Swansea and Glamorgan Herald, and South Wales Free Press. — 1849-05-09 (Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales)

THE NATIONAL HANGMAN.  Subjoined is a brief abstract of -tb-e-bi.;t-c;;;-(-4 the hangman, Calentit, which may lI t be uninteresting at this moment :  "lie was born about the year 1801, of humble but indust lions parents, at a little village a few miles out of London, situate in the county of Essex. But, alas he never had the opportunity of going to school to lw taught how to shun the ' broad way leading to destruction'—for those who might hate nourished him, ' in the way he should go,' were snatched from him ere he laid reached the tenth year of his age. To seek a chance Mrtune ho travelled up to London' where his ignorance RIM forlorn condition shortly etiabled that demon which ever haunts the fiadsteps of the wretched to mark him for her own. "The same social arrangements that create victims for the gallows, induced IVillium Calen& to become a hangman. Is each day dawned, he was compelled to scheme for that day's existence. He had not been taught the trade lie has sitce learned, that of shoemaking; nor had he any friend, to set beMre hint a better way. To use the expressive words of Hugo, he was doomed like one of those wretches whom we scarcely look at when they pass IN in tbe street, to whom we never speak, and Whose filthy contiguity we religiously avoid; 011 e of those unfortunates who, in their ragged infancy, run about with naked feet in the highways and streets, shivering with cold upon the quays, warming their titet by the steam that itellee from the kitchens of the grand hotels at which we dine ; dragging forth here and there a crust of bread from a heap of dirt, and wiping it ere it be eaten ; fishing all day in the gutters to catch halfpence; having no other amusement than the gratuitous spectacle of king's or queen's birthdays, and the executions at the Place de Greve, at Paris; or before the debtors' door at the Old Bailey, London ; whose taste, if such as they have taste for reading at all, leads them to prefer perusing the Newgate Calendar, or the last dying specifies and contssions of murderers,' and accounts of their various bloody exploits. Poor devils, whom hunger urges on to want, and want to do more.  "In course of time, Caleraft got initiated into all the mysteries of the profession,' as it is termed. It is but an a:t of strict justice due to Calcraft to state, that the cm-amen rumour respecting his having been convicted of Limy, and that he afterwards rece:v ed a pardon on condition of his becoming a hangman, is not founded on fact; while the fact of his undertaking to learn to be a shoemaker, and of his own accord endeavouring to shake off his companions, to get his living in a better manner, proves that he only wanted to be surrounded by favourable eilcumstances, when, without doubt, he would have made what the world calls • bright man.' Messrs. Read and Company, the gruit porter-brewers in Liquorpond-street, Gray's-lra-lane, about the same period, took him into their employ as a private watchman, and he might to this day have continued there, or followed some more advantageous employment, had not his evil geniuslatunted him. He, by some means or other, became acquainted with 'Old , Tom Cheshire,' the late executioner, who induced him to ucc.:pt the office of &may hangman. W lien Old Tom died, he succeeded to the post of chief executioner, and intended fofiowing the fashion of Appointing an assistant to himself, but we, overruled by his employers, the sheriffs, in consequence of a ' falling off of orders ' in the hanging line, through the abolition of that mode of punishment for robbery and forgery. His preient age is about forty-nine. The reward that he receives amounts to twenty-five shillings weekly, paid by the authorities of the city of London and Middlesex; and £5 a quarter contributed by those of the county of Surrey, for executions done at the Iforunnonger-lane He also appropriates whatever property may be on ele persons of those lie executes, including the clothes they die in, sinless when especially ordered, in accordance with the dying wish of • favoured criminal., to be given to the survivors, for the value of which he Is not allowed anything."