A BRIGHT PAGE IN PRISON HISTORY
Wonderful results achieved by Colonel Montesinos in the presidio
at Valencia--Montesinos repairs and reconstructs the prison with
convict labour--His system of treatment--Period--Marvellous success
in reforming criminals--Convicts entrusted with confidential
despatches in civil war--Armed to resist attack on the prison
by insurgents--Employed to hunt down brigands--Movement towards
prison reform in 1844--Three new model prisons planned for
Madrid--Executions--The "garrote"--Account of the trial and execution
of José de Rojas--The condemned cell at the Saladero--An Englishman's
description of a Spanish execution.
The reader who has followed this detailed description of Spanish penal
methods has realised the hideous shortcomings of Spanish prisons, the
horrible practices so constantly prevailing within the walls, the
apparently incurable nature of the criminals who regularly fill them,
and he might reasonably doubt that definite and substantial amendment
was possible. Yet the contrary is true and to the most marked and
astonishing degree if we are to believe the facts on record. In one
instance the personal character of one man, backed by his unshaken
determination and the exercise of a resolute and inflexible will,
brought a large mass of convicts into an admirable condition of
self-control and good behaviour. The story reads like a fairy tale,
as set forth in contemporary chronicles. One of the most interesting
accounts is to be found in a book of travels entitled "Spain as It
Is," by a Mr. Hoskins, in which he gives his personal observations
of the results achieved in the prison at Valencia by the enlightened
administration of its Governor, Colonel Montesinos. A brief account of
the man himself should precede our appreciation of his work.
Montesinos was a soldier, trained to arms, whose education and
experience were entirely military. He had no previous acquaintance
with or insight into prison systems, although he had travelled far
and wide in many countries. He had never visited or inspected their
penal establishments nor had he penetrated into any single prison in
his native Spain. He served in the Spanish army, beginning as a cadet
at fourteen, was actively engaged in the war of Independence, and was
carried off as a prisoner into France. When set free at the conclusion
of peace, he accepted a post in the secretariat of the War Office at
Madrid, where he remained for five years. Then came the political
troubles which ended in the fall of the constitutional government
in 1823 and the surrender of Cadiz. With many other soldiers and
citizens, he left Spain and wandered through Europe and America, with
no very definite idea of examining into the laws and customs of other
countries, but gaining knowledge and breadth of views. On his return
to Spain when close on forty years of age he was appointed governor of
the convict prison in Valencia.
Montesinos entered upon his duties with a firm conviction of the
paramount importance of military discipline, of that passive and
unquestioning obedience to authority, the absolute surrender of
individual volition, the complete subjection of the many to the single
will of one superior master, which he believed to be the essence of all
personal government and more particularly in a prison. To enforce such
discipline was the only effectual method of securing good order and
the due subordination of the rough and possibly recalcitrant elements
under his command. In this he entirely succeeded and established an
extraordinary influence over his charges. He became an autocrat but
in the best sense; his prisoners resigned themselves submissively and
unhesitatingly to his control, anxious to gain his good will by their
exemplary demeanour and their unvarying desire to behave well. What
he actually made of his charges, how he succeeded in changing their
very natures, in transforming lawbreakers and evil doers into honest,
trustworthy persons, successfully restraining their evil instincts,
will be best realised by a few strange facts which, if not positively
vouched for, would be considered beyond belief. But before relating
these marvellous results it will be well to describe in some detail the
processes adopted by him and the principles on which he acted.
When Colonel Montesinos was appointed governor of the Valencian convent
prison, it was located in an ancient mediæval edifice known as the
"_Torres de Cuarte_," two towers flanking the great gate which gave
upon the suburb known as "_El Cuarte_." This semi-ruinous building,
dating from the fifteenth century, lodged about a thousand prisoners,
herded together in a number of dark, dirty, ill-kept and insecure
chambers, wholly unfit for human habitation. They were on several
floors communicating by narrow passages and tortuous staircases, below
which were deep underground cellars divided up into obscure foul
dungeons, which were always humid from the infiltration from the city
ditch and into which neither sunlight nor fresh air came to dry up the
damp pavement and the streaming walls. Montesinos saw at once that it
would be impossible to introduce reforms in such a building and he
laboured hard to move into better quarters, securing at length, after
a long correspondence, new quarters in the monastery of St. Augustine,
which indeed was but little better. Here also the buildings had fallen
into disrepair. A large part was without roof, there was little
flooring, and many broken windows and decayed walls offered numerous
facilities for escape. Extensive repairs were indispensable, yet funds
were wanting, for the Spanish government was sorely taxed to meet the
expenses of the civil war (Carlist) now in full swing. Nevertheless
Montesinos, strenuous and indefatigable, a host in himself, transferred
his people, a thousand convicts of dangerous character, into their new
abode and set them to work to repair and reconstruct the old building.
He meant to succeed, by drawing upon his own limitless energies,
creating means from his own native resources, and was backed by the
ready response of those he brought under the dominion of an indomitable
will.
All difficulties yielded before his intense spirit. He was the very
incarnation of activity and it was enough to look at him to be
spurred on to assiduous effort. His personal traits and their effect
upon his surroundings are thus described by his biographer, Vincente
Boix,--"There can be no doubt that his martial air, his tall figure
and the look in his face, a mixture of imperious command with great
kindliness and shrewd appreciation of willing effort, had a marked
effect upon his people, and convicts who had been once coerced and
driven by the fear of punishment yielded much more readily to his
moral force. His obvious determination and strength of character got
more out of them than threats or penalties, although, if needs were,
he was ready enough to appeal to the strong arm. They acknowledged
his superiority, and rough undisciplined men, quite capable of rising
against authority when unchecked or weakly held, succumbed to his
lightest word like children to their father. They yielded even against
the grain absolute compliance to his lightest wish without needing a
sharp look or a cross word."
It will be interesting to follow Montesinos' procedure. Under his
system the treatment was progressive and divided into three periods;
first, that of chains; second, that of labour; and third, that of
conditional liberation. This arrangement is in some respects akin to
that generally known as the "Irish" system as practised many years ago
with conspicuous success.
(1) The wearing of irons at that time was general in Spain, although
now the practice has fallen into disuse. With Montesinos the rule was
to impose irons of varying weight graduated to the length of sentence.
A two years' man carried them of four pounds' weight; a four years'
man of six pounds, while between six and eight years they were of
eight pounds. They consisted of a single chain fastened to a fetter on
the right ankle, while the other end was attached to a waist belt, a
method supposed to cause no great inconvenience. With Montesinos the
period of wearing them was of short duration. It terminated on the
day that the convict petitioned for regular employment, for on first
reception, after having entered the first courtyard, which was kept
bright with garden flowers and the songs of many birds in cages hanging
around, the new arrival was given no work. He remained at the depot
idle and silent, for no conversation was permitted, although he was
associated with others, and if he put a question to a neighbour he
got no reply. Weariness and boredom soon supervened in this period of
first probation and the convict was keen to pass on. He appealed to his
officer, who told him to seek employment at some trade. "I know none."
"Then learn one, you cannot get quit of your irons in any other way."
If the convict hesitated he was left studiously to himself, unhappy
and ashamed, for his condition was deemed disgraceful. He could not
hold his head up, for a wide gulf separated him from others who had
escaped the chain. He was a marked man, shunned and sneered at, and was
required to work from the second day at ignominious and humiliating
labour, such as sweeping, cleaning, and so forth. They were the helots
and scavengers of the prison. Their lot was the more unbearable because
they were debarred from many privileges conferred on those who were
at regular labour, and who were earning wages to spend in part upon
themselves. These regular labourers might buy toothsome food and
cigars, the delight of every Spaniard's heart. Meanwhile the governor
had been watching him closely, noting his disposition and whether
or not he was desirous of taking up work which was so much to his
advantage and of which he would be speedily deprived unless he applied
himself to it with zeal and unflagging industry.
(2) A wide choice of labour obtained in Valencia. Trades and
handicrafts were varied and numerous. Carpenters, turners, saddlers,
shoemakers, fanmakers, workers with esparto grass, weavers of
palm straw hats, silk spinners, tailors, basket makers, were all
represented, and the total was some forty trades, with seven hundred
artisans. To-day there would be nothing remarkable in this industrial
activity, which may be seen in well governed prisons, but in Valencia
at that date (1835-40) it was a novelty due very largely to Montesinos'
initiative, and he could boast that out of three thousand convicts,
barely a fourth left prison without having acquired some smattering
of a trade. Stress must not be laid upon the exact amount of skill
possessed by these prison taught artisans, and it is to be feared
that it was no more thorough than in these latter days of ours, when
the same principles as those of Montesinos have actuated prison
administration. This is the crux of the system of prison instruction.
It cannot be expected to turn out workmen sufficiently well trained and
expert to go out into the open labour market, so generally overcrowded,
and compete for wages against the free labourer who has had the benefit
of full apprenticeship. Adults cannot easily acquire knowledge and
dexterity in the use of tools, and inevitable waste of materials
accompanies the experiments made by unskilled hands. We have no record
of how far these drawbacks affected Montesinos' well-meant practice.
(3) We have no facts to show how far the third period, that of
conditional liberation, was successful at Valencia. There is no
possibility of knowing definitely whether it was really tried or
went beyond the enunciation of the theory so long in advance of our
modern practice. It is little likely, however, that the effective
and elaborate method of police supervision on which it is absolutely
dependent was in existence or even understood in Spain in the days of
Montesinos.
No permanent results seemed to have been achieved by the Montesinos
system. There is no record that it survived the man who created it
or that the government sought to extend the admirable principles
on which it rested. It was essentially a one man system, depending
entirely for success on the personal qualities of the individual
called upon to carry it out. Montesinos was not, however, singular in
his remarkable achievement. The German Obermaier did much the same
in the prison of Kaiserslautern, and Captain Maconochie in Norfolk
Island exercised a notable mastery over the Australian convicts. The
effects produced by Montesinos were little less than phenomenal. He so
developed the probity of his convicts that he could rely implicitly
upon their honesty and good faith. During the civil war he sent them
with confidential despatches to commanders in the field and never had
cause to regret the trust placed in them. They were sent out as scouts
seeking information of the enemy's movements and brought in news with
punctuality and despatch. A message was brought one day to the governor
directing him to send a clerk to fetch a thousand dollars from the
provincial Treasury. Montesinos forthwith summoned one of his convicts
and despatched him, carrying with him the receipt for the money. Within
half an hour the man returned with the dollars. Whenever a convict
escaped from the presidio, a rare occurrence indeed, other convicts
were despatched in pursuit and seldom failed to bring in the fugitive.
At one time the Spanish government decided to build a new prison in
the capital and to employ convict labour in the construction. The
Governor of the presidio of Valencia was ordered to send up a number
of prisoners, and next day at daylight they marched, taking with
them a quantity of material, the whole escorted by a small body of
_cabos_, "prisoner warders," and commanded by a veteran overseer. The
journey was safely made to Madrid without the smallest mishap, not a
sign or symptom of misbehaviour shown on the road, and the alcaldes
of the towns on the route, after anticipating the worst evils, were
agreeably surprised and were satisfied to lodge the travellers at
night in private houses if there was no prison accommodation. A second
experiment of the kind was made in the same year.
On a previous occasion Valencia was threatened by a strong force of
Carlists under that distinguished Carlist general, Cabrera, and it was
feared that he would capture a large body of convicts at that time
employed on a new road, Las Cabrillas, a little distance from the city.
There were hardly any troops in the capital except the city militia
only recently organised and barely equal to the duties and dangers
imposed upon them. Great fears were entertained that Cabrera would
seize the convicts and incorporate with his own force. Montesinos was
desired to prevent this, and he turned up in person one evening at Las
Cabrillas, where he assumed command and drew off the greater number,
happily escaping without attack or interference by the enemy. So loyal
was the demeanour of the Valencian prisoners that under the direction
of Montesinos at another time they were armed and resisted an attack
made upon the gates of their convent prison by the insurgents in a
rising in Valencia. The following extraordinary story is related in an
official publication by the well known poet Don Ramon de Campoamor,
at that time governor of the province of Valencia. A formidable band
of brigands was devastating the neighbourhood of Valencia and a reign
of terror prevailed. The governor sent for Colonel Montesinos and
inquired whether there were any old brigands among the convicts in
custody and who were willing to atone for past misdeeds by coming to
the assistance of the authorities. Montesinos, who made it a rule to
know all his prisoners by heart, their present dispositions, and indeed
their inmost thoughts, spoke confidently of one as quite a reformed
character, and at the governor's request entrusted him with the special
mission of clearing out the country. The convict, after receiving
his instructions, went out with a sufficient escort, hunted down the
brigands, broke up their bands, killing or capturing the whole. Here
the commanding influence of Montesinos was paramount even beyond the
walls of the presidio. By the power of his strong will he called out
fine qualities and exacted loyal service from the worst materials whom
he had won to a high sense of discipline.
A minor and more sentimental instance is recorded of the confidence
he could repose in his reformed criminals. The mother of one of the
convicts was at the point of death. The man was summoned to the
governor's office and informed of her desperate condition. "Do you wish
to see her in her last moments?" asked the governor. "Can I trust you
to return if I give you permission to leave the prison for a time?"
The man much moved solemnly promised not to misuse his liberty. He was
allowed to exchange his prison uniform for a peasant's dress; he went
without escort to his mother's cottage, received her blessing, and went
back to durance as had been agreed.
The experience of Valencia was unique and short-lived. A commendable
effort was made to extend the principles on which Montesinos had acted,
and decrees embodying them and recommending them for general adoption
were issued but soon became a dead letter. Excellent in theory, their
success depended entirely on the man to give them effect. A second
Montesinos did not appear and Spanish prisons continued to exhibit the
worst features down to the present day.
A movement towards prison reform had been commenced as early as 1844,
when three new "model" prisons were planned for Madrid, but their
construction was long delayed. About the same date a model convict
prison was planned at Valladolid, but slow progress was made with
this and with other new prisons, including that of Saragossa, and
at the Casa de Galera of Alcalá de Henares. A penitentiary was also
projected on the island of Cabrera, opposite Cadiz. The chief effort
was concentrated on the model prison of Madrid, which was undertaken
in 1876 after much debate and discussion. It was to be an entirely
new building, to which were devoted all the funds that might have
been expended upon the impossible reform and repair of the hideous
old Saladero. Several years passed before the building began, and not
until 1884 did the tenants of the dismantled Saladero move into the new
prison. It is for the most part on the cellular or separate system,
by which each individual is held strictly apart from his fellows,
according to the most modern ideas, which have claimed to have exerted
a potent effect in the reformation of offenders and the diminution of
crime. Nevertheless the system is still in its trial and its beneficial
results are by no means universally conceded. The new prison is a very
distinct improvement on the old, and the former horrors and atrocities
are fast disappearing, but the secluded solitary life has its own
peculiar terrors which press hardly on transgressors, with results that
are very distinctly deterrent if not very largely reformatory.
What those actually subjected to the treatment feel we may read in
their own effusions. The literary quality of prison writers does not
rank high but they sometimes put their views forcibly. One says of the
"model":--"If I leave this trying place alive I can at least declare
that I have been buried underground and had made the acquaintance of
the grave diggers." Another writer:--"If you wish to know what life is
like here, come and take your lodging inside. They are handsome, but
curious, well provided with means to drive you out of your mind. There
is a water tap which overflows in drought and runs dry in wet weather;
a pocket handkerchief and a towel; a plate, a basin and a wooden spoon,
a broom, a dust box, one blanket and a mattress with four straws that
gives you pain in every limb: many things more, but one alone much
needed is absent, a rope by which you commit suicide."
It has been said that the worst use to which a man may be put is to
shut him up in a prison. A still more wasteful extravagance is to put
him out of the world. The penalties known to Spanish law have been
very various; there have been many forms of imprisonment, perpetual
imprisonment, greater or less detention, exile, the application of
fetters of several sorts, handcuffs, shackles, the _guarda amigo_ or
"holdfriend," the "persuader" or "come along with me"; the leg irons
and waist chains of varying weights. Penal labour was enforced in
_maniobras infimas_ by convicts chained together on public works,
fortifications, harbours and mines. All forms of secondary punishment
have been inflicted, winding up with capital, the death sentence
inflicting the extreme penalty of the law. This last irrevocable act
does not find favour with all Spanish legists, whose chief objection
is the familiar one that when a judicial error has been committed,
rectification is altogether impossible. Spain can add one to the many
well known cases such as those of Callas and Lesurques, and it may be
quoted here as it is probably little known.
The case occurred in Seville and grew out of a sudden quarrel in a
tavern followed by a fight to the death with knives. The combatants
went on the ground and attacked each other in the regular fashion when
one dropped to the ground mortally wounded and the other with his
second ran away. The wounded man's second went up to see whether his
principal was dying or already dead, when he got up and declared that
he was entirely unhurt. He had slipped upon a stone and fallen with
the obviously cowardly desire to escape from his antagonist's attack.
The second was furiously angry and rated his man soundly. He retorted
fiercely and another quarrel and another encounter ensued, also with
knives, in which the first man again fell and this time was killed
outright, by his own second, who at once made off. The body lay where
it had fallen until next morning, when the police found it. The story
of the original quarrel but nothing of the second had become known, and
it was naturally concluded that death had been inflicted by the first
combatant. On the face of it the evidence was conclusive against him,
and he did not attempt to deny the facts as they appeared when arrested
and put upon his trial. At that time the law treated homicide in a duel
as murder and the victim suffered the extreme penalty without protest,
believing himself to be guilty. The truth was never known, until the
real offender, years after, confessed the part he had played, but too
late of course to prevent the judicial murder of the innocent man.
This case has naturally been added to give weight to the many powerful
arguments against capital punishment.
The extreme penalty of the law is nowadays inflicted in Spain by the
_garrote_, a method of strangulation by the tightening of an iron
collar, the substitute for hanging introduced by King Ferdinand VII
(1820). Till then the hanging was carried out in the clumsiest and most
brutal manner. The culprits were dragged by the executioner up the
steps of a ladder leaning against the scaffold. At a certain height
he mounted on the victim's shoulders and thus seated flung himself off
with his victim underneath. As they swung to and fro the hangman's
fingers were busily engaged in choking the convict so as to complete
the strangulation. The _garrote_ is a very simple contrivance. The
condemned man sits on a stool or low seat, leaning his back against a
strong, firm upright post to which an iron collar is fixed. This, when
opened, encircles his neck, and is closed and tightened by a powerful
screw, worked by a lever from behind. Death is instantaneous.
Public executions must prove very popular performances with a people
who still revel in a bull fight and flock to look at the hairbreadth
escapes of human beings from hardly undeserved death by the horns
of a fierce beast tortured into madness. De Foresta, an Italian
traveller,[25] tells us that never was a greater concourse seen in
Madrid than that which collected in 1877 to witness the execution of
two murderers, Mollo and Agullar, when it was estimated that 80,000
people were present. Ford describes an execution in Seville in 1845
when the crowd was enormous and composed largely of the lower orders,
of the humbler ranks, "who hold the conventions of society very cheap
and give loose rein to their morbid curiosity to behold scenes of
terror, which operates powerfully on the women, who seem irresistibly
impelled to witness sights the most repugnant to their nature and to
behold sufferings which they would most dread to undergo," and many of
whom "brought in their arms young children at the beginning of life
to witness its conclusion." "They desire to see how the criminal will
conduct himself, they sympathise with him if he displays coolness and
courage, and despise him on the least symptom of unmanliness."
[25] La Spagna; Da Irun a Malaga, by Adolfo de Foresta, Bologna, 1879.
Ford in his "Gatherings from Spain" gives a graphic account of the
execution of a highway robber, one of the band of the famous José
Maria already mentioned. The culprit, José de Rojas, was nicknamed
"Veneno," poison, from his venomous qualities and had made a desperate
resistance before he was finally overcome by the troops who captured
him. He fell wounded with a bullet in his leg, but killed the soldier
who ran forward to secure him. When in custody he turned traitor and
volunteered to betray his old associates and give such information as
would lead to their arrest if his own life was spared. The offer was
accepted and he was sent out with a sufficient force to seize them.
Such was the terror of his name that all surrendered, but not to him.
On this quibble the indemnity promised him was withdrawn, he was
brought to trial, condemned, and in due course executed on the Plaza
San Francisco, which adjoins the prison in Seville and is commonly used
for public executions.
Ford was admitted within the walls and describes Veneno "_en
capilla_," a small room set apart as a condemned cell, the approach to
which was thronged with officers, portly Franciscan friars and "members
of a charitable brotherhood collecting alms from the visitors to be
expended in masses for the eternal repose of the soul of the criminal.
The levity of those assembled without, formed a heartless contrast with
the gloom and horror of the melancholy interior of the _capilla_. At
the head of the cell was placed a table with a crucifix, an image of
the Virgin and two wax tapers, near which stood a silent sentinel with
a drawn sword. Another soldier was stationed at the door with a fixed
bayonet. In a corner of this darkened compartment lay Veneno curled up
like a snake, with a striped coverlet drawn closely over his mouth,
leaving visible only a head of matted locks, and a glistening dark
eye rolling restlessly out of its deep socket. On being approached he
sprang up and seated himself on a stool. He was almost naked, but a
chaplet of beads hung across his exposed breast and contrasted with
the iron chains around his limbs.... The expression of his face though
low and vulgar was one which, once seen, was not easily forgotten.
His sallow complexion appeared more cadaverous in the uncertain light
and was heightened by a black unshorn beard, growing vigorously on a
half-dead countenance. He appeared to be reconciled to his fate and
repeated a few sentences, the teaching of the monks, as by rote. His
situation was probably more painful to the spectator than himself, an
indifference to death arising rather from an ignorance of its dreadful
import than from high moral courage."
When Veneno came out to die he was clad in a coarse yellow baize gown,
the colour which in Spain denotes the crime of murder and appropriated
always to Judas Iscariot in Spanish paintings, the colour, too, of
the _sanbenito_ or penitential cloak worn by the victims of the
Inquisition at an _auto da fé_. He walked slowly, stopping often to
kiss the crucifix held to his lips by the attendant confessor, a monk
of the Franciscan order, whom it was the convict's privilege to choose
for himself to accompany him to the scaffold. He was met there by the
executioner, a young man dressed in black who proceeded to bind his
naked legs and arms so tightly that they swelled and turned black:
a necessary precaution, as this very executioner's father had been
killed when struggling with a convict unwilling to die. Veneno made
no resistance, but he spoke with supreme contempt of this degraded
functionary, saying, "_Mi delito me mata no ese hombre_" (My crime
kills me and not this creature). He uttered many pious ejaculations,
and his dying cry was, "Viva la Virgen Santisima." The last scene was
ghastly in the extreme. While the priest stood by, "a bloated corpulent
man more occupied in shading the sun from his face than in his ghostly
office," the robber sat with a writhing look of agony, grinding his
clenched teeth. The executioner took the lever of the screw in both
hands, gathered himself up for a strong muscular effort, drew the iron
collar tight while an attendant threw a black handkerchief over the
face. A convulsive pressure of the hands and a heaving of the chest
were the only visible signs of the passing of the convict's spirit.
"After a pause of a few moments the executioner cautiously peeped under
the handkerchief and, after having given another turn of the screw,
lifted it off, carefully put it in his pocket and proceeded to light
a cigar. The face of the dead man was slightly convulsed, the mouth
open, the eye balls turned into their sockets from the wrench. A black
bier with two lanterns fixed on staves was now set down before the
scaffold. A small table and a dish into which alms were again collected
to be paid to the priests who sang masses for his soul was also brought
forward.... The body remained on the scaffold till after noon. It was
then thrown into a scavenger's cart and led by the _pregonero_ or
common crier beyond the jurisdiction of the city to a square platform
called the "mesa del Rey," the king's table, where it was to be
quartered and cut up. Here the carcass was hewed and hacked into pieces
by the bungling executioner and his assistants."
The condemned cell at the Saladero was a part of the prison chapel in
which the Spanish convict spent the last twenty-four hours of life and
was a horrible and painfully gruesome hole. The _capilla_ is described
by de Foresta, who saw it when it was on the eve of abolition. It was
of narrow dimensions, damp, dark, windowless and lighted only with one
or two small candles burning upon the altar which occupied a large
space filling all one wall. In a corner cut off by a black iron railing
from the rest of the chapel was a small space fitted with a bed or
stone shelf with rings to which the convict's chains were fastened and
where he knelt close to the bars to converse with or confess to the
ministering priests. The chapel was dimly lighted by a hanging lamp and
one or two wax candles. Its walls and floor were damp and it received
light and air only through the door. This gruesome den rejoiced in the
name _el confortador_, or the "place of comfort."
Another traveller gives the following graphic account of a Spanish
execution:--
"At seven we find ourselves in the crowd immediately beneath the prison
walls. Large bodies of troops are drawn up on either side of the
_plaza_ and there is a tolerably large concourse of male spectators
present. In a few minutes the mournful cortége appears upon the wall.
First comes the executioner, the Spanish Calcraft, a wiry looking
fellow, carrying a coil of rope; next comes a very stout padre armed
with a baton, and bawling out prayers at the top of his voice; he is
followed by the convict, who walks on in prison uniform, with his
neck bare and arms pinioned, clasping the cross in his hands and
looking literally in a blue fright; a couple more priests and two armed
sentries complete the group, who range themselves along the wall, the
criminal in the centre. The terrible scene is long protracted. The fat
padre roars out _Ave Marias_, exhortations and prayers, waving his
baton frantically in the air and making the miserable wretch repeat
after him. He then clasps him in his arms, and sitting down on chairs
opposite each other, they are covered with a large black pall held
by the supernumerary priests; under this they remain for some time
perfectly motionless, while the poor creature is unburdening his soul
and pouring forth his load of crimes into the ear of his confessor.
"The nerves of the spectators are strained to an intense pitch during
the awful pause, as is evident from the oppressive silence which
prevails and the anxious looks directed at the scaffold. At length the
pall is removed and the executioner proceeds to business. The culprit
is made to sit against an upright post to which he is firmly lashed;
the _garrote_, a machine consisting of an iron collar worked back by
a powerful screw and a long lever, is carefully adjusted round his
neck, a small handkerchief thrown over his face and all is ready. The
priest recommences shouting while the executioner, preparing himself
for a mighty effort, suddenly turns the handle two or three times as
quick as lightning; the head of the victim drops, the knees and arms
quiver for a few seconds and all is over. Priests and sentries retire,
Calcraft peeps under the handkerchief and, whipping it off with a
jerk, immediately disappears, leaving the ghastly corpse exposed to
open view. It is a sickening and disgusting sight: the face is of a
livid hue, the tongue protruding, and shedding saliva on the breast;
the bystanders shudder, the troops march off with drums gaily beating
and the crowd slowly disperses. I make a rapid sketch of the body and
return to the hotel fully satisfied that, were it not for the cruel
state of suspense in which the criminal is kept before the execution,
the punishment of the _garrote_ is far more merciful and expeditious
than the less speedy death by hanging in this country."
The profession of hangman does not entitle those who practise it to
the very highest honour, although in France in the case of the Sansons
it was an hereditary office in which son succeeded father for many
generations and the family took considerable pride in their functions.
In Spain the _verdugo_ is by no means a popular person. De Foresta, the
Italian traveller already quoted, tells us that in several towns he saw
a person of forbidding aspect who was walking about with a camp stool
under his arm and generally shunned. On enquiry he was informed that
this was the gentleman who administered the _garrote_. He was strictly
forbidden to take a seat at a café or in any place of public resort,
hence the camp stool on which he rested himself when tired. No one
recognised or addressed to him a single word. De Foresta's comment on
this is a story of the French executioner who, when called to Nice to
guillotine a criminal, was unable to find anywhere to lay his head.
He was turned away from every door, was refused a mouthful of food
and was obliged to dine on what he could find at the railway station
restaurant, and he spent the night in walking up and down the platform.
It may not be generally known that in England the executioner is
provided with board and lodging in the gaol where his victim is waiting
to be "finished."
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Superscript text is represented with carat and brackets (i.e. E=MC^{2} )
Minor punctuation and printer errors repaired.