WAR EXECUTIONS.
To have looked upon seventeen beings of human organism, ambition, sense
of pain and of disgrace, brought forward with all the solemnities of a
living funeral, and launched from absolute cognition to direct death,
should put one in the category of Calcraft, Ketch, and Isaacs.
Yet, I do not think it would be right to so classify me. I know an
excellent clergyman, who has seen and assisted in fifty odd executions.
He says, as I say, that each new one is an augmented terror. But he is
upon the spot to smooth the felon's troubled spirit, and I am with him
to teach the felon's boon companions the direness of the penalty.
Without either the Chaplain or myself, capital punishment would lose
half its effectiveness.
And this is why I write the present article,--to relieve myself from the
pertinacious inquiries with which I have been assailed since my return
from the melancholy episodes of the executions at Washington. I am
button-holed at every corner, and put through a cross-examination, to
which Holt's or Bingham's had no searchingness: "How did Mrs. Suratt
die?" "Was the rope attached to her left ear?" "What sort of rope was
it, for example?" "Do her pictures look like her?" "Pray describe how
Payne twisted, and whether you think Atzeroth's neck was dislocated?"
And, after answering these questions, replete as they are with horrible
curiosity, the questioner turns away, saying, "Dear me! I wouldn't see a
man hung for a thousand dollars."
I am weary of such hypocrisy, and I shall, in this paper, speak of some
executions I have witnessed.
I was quite a small boy, at school, when my chum and model, Bill
Everett, dragged me off to Wayland's Mill, to see old Mrs. Kitty White
suspended. She was a very infamous old woman, who had been in the habit
of kidnapping black children, and running them by night from the Eastern
shore across the bay to Virginia, where they were sold. If they became
noisy and obstreperous before they left her house, and suspicion fell
upon her, she clove their skulls with a hatchet, and buried them in her
garden. When finally discovered, the remains of nearly a score marked
how wholesale had been her wickedness.
This old woman was very drunk when she came to be hanged, and so was the
sheriff who assisted her. She called him impolite names, and carried a
pipe in her mouth, and went off smoking and cursing. I remember that I
cried very loudly, so that Bill Everett had to choke me, and saw ghosts
for so many nights succeeding, that Crouch, our maid of all work, had to
sit at my bedside till I fell asleep.
The atrocity of a crime makes great difference in one's desire to see
its after tragedy; and the next hanging I attended was almost
world-famed. Four men were suspended for shooting down an entire family
in cold blood. They had embarked on a raid of robbery, and emerging from
the barren scrub of Delaware Forest, fell upon a snug and secluded
Maryland farm-house, where the farmer's family were taking their supper.
They fired through the ruddy windows, and brought the man down at his
wife's feet; she, in turn, fell upon her threshold, rushing forth into
the darkness, and the remnant of the family perished except two boys,
who slipped away and gave the alarm.
The jailer's boys of Chestertown went to school with me, and I was
invited by the least of them to visit the jail,--a tumble-down old
structure with goggly windows, and so unsafe that the felons had to be
ironed to almost their own weight. And into the cell where the four
fiends were lying, the jailer's big boy, for a big joke, pushed me, and
locked the door upon me.
I was alone with the same bloody-handed men who had so recently, and for
a trifle of gold, made the fireside a shamble, and the night a howling
terror.
They appreciated the joke, and drew me to them, while their chains
clanked, and pressed to my face their wild and prickly beards. There was
one of them, named Drummond, who swore he would cut my heart out, and
they executed a sort of death-tune on the floor with their balls and
links. I lost all knowledge and perception in my fright, and cannot, at
this interval, remember anything succeeding, but the execution. They
were put to death upon a single long scaffold, the counterpart of that
erected for the Booth conspirators, and the rope attached to the neck of
the least guilty, broke when the drop fell, and cast him upon the
ground, lacerated, but conscious, to be picked up and again suspended,
while he begged for life, like a child.
The sixth miscreant murdered from revenge, which is just a trifle better
than avarice: his girl preferred another, and the disappointed man,
Bowen, went to sea. Returning, he found the united lovers in the
exultation of happiness; a child had just been born to them, and,
touched by their content, Bowen gave the old rival his hand, and asked
him out to accept a bumper. They drank again and again,--the spirits
burning their blood to fire, and reviving again the bitter story of
Bowen's love and shame. Within the hour, the husband lay at the jilted
man's feet! He was condemned to death, and I undertook to describe his
exit for a weekly newspaper.
Still I see him, broad and muscular, climbing the gallows stair with
his peaked cap, deathly white, and looking up at the sun as if he
dreaded its eye. There was the muttering of prayers, the spasm of one
spectator taken sick at the crisis, and the dull thump of the scaffold
falling in.
The preacher Harden, who fondled his wife on his knee, and fed her the
while with poison, passed away so recently, that I need not revive the
scene into which all his bad life should have been prolonged.
The death of Armstrong, expiating a hypocrite's life at Philadelphia, is
not so well remembered: he killed an old man in the heart of the city,
riding in a wagon, and dumped him out when he reached the suburbs. His
life, to the end, was marked by all insolence and infamy, and on the day
of the execution, he made a pretended confession, inculpating two
innocent persons. One hour after this, he made the following speech:--
MY FRIENDS: I have a few words to say to you; I am going to die;
and let me say, in passing, I die in peace with my Maker; and if,
at this moment, a pardon was offered me on condition of giving up
my Maker, I would not take it; and I die in peace with all the
world, and forgive all my enemies. I desire you to take warning by
my fate. Sabbath-breaking was the first cause. I bid you farewell,
gentlemen, (here he mentioned various officers), and I bid you all
farewell. I die in peace with everybody.
The Sheriff, very nervous, gave a signal to the drop-man too soon, and a
serious accident very nearly occurred. The props were readjusted, all
but the main support removed, and that unhinged; the Sheriff waved his
handkerchief, and with the dead thump of the trap-lids against their
cushions, and the heavy jerking of the noose knot against the victim's
throat, the young murderer hung dangling in the air, not a limb
quivering, and only a convulsive movement of the shoulders, to indicate
the struggle which life maintained when giving up its place in the
body.
There was a rush forward. The doctors grasped his wrist. Some spectators
passed their hands across his knees to feel the tremulous sinews; one or
two felt a faintness, and a dozen made coarse jokes; and one or more
speculated as to the issue of his immortal part, or the degree of his
pain, or the probability of his cognizance. In seven minutes he was
beyond the reach of execution or executioner, and a hurdle being wheeled
from the stable, they cut down his body, while a few scrambled for the
rope, and it was wheeled on a run into the convict's corridor for his
old father to claim. The neck was not broken, nor the flesh discolored.
Some said that he died "game;" and all went away, leaving the old man
and a brother to sit by the remains and weep, that so great calamity had
darkened their home and blighted their lives. Few lamented him, for he
had youth, but none of its elements of sympathy; and those who would
make, even of his dying speech, a text and a lesson, are instancing a
lie more grievous than the murder which he did.
In England, I saw two men and a woman suffer death on the common
sidewalk; just as if we were to hang people in New York on the pavement
before the Tombs.
No man, anxious to see an execution in London, need be disappointed.
Once or twice a month the wolves are brought to the slaughter, and all
the people are invited to enjoy the spectacle. A woman, one Catharine
Wilson, was to be hanged for poisoning. She was middle aged, and had
been reputable. Her manner of making way with folks was to act as
sick-nurse, and mingling poison with their medicine, possess herself of
the trifles upon their persons. She had sent six souls to their account
in this way; but, discovered in the seventh attempt, all the other cases
leaked out. She was condemned, of course, and on the Sunday evening
previous to the execution, as I was returning from Spurgeon's
Tabernacle, the omnibus upon which I sat passed through the Old Bailey.
There were the carpenters joining the timbers of the scaffold, and
building black barricades across the street. A murmuring crowd stood
around in the solemn night, and the funereal walls of old Newgate
glowered like a horrible vault upon the dimly-lit street. The public
houses across the way were filled up with guests. All the front parlors
and front bedrooms had been let at fat prices, and suppers were spread
in them for the edification of their tenants. Do you remember the
thrilling chapter of "The Jew's last night alive," in "Oliver Twist?"
Well, this was the scene! These were the same beams and uprights. There,
huge, massive, and blackened with smoky years, rose the cold, impervious
stones; and yonder, casting its sharp pinnacles into the sky, is the
tower of St. Sepulchre's Church, where the bell hangs muffled for the
morrow's tolling away of a sinner's life. Old Fagin heard it, though it
was no new sound to him; for Field Lane, where he kept his "fence," lies
a very little way off,--little more than a stone's throw, and when, in
the morning, I dressed at an early hour and hurried to the place of
execution, I saw Charley Bates, and the Dodger, and Nancy, and Toby
Crackit, and the rest, shying men's hats in the air, and looking out for
the "wipes" and the "tickers." All the streets leading to Newgate were
like great conduits, where human currents babbled along, emptying
themselves into the Old Bailey. Mothers by the dozen were out with their
infants, holding them aloft tenderly, to show them the noose and the
cross-beam. Fathers came with their sons, and explained very carefully
to them the method of strangulation. Little girls, on their way to
workshops, had turned aside to see the playful affair, and traders in
fancy soap and shoe-blacking, pea-nuts and shrimps, Banbury cakes, and
Chelsea buns, and Yarmouth bloaters, were making the morning hilarious
with their odd cries and speeches. Along the chimney-pots of Green
Arbour Court, where Goldsmith penned the "Vicar of Wakefield," lads and
maidens were climbing, that they might have commanding places. There
was one young woman who had some difficulty in climbing over a
battlement, and the mob hailed her failure with roars of mirth. But she
persevered, though there was a high wind blowing, and then called loudly
for her male attendant to follow her. He obeyed dutifully, and they both
seated themselves upon a chimney-top,--a picture of love rewarded,--and
waited for the show. The moments, as marked upon St. Sepulchre's clock,
went grudgingly, as if the index-hands were unwilling to shoulder the
responsibility of what was to come. Meantime, the police had their hands
full; for some merry urchins were darting between their legs, and it was
dangerous to keep one's hat on his head, for it hazarded plucking off
and shying here and there. At the chamber-windows aforesaid, crowded the
tipsy occupants, men and women, red-eyed with drinking, and leering
stupidly upon the surging heads below. Some asked if Calcraft did the
"job," and others volunteered sketches of Calcraft's life. One man
boasted that he had taken a pot of beer with him, and another added that
the hangman's children and his own went to school together. "He
pockets," said the man, "two-pun ten for every one he drops, besides his
travelling expenses, and he has put away three hundred and twenty folks.
He is a clever fellow, is Calcraft, and he is going to retire soon."
So the hours passed; the great clock-hands journeyed onward; all eyes
watched them attentively; suddenly the deep bells struck a terrible
one--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight, and the bells of the
neighborhood answered, some hoarsely, others musically, others faintly,
as if ashamed.
Before the tones had died away, three persons appeared upon the
scaffold,--a woman, pinioned and wearing a long, sharp, snowy, shrowdy,
death-cap; a man in loose black robes with a white neckhandkerchief, and
a burly, surly fellow, in black cloth, bareheaded, and having a curling
jetty beard around his heavy jaws. It is but a moment, that, standing
on tiptoe, you catch this scene. The priest stretches his hand toward
the people, and says some unintelligible words; those of the mob curse
each other, and some scream out that they are dying in the press. Then
the scaffold is clear; the woman stands alone,--God forgive her!--and
when you look again, a bundle of old clothes, tipped with a sugar-loaf,
is all that is visible, and the gallows-cord is very straight and tight.
For the last chapter, consult the graveyard within the jail walls!
The guillotining which I witnessed in Paris, in the month of June, 1864,
may be deemed worthy of an extended description:--
Couty de la Pommerais was a young physician of Paris, descended from a
fine family, and educated beyond the requirements of a French Faculty.
He was handsome and manly, and gave evidences of ambition at an early
age. He was popularly called the Comte de la Pommerais, and at the time
of his apprehension, was expecting a decoration from the Papal
Government, with the rank he desired. Like all French students, he was
incontinent, and had several mistresses. The last of these was a widow
named Pauw, who appears to have loved him sincerely. She had some little
fortune, which they consumed together; and then la Pommerais married a
rich young lady, with whom he lived one year. Her mother died suddenly
at the end of that time, and as la Pommerais was interested in getting
certain moneys which the elder lady controlled, the manner of her death
led to suspicions of poisoning. However, the woman was interred, but the
son-in-law was not so fortunate as he supposed, and he ceased to live
with his wife, but returned to Madame Pauw, who still adored him. Upon
this fond, foolish woman he seems to have premeditated a deep and
intricate crime; and it was for this that he suffered death. She must
have been dishonest like himself, for she consented to a scheme of
swindling the insurance companies; but, unlike himself, she lacked the
wit to be silent, and was heard to hint mysteriously that she should
soon be grand and happy. La Pommerais persuaded her to have her life
insured, which was done for 515,000 francs, or upward of $100,000. When
the matter had transpired some time, he persuaded her to feign sickness.
The simple woman asked why she should do so.
"The insurance people," he replied, "will, when they consider that you
are dangerously ill, prefer to give you 100,000f., rather than pay the
515,000f. in the certainty of your death. You can give them up your
policy, accept the compromise, get well again, and be rich."
Yet this counterfeited sickness was meant by the villain to prepare the
neighbors of Mme. Pauw for the death which he intended to ensue. He was
to make it known to all, that she was dangerously ill; she was to uphold
his testimony; and he was to kill her in due time, and take the whole of
the insurance. At length, the farce was finished. La Pommerais gave to
Mme. Pauw, a poison difficult to detect, called _digitalline_, the
essential principle of our common foxglove; she died unconscious of his
deception, loving him to the last, and he claimed the 515,000 francs at
the insurance office. He was suspected, accused, and tried. The old
suspicions relative to his mother-in-law were revived; the bodies were
exhumed and examined; upon evidence entirely circumstantial and
technical, he was convicted, and sentenced to be guillotined. His
learning and standing made the trial a famous one; his bearing during
the long proceedings was calm and collected; he was handsome, and had
much sympathy: but the jury found him guilty, and the Emperor refused to
extend his clemency to the case. He was put in a strait jacket and
locked up in La Roquette, the prison for the condemned.
The prison of _La Roquette_ (or the Rocket Prison) is situated in the
eastern suburbs of Paris, a mile beyond the Bastile. It does not look
unlike our American jails; a high exterior wall of rough stone, over the
top of which one gets a glimpse of the prison gables, with a huge gate
in the arched portal, guarded forever by sentinels. Before this gate is
a small open plot of ground, planted with trees. _Rue de la Roquette_
passes between it and a second prison, immediately facing the first,
called the _Prison des Jeunes Detenus_, or, as we would say in America,
the "House of Refuge." Standing between the two jails, and looking away
from Paris, one will see the great metropolitan cemetery of _Pere la
Chaise_, scarcely a stone's throw distant, and behind him will be the
great _abbatoir_ or public slaughter-house of Menilmontant, with the
vast area of roofs and spires of Paris stretching beyond it to the
horizon. It was to this region of vacant lots and lonesome, glowering
houses, that thousands of Parisians bent their steps the night before
the execution. The news had gone abroad that la Pommerais would not be
pardoned. It was also generally credited that this would be the last
execution ever held in Paris, since there is a general desire for the
abolition of capital punishment in France, and a conviction that the
Legislature, at its next session, will substitute life-imprisonment.
This, with the rarity of the event, and that terrible allurement of
blood which distinguishes all populaces, brought out all the excitable
folk of the town; and at dusk, on the night before the expiation, the
whole neighborhood of La Roquette was crowded with men and women. All
classes of Parisians were there,--the _blouses_, or workingmen, standing
first in number; the students from the Latin Quartier being well
represented, and idlers, and well-dressed nondescripts without
enumeration,--distributing themselves among women, dogs, and babies.
Venders of _gateaux_, muscles, and fruit were out in force. The "Savage
of Paris," clothed in his war plumes, paint, greaves, armlets, and
moccasins, was selling razors by gaslight; here and there ballad-mongers
were singing the latest songs, and boys, with chairs to let, elbowed
into the intricacies of the crowd, which amused itself all the night
long by smoking, drinking, and hallooing. At last, the mass became
formidable in numbers, covering every inch of ground within sight of the
prison, and many soldiers and _sergeants de ville_, mounted and on foot,
pushed through the dense mass to restore order.
At midnight, a body of cavalry forced back the people from the square of
La Roquette. A number of workmen, issuing from the prison-gates,
proceeded to set up the instrument of death by the light of blazing
torches. The flame lit up the dark jail walls, and shone on the helmets
and cuirasses of the sabre-men, and flared upon spots of the upturned
faces, now bringing them into strong, ruddy relief, now plunging them
into shadow. When the several pieces had been framed together, we had a
real guillotine in view,--the same spectre at which thousands of good
and bad men had shuddered; and the folks around it, peering up so
eagerly, were descendants of those who stood on the _Place de la
Concorde_ to witness the head of a king roll into the common basket.
Imagine two tall, straight timbers, a foot apart, rising fifteen feet
from the ground. They are grooved, and spring from a wide platform,
approached by a flight of steps. At the base, rests a spring-plank or
_bascule_, to which leather thongs are attached to buckle down the
victim, and a basket or _pannier_ filled with sawdust to receive the
severed head. Between these, at their summit, hangs the shining knife in
its appointed grooves, and a cord, which may be disconnected by a jerk,
holds it to its position. Two men will be required to work the
instrument promptly,--the one to bind the condemned, the other to drop
the axe. The _bascule_ is so arranged that the whole weight and length
of the trunk will rest upon it, leaving the head and neck free, and when
prone it will reach to the grooves, leaving space for the knife to pass
below it. The knife itself is short and wide, with a bright concave
edge, and a rim of heavy steel ridges it at the top; it moves easily in
the greased grooves, and may weigh forty pounds. It has a terrible
fascination, hanging so high and so lightly in the blaze of the torches,
which play and glitter upon it, and cast stains of red light along its
keen blade, as if by their brilliance all its past blood-marks had
become visible again. A child may send it shimmering and crashing to the
scaffold, but only God can fasten together the warm and throbbing parts
which it shall soon dissever. And now that the terrible creature has
been recreated, the workmen slink away, as if afraid of it, and a body
of soldiers stand guard upon it, as if they fear that it might grow
thirsty and insatiate as in the days of its youth. The multitude press
up again, reinforced every hour, and at last the pale day climbs over
the jail-walls, and waiting people see each other by its glimmer. The
bells of Notre Dame peal out; a hundred towers fall into the march of
the music; the early journals are shrieked by French newsboys, and folks
begin to count the minutes on their watches. There are men on the ground
who saw the first guillotine at work. They describe the click of the
cleaver, the steady march of victims upon the scaffold-stairs, the
rattle of the death-cart turning out of the _Rue Saint Honore_, the
painted executioners, with their dripping hands, wiping away the jets of
blood from the hard, rough faces; nay! the step of the young queen,
white-haired with care, but very beautiful, who bent her body as she had
never bent her knee, and paid the penalty of her pride with the neck
which a king had fondled.
At four minutes to six o'clock on Thursday morning, the wicket in the
prison-gate swung open; the condemned appeared, with his hands tied
behind his back, and his knees bound together. He walked with
difficulty, so fettered; but other than the artificial restraints, there
was no hesitation nor terror in his movements. His hair, which had been
long, dark, and wavy, was severed close to his scalp; his beard had
likewise been clipped, and the fine moustache and goatee, which had set
off his most interesting face, no longer appeared to enhance his
romantic, expressive physiognomy. Yet his black eyes and cleanly cut
mouth, nostrils, and eyebrows, demonstrated that Couty de la Pommerais
was not a beauty dependent upon small accessories. There was a dignity
even in his painful gait; the coarse prison-shirt, scissored low in the
neck, exhibited the straight columnar throat and swelling chest; for the
rest, he wore only a pair of black pantaloons and his own shapely boots.
As he emerged from the wicket, the chill morning air, laden with the dew
of the truck gardens near at hand, blew across the open spaces of the
suburbs, and smote him with a cold chill. He was plainly seen to
tremble; but in an instant, as if by the mere force of his will, he
stood motionless, and cast a first and only glance at the guillotine
straight before him. It was the glance of a man who meets an enemy's
eye, not shrinkingly, but half-defiant, as if even the bitter
retribution could not abash his strong courage. The dramatic manner
which is characteristic of the most real and earnest incidents of French
life had its fascination for la Pommerais, even at his death-hour. Not
Mr. Booth nor Mr. Forrest could have expressed the rallying, startling,
almost thrilling recognition of an instrument of death, better than this
actual criminal, whose last winkful of daylight was blackened by the
guillotine. It reminded one of Damon, in the pitch of the tragedy:--
"I stand upon the scaffold--I am standing on my throne."
His dark eye was scintillant; his nostril grew full; his shoulders fell
back as if to exhibit his broad, compact figure in manlier outline; he
seemed to feel that forty thousand men and women, and young children
were looking upon him to see how he dared to die, and that for a
generation his bearing should go into fireside descriptions. Then he
moved on between the files of soldiers at his shuffling pace, and before
him went the _aumonier_ or chaplain, swaying the crucifix, behind him
the executioner of Versailles--a rough and bearded man--to assist in the
final horror.
It was at this intense moment a most wonderful spectacle. As the
prisoner had first appeared, a single great shout had shaken the
multitude. It was the French word "_Voila!_" which means "Behold!"
"See!" Then every spectator stood on tiptoe; the silence of death
succeeded; all the close street was undulant with human motion; a few
house roofs near by were dizzy with folks who gazed down from the tiles;
all the way up the heights of Pere la Chaise, among the pale chapels and
monuments of the dead, the thousands of stirred beings swung and shook
like so many drowned corpses floating on the sea. Every eye and mind
turned to the little structure raised among the trees, on the space
before _La Roquette_, and there they saw a dark, shaven, disrobed young
man, going quietly toward his grave.
He mounted the steps deliberately, looking toward his feet; the priest
held up the crucifix, and he felt it was there, but did not see it; his
lips one moment touched the image of Christ, but he did not look up nor
speak; then, as he gained the last step, the _bascule_ or swingboard
sprang up before him; the executioner gave him a single push, and he
fell prone upon the plank, with his face downward; it gave way before
him, bearing him into the space between the upright beams, and he lay
horizontally beneath the knife, presenting the back of his neck to it.
Thus resting, he could look into the _pannier_ or basket, into whose
sawdust lining his head was to drop in a moment. And in that awful
space, while all the people gazed with their fingers tingling, the
legitimate Parisian executioner gave a jerk at the cord which held the
fatal knife. With a quick, keen sound, the steel became detached; it
fell hurtling through the grooves; it struck something with a dead, dumb
thump; a jet of bright blood spurted into the light, and dyed the face
of an attendant horribly red; and Couty de la Pommerais's head lay in
the sawdust of the pannier, while every vein in the lopped trunk
trickled upon the scaffold-floor! They threw a cloth upon the carcass
and carried away the pannier; the guillotine disappeared beneath the
surrounding heads; loud exclamations and acclaims burst from the
multitude; the venders of trash and edibles resumed their cheerful
cries, and a hearse dashed through the mass, carrying the warm body of
the guillotined to the cemetery of Mt. Parnasse. In thirty minutes,
newsboys were hawking the scene of the execution upon all the quays and
bridges. In every cafe of Paris some witness was telling the incidents
of the show to breathless listeners, and the crowds which stopped to see
the funeral procession of the great Marshal Pelissier divided their
attention between the warrior and the poisoner,--the latter obtaining
the preponderance of fame.
I wonder sometimes, if the ultimate penalty, however enforced, greatly
assists example, or dignifies justice. But this would involve a very
long controversy, over which many sage heads have sadly ached.
In the open daylight, when my face is shining, and my life secure, I
take the humanitarian side, and denounce the barbarities of the gibbet.
But when I come down the dark stairs of the daily paper office, after
midnight, and see three or four stealthy fellows hiding in the shadows,
and go up the black city unarmed with my pocket full of greenbacks, I
think the gallows quite essential as a warning, and indorse it, even
after seventeen executions.
So end my desultory chapters of desultory life. It has been, in the
arranging of them, difficult to reject material,--not to select it. I am
amazed to find what a world of dead leaves lies around my feet, as if I
were a tree that blossomed and shed its covering every day. There are
baskets-full of copy still remaining, from which the temptation is great
to gather. It is sad to have written so much at twenty-five, and yet to
have only drifting convictions. I may have succeeded in depicting the
lives of certain young gentlemen who reported the war. All of us, who
were young, loved the business, and were glad to quit it. For myself, I
am weary of travel; rather than publish again from these fragments of my
fugitive life, let me weave their material into a more poetic story,
softened by some years of stay at home.