“There are but two classes of persons in the world--those who are
hanged, and those who are not hanged: and it has been my lot to belong
to the former.”
There is a pathetic, narrative, under the preceding title and motto in
“Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine,” of the present month, (April, 1827.)
It is scarcely possible to abridge or extract from it, and be just to
its writer. Perhaps the following specimen may induce curiosity to the
perusal of the entire paper in the journal just named.
“I have been _hanged_, and am _alive_,” says the narrator. “I was a
clerk in a Russia broker’s house, and fagged between Broad-street
Buildings and Batson’s coffee-house, and the London-docks, from nine in
the morning to six in the evening, for a salary of fifty pounds a-year.
I did this--not contentedly--but I endured it; living sparingly in a
little lodging at Islington for two years; till I fell in love with a
poor, but very beautiful girl, who was honest where it was very hard to
be honest; and worked twelve hours a-day at sewing and millinery, in a
mercer’s shop in Cheapside, for half a guinea a-week. To make short of a
long tale--this girl did not know how poor I was; and, in about six
months, I committed seven or eight forgeries, to the amount of near two
hundred pounds. I was seized one morning--I expected it for weeks--as
regularly as I awoke--every morning--and carried, after a very few
questions, for examination before the lord mayor. At the Mansion-house I
had nothing to plead. Fortunately my motions had not been watched; and
so no one but myself was implicated in the charge--as no one else was
really guilty. A sort of instinct to try the last hope made me listen to
the magistrate’s caution, and remain silent; or else, for any chance of
escape I had, I might as well have confessed the whole truth at once.
The examination lasted about half an hour; when I was fully committed
for trial, and sent away to Newgate.
“The shock of my first arrest was very slight indeed; indeed I almost
question if it was not a relief, rather than a shock, to me. For months,
I had known perfectly that my eventual discovery was certain. I tried to
shake the thought of this off; but it was of no use--I dreamed of it
even in my sleep; and I never entered our counting-house of a morning,
or saw my master take up the cash-book in the course of the day, that
my heart was not up in my mouth, and my hand shook so that I could not
hold the pen--for twenty minutes afterwards, I was sure to do nothing
but blunder. Until, at last, when I saw our chief clerk walk into the
room, on new year’s morning, with a police officer, I was as ready for
what followed, as if I had had six hours’ conversation about it. I do
not believe I showed--for I am sure I did not feel it--either surprise
or alarm. My ‘fortune,’ however, as the officer called it, was soon
told. I was apprehended on the 1st of January; and the sessions being
then just begun, my time came rapidly round. On the 4th of the same
month, the London grand jury found three bills against me for forgery;
and, on the evening of the 5th, the judge exhorted me to ‘prepare for
death;’ for ‘there was no hope that, in this world, mercy could be
extended to me.’
“The whole business of my trial and sentence passed over as coolly and
formally as I would have calculated a question of interest, or summed up
an underwriting account. I had never, though I lived in London,
witnessed the proceedings of a criminal court before; and I could hardly
believe the composure and indifference--and yet civility--for there was
no show of anger or ill-temper--with which I was treated; together with
the apparent perfect insensibility of all the parties round me, while I
was rolling on--with a speed which nothing could check, and which
increased every moment--to my ruin! I was called suddenly up from the
dock, when my turn for trial came, and placed at the bar; and the judge
asked, in a tone which had neither severity about it, nor
compassion--nor carelessness, nor anxiety--nor any character or
expression whatever that could be distinguished--‘If there was any
counsel appeared for the prosecution?’ A barrister then, who seemed to
have some consideration--a middle aged, gentlemanly-looking man--stated
the case against me--as he said he would do--very ‘fairly and
forbearingly;’ but, as soon as he read the facts from his brief, ‘that
only’--I heard an officer of the gaol, who stood behind me, say--‘put
the rope about my neck.’ My master then was called to give his evidence;
which he did very temperately--but it was conclusive. A young gentleman,
who was my counsel, asked a few questions in cross-examination, after he
had carefully looked over the indictment: but there was nothing to
cross-examine upon--I knew that well enough--though I was thankful for
the interest he seemed to take in my case. The judge then told me, I
thought more gravely than he had spoken before--‘That it was time for me
to speak in my defence, if I had any thing to say.’ I had nothing to
say. I thought one moment to drop down upon my knees, and beg for mercy;
but, again--I thought it would only make me look ridiculous; and I only
answered--as well as I could--‘That I would not trouble the court with
any defence.’ Upon this, the judge turned round, with a more serious air
still, to the jury, who stood up all to listen to him as he spoke. And I
listened too--or tried to listen attentively--as hard as I could; and
yet--with all I could do--I could not keep my thoughts from wandering!
For the sight of the court--all so orderly, and regular, and composed,
and formal, and well satisfied--spectators and all--while I was running
on with the speed of wheels upon smooth soil downhill, to
destruction--seemed as if the whole trial were a dream, and not a thing
in earnest! The barristers sat round the table, silent, but utterly
unconcerned, and two were looking over their briefs, and another was
reading a newspaper; and the spectators in the galleries looked on and
listened as pleasantly, as though it were a matter not of death going
on, but of pastime or amusement; and one very fat man, who seemed to be
the clerk of the court, stopped his writing when the judge began, but
leaned back in his chair, with his hands in his breeches’ pockets,
except once or twice that he took a snuff; and not one living soul
seemed to take notice--they did not seem to know the fact--that there
was a poor, desperate, helpless creature--whose days were fast running
out--whose hours of life were even with the last grains in the bottom of
the sand-glass--among them! I lost the whole of the judge’s
charge--thinking of I know not what--in a sort of dream--unable to
steady my mind to any thing, and only biting the stalk of a piece of
rosemary that lay by me. But I heard the low, distinct whisper of the
foreman of the jury, as he brought in the verdict--‘GUILTY,’--and the
last words of the judge, saying--‘that I should be hanged by the neck
until I was dead;’ and bidding me ‘prepare myself for the next life, for
that my crime was one that admitted of no mercy in this.’ The gaoler
then, who had stood close by me all the while, put his hand quickly upon
my shoulder, in an under voice, telling me, to ‘Come along!’ Going down
the hall steps, two other officers met me; and, placing me between
them, without saying a word, hurried me across the yard in the direction
back to the prison. As the door of the court closed behind us, I saw the
judge fold up his papers, and the jury being sworn in the next case. Two
other culprits were brought up out of the dock; and the crier called out
for--‘The prosecutor and witnesses against James Hawkins, and Joseph
Sanderson, for burglary!’
“I had no friends, if any in such a case could have been of use to
me--no relatives but two; by whom--I could not complain of them--I was
at once disowned.--There was but one person then in all the world that
seemed to belong to me; and that one was Elizabeth Clare! And, when I
thought of her, the idea of all that was to happen to myself was
forgotten--I covered my face with my hands, and cast myself on the
ground; and I wept, for I was in desperation.--She had gone wild as soon
as she had heard the news of my apprehension--never thought of herself,
but confessed her acquaintance with me. The result was, she was
dismissed from her employment--and it was her only means of livelihood.
“She had been every where--to my master--to the judge that tried me--to
the magistrates--to the sheriffs--to the aldermen--she had made her way
even to the secretary of state! My heart did misgive me at the thought
of death; but, in despite of myself, I forgot fear when I missed her
usual time of coming, and gathered from the people about me how she was
employed. I had no thought about the success or failure of her attempt.
All my thoughts were--that she was a young girl, and beautiful--hardly
in her senses, and quite unprotected--without money to help, or a friend
to advise her--pleading to strangers--humbling herself perhaps to
menials, who would think her very despair and helpless condition, a
challenge to infamy and insult. Well, it mattered little! The thing was
no worse, because I was alive to see and suffer from it. Two days more,
and all would be over; the demons that fed on human wretchedness would
have their prey. She would be homeless--pennyless--friendless--she would
have been the companion of a forger and a felon; it needed no witchcraft
to guess the termination.----
“We hear curiously, and read every day, of the visits of friends and
relatives to wretched criminals condemned to die. Those who read and
hear of these things the most curiously, have little impression of the
sadness of the reality. It was six days after my first apprehension,
when Elizabeth Clare came, for the last time, to visit me in prison! In
only these short six days her beauty, health, strength--all were gone;
years upon years of toil and sickness could not have left a more
worn-out wreck. Death--as plainly as ever death spoke--sat in her
countenance--she was broken-hearted. When she came, I had not seen her
for two days. I could not speak, and there was an officer of the prison
with us too: I was the property of the law now; and my mother, if she
had lived, could not have blest, or wept for me, without a third person,
and that a stranger, being present. I sat down by her on my bedstead,
which was the only place to sit on in my cell, and wrapped her shawl
close round her, for it was very cold weather, and I was allowed no
fire; and we sat so for almost an hour without exchanging a word.----
* * * * *
“She was got away, on the pretence that she might make one more effort
to save me, with a promise that she should return again at night. The
master was an elderly man, who had daughters of his own; and he
promised--for he saw I knew how the matter was--to see Elizabeth safe
through the crowd of wretches among whom she must pass to quit the
prison. She went, and I knew that she was going for ever. As she turned
back to speak as the door was closing, I knew that I had seen her for
the last time. The door of my cell closed. We were to meet no more on
earth. I fell upon my knees--I clasped my hands--my tears burst out
afresh--and I called on God to bless her.”----
The mental and bodily sufferings of the condemned man in his cell, his
waking dreams, and his dead sleep till the morning of execution,
though of intense interest in the narrative, are omitted here that the
reader may at once accompany the criminal to the place of
execution.----
“I remember beginning to move forward through the long arched passages
which led from the press-room to the scaffold. I saw the lamps that
were still burning--for the daylight never entered here: I heard the
quick tolling of the bell, and the deep voice of the chaplain reading
as he walked before us--
‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth
in me, though he were dead, shall live. And though after my skin
worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God!’
“It was the funeral service--the order for the grave--the office for
those that were senseless and dead--over us, the quick and the
living----
“I felt once more--and saw! I felt the transition from these dim, close,
hot, lamp-lighted subterranean passages, to the open platform and steps
at the foot of the scaffold, and to day. I saw the immense crowd
blackening the whole area of the street below me. The windows of the
shops and houses opposite, to the fourth story, choked with gazers. I
saw St. Sepulchre’s church through the yellow fog in the distance, and
heard the pealing of its bell. I recollect the cloudy, misty morning;
the wet that lay upon the scaffold--the huge dark mass of building, the
prison itself, that rose beside, and seemed to cast a shadow over
us--the cold, fresh breeze, that, as I emerged from it, broke upon my
face. I see it all now--the whole horrible landscape is before me. The
scaffold--the rain--the faces of the multitude--the people clinging to
the house-tops--the smoke that beat heavily downwards from the
chimneys--the waggons filled with women, staring in the inn-yards
opposite--the hoarse low roar that ran through the gathered crowd as we
appeared. I never saw so many objects at once so plainly and distinctly
in all my life as at that one glance; but it lasted only for an instant.
“From that look, and from that instant, all that followed is a
blank----”
To what accident the narrator owes his existence is of little
consequence, compared with the moral to be derived from the sad
story.--“The words are soon spoken, and the act is soon done, which
dooms a wretched creature to an untimely death; but bitter are the
pangs--and the sufferings of the body are among the least of them--that
he must go through before he arrives at it!”
In the narrative there is more than seems to be expressed. By all who
advocate or oppose capital punishment--by every being with a human
heart, and reasoning powers--it should be read complete in the pages of
“Blackwood.”
*
[Illustration: ~Blind Willie, the Newcastle Minstrel.~]
Lang may wor Tyneside lads sae true,
In heart byeth blithe an’ mellow,
Bestow the praise that’s fairly due
To this bluff, honest fellow--
And when he’s hamper’d i’ the dust,
Still i’ wor memory springin’,
The times we’ve run till like to brust
To hear blind Willie singin’.