The Waterbury Democrat., 1936-04-28
By FRED EDWARDS

In the Good Old Days" looked back to with regret by persons who compare our hectic times with the past, whose ideas are formed by reading tales of TO- nance, such as stories of gallant highwaymen like Dick Turpin, and 4lis mare "Black Bess," Tom King, Sixteen-String Jack, Jon- athan Wild, and Bow Street run ners, as the police were then call ed, and dances on HounSlow Health by moonlight with the highwaymen, who exacted the fav- or of such dances from fair lady passengers in the stage coaches they held up, hanging on gibbets, i. e. the gallows tree-a post with a projecting arm, from which the bodies of executed criminals were hung in chains, was the popular form of execution. It was quick shift from the Old Bailey. the po- lice court of the City of London to Tyburn Tree, whereon the high Waymen executed the merry dance of death in their creaking chains, for having wronged organized so- ciety of those Good Old Days.
 Those were the days of George III in whose reign there were on the statute book something like two hundred crimes that were punishable by hanging, a state of affairs which were then scandal to the civilized world, Mirabeau commenting said, "The English nation is the most merciless of any that have read or heard of"
 Ninety-six Hung In One Year
 Compare the condition of pub lie opinion in the Mother coun- try, to the United States today. Note how down the vale of years from that day to this, how public opinion has reacted, until with few exceptions the world over, the only crimes punishable by death, are murder and Kidnapping.
 Douglas Jerrold, writer by no means addicted to sentimental ism, draws a picture of Georgian justice in those far off dave:
 ''The Lords of the Privy Coun- Gil had met with the good King George III at their head to cor rect the vices of the land. There was death for the burglar. death for the foot-pad, death for the sheep-stealer, death, death, death for hundred different sinners. The hangman was the one social physician, and was though to cure all ills. Horrible, ghastly quack! And yet the Kings Majesty believed in the hideous mountebank, and every week, by the advice of his Lords and of the Council-the wise men of St. James's, the Magi of the King dom, the starred and gartered philantrophists-every week did sacred royalty call in Jack Ketch (the hangman's nick-name) to cure his soul-sick children! Yea; it was with the hangman's fling CTS that the father of his people touched the peoples evil. And if in sooth the malady was not allay- ed, it was not for lack of pa- ternal tending, since we find from the Old Bailey Register that thing of blood and bigotry and ignorance-that in one little year, in almost the first twelve months of the new drop, ninety six wretches were publicly cured Of their ills by the hangman's rope in front of Newgate Prison! And the King in Council thought there was no such remedy for crime as the grave. To reform men was tedious labor; now hanging was the sure work of a minute.
 CheapenS the Value of Human Life
 To one who has witnessed the execution of 0 human being, the horror of the spectacle remains for ever sacred on memory. A nightmare to be dreamed of years after, picture imprinted on the Sub-concious mind never to be erased. Take some years ago when during the execution of some seven criminals in the electric chair in Sing Sing prison, one after the other, with the smell of burning flesh permeating the death chamber, several of the spectators tainted, or at the ex- ecution of the boy Hickman in San Quentin prison in California, when a number of witnesses were overcome by the horror Of the tragic scene in the early hours of the morning, or in an Arizona prison, where when a womans head was decapitated in the drop which caused that state to