The Sun. — 1845-10-02 (London, England)

EXECUTION AT GENOA.  Went to the mole, wishing to see what preparations had been made for the execution, but was refused admittance at the gates. I then took a boat and went on board the Emulous, an English schooner, lying near the mole, and at a short distance from the gallows. About noon the two criminals arrived on foot, escorted by a procession of officers of justice, monks, and others, with a banner, crucifix, &c. The gallows was very low, and had no drop nor stage, but a strong wide ladder was placed against the cross-beam. The executioner was a tall, powerful man, very well and neatly dressed, with his hair nicely arranged, appearing somewhat like a respectable servant in half livery. He mounted the ladder first, and one of the criminals, apparently without any compulsion, followed behind him, dressed in shabby, dirty clothes, with no eap or other covering for his head or face. Ills arms were closely pinioned to his side. When the executioner had attached the halter, previously placed round the criminal's neck, to the hook, with a sudden thrust, he pushed him off the ladder, and supporting himself by the beam, he stood on the neck and shoulders of his victim, jumping, stamping, and bending the head sideways as much as possible, while one or two assistants below pulled forcibly at his legs. The wretched man appeared to be quite dead in less than half a minute. The execution of the second criminal, who was treated in the same manner, was a still more horrid spectacle, for he was dragged up the ladder, step by step, by main force, by the executioner and his men ; and his terror must have be:n increased, if possible, by seeing the ghastly corpse of his companion dangling above him. In another minute he was himself a corpse hanging by his side. A handsome well-fed priest then mounted the ladder, and made a short address to the spectators, exhorting them (as I was informed, for I was at too great a distance to hear his words) to take warning by the fate of the criminals. Not more than 200 or 300 persons were admitted on the mole. The greater part of the spectators were in boats, or in the vessels in the barbaur, and among them all I could not see more than about twenty as omen, who were chiefly quite of the lower orders. The assembly behaved quietly, but showed great indifference, and even levity. The bodies of the criminals remained on the gallows till half-past five in the afternoon. and the spot was visited by thousands, the mole being open to the public as usual. They were natives of Savona. They had been notoriously bad characters, and one of them had been a thief from the age of five years, at which time he was in the habit of cutting off the leaden weights from the fishermen's nets when they were spread out to dry on the shore. The crime for which they suffered was a murder of the worst description. 'They had gone to the house of a priest in Genoa, and finding from the servant that her master was out, and would not return for some time, they murdered her by strangling her with their own hands; after which they had brutally disfigured the body. They had then plundered the house of some plate and other articles of value. They both made a confession of their guilt. This method of executing criminals, though really quite as humane as that adopted in England, and perhaps more so, appears very barbarous and uncivilised, and the spectacle is rendered infinitely more horrid by the . protruded face being exposed. The rolling .eyes, the tongue, the features, purple and distorted in the death agony of strangulation, and with that hideous expression upon them becoming gradually fixed and rigid, form a spectacle, the horrors of which can neither be described by those who have witnessed it, nor conceived by those who have not. But the advocates for capital punishments and public executions say that the example is useful in deterring others from committing crime. If so, the Genoese are more rational than the English, because, viithout increasing the sufferings of the criminal, they make that example as effective and horrible as possible. And the. ad• dress of the priest, standing' on the ladder by the side of the scarcely lifeless bodies, and spealcing to an assembly,f every individual of which, however. deprave?, a short time at least, be in a serious mood, must,miht be made, if well managed, a very solemn and_ mp.rgessive part of this dreadful ceremony.—(From an Eye Witness.).