. like
NJ. B~eauquesne, he is positive that, far
from being n merciful innovation, the
system of executing prisoners through the
medium of electricity would really sub
ject them 10 n decided increase Of moral
torture.