Rightly or wrongly, during the last twenty or thirty years a strong
feeling has grown up in the public mind against the principle, and a
still stronger feeling against the practice, of capital punishments.
Many people who will admit that the execution of the murderer may be,
abstractly considered, just enough, sincerely doubt whether such
execution be expedient, and are in their own minds perfectly certain
that it cannot fail to demoralise the spectators. In consequence of
this, executions have become rare; and it is quite clear that many
scoundrels, well worthy of the noose, contrive to escape it. When, on
the occasion of a wretch being turned off, the spectators are few, it
is remarked by the newspapers that the mob is beginning to lose its
proverbial cruelty, and to be stirred by humane pulses; when they are
numerous, and especially when girls and women form a majority, the
circumstance is noticed and deplored. It is plain enough that, if the
newspaper considered such an exhibition beneficial, it would not lament
over a few thousand eager witnesses: if the sermon be edifying, you
cannot have too large a congregation; if you teach a moral lesson in a
grand, impressive way, it is difficult to see how you can have too many
pupils. Of course, neither the justice nor the expediency of capital
punishments falls to be discussed here. This, however, may be said,
that the popular feeling against them may not be so admirable a proof
of enlightenment as many believe. It is true that the spectacle is
painful, horrible; but in pain and horror there is often hidden a
certain salutariness, and the repulsion of which we are conscious is as
likely to arise from debilitation of public nerve, as from a higher
reach of public feeling. To my own thinking, it is out of this pain
and hatefulness that an execution becomes invested with an ideal
grandeur. It is sheer horror to all concerned--sheriffs, halbertmen,
chaplain, spectators, Jack Ketch, and culprit; but out of all this, and
towering behind the vulgar and hideous accessories of the scaffold,
gleams the majesty of implacable law. When every other fine morning a
dozen cut-purses were hanged at Tyburn, and when such sights did not
run very strongly against the popular current, the spectacle was
vulgar, and could be of use only to the possible cut-purses congregated
around the foot of the scaffold. Now, when the law has become so far
merciful; when the punishment of death is reserved for the murderer;
when he can be condemned only on the clearest evidence; when, as the
days draw slowly on to doom, the frightful event impending over one
stricken wretch throws its shadow over the heart of every man, woman,
and child in the great city; and when the official persons whose duty
it is to see the letter of the law carried out perform that duty at the
expense of personal pain,--a public execution is not vulgar, it becomes
positively sublime. It is dreadful, of course; but its dreadfulness
melts into pure awfulness. The attention is taken off the criminal,
and is lost in a sense of the grandeur of justice; and the spectator
who beholds an execution, solely as it appears to the eye, without
recognition of the idea which towers behind it, must be a very
unspiritual and unimaginative spectator indeed.
It is taken for granted that the spectators of public executions--the
artisans and country people who take up their stations overnight as
close to the barriers as possible, and the wealthier classes who occupy
hired windows and employ opera-glasses--are merely drawn together by a
morbid relish for horrible sights. He is a bold man who will stand
forward as the advocate of such persons--so completely is the popular
mind made up as to their tastes and motives. It is not disputed that
the large body of the mob, and of the occupants at windows, have been
drawn together by an appetite for excitement; but it is quite possible
that many come there from an impulse altogether different. Just
consider the nature of the expected sight,--a man in tolerable health
probably, in possession of all his faculties, perfectly able to realise
his position, conscious that for him this world and the next are so
near that only a few seconds divide them--such a man stands in the
seeing of several thousand eyes. He is so peculiarly circumstanced, so
utterly lonely,--hearing the tolling of his own death-bell, yet living,
wearing the mourning clothes for his own funeral,--that he holds the
multitude together by a shuddering fascination. The sight is a
peculiar one, you must admit, and every peculiarity has its
attractions. Your volcano is more attractive than your ordinary
mountain. Then consider the unappeasable curiosity as to death which
haunts every human being, and how pathetic that curiosity is, in so far
as it suggests our own ignorance and helplessness, and we see at once
that people _may_ flock to public executions for other purposes than
the gratification of morbid tastes: that they would pluck if they could
some little knowledge of what death is; that imaginatively they attempt
to reach to it, to touch and handle it through an experience which is
not their own. It is some obscure desire of this kind, a movement of
curiosity not altogether ignoble, but in some degree pathetic; some
rude attempt of the imagination to wrest from the death of the criminal
information as to the great secret in which each is profoundly
interested, which draws around the scaffold people from the country
harvest-fields, and from the streets and alleys of the town. Nothing
interests men so much as death. Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale
it. "A greater crowd would come to see me hanged," Cromwell is
reported to have said when the populace came forth on a public
occasion. The Lord Protector was right in a sense of which, perhaps,
at the moment he was not aware. Death is greater than official
position. When a man has to die, he may safely dispense with stars and
ribbands. He is invested with a greater dignity than is held in the
gift of kings. A greater crowd _would_ have gathered to see Cromwell
hanged, but the compliment would have been paid to death rather than to
Cromwell. Never were the motions of Charles I. so scrutinised as when
he stood for a few moments on the scaffold that winter morning at
Whitehall. King Louis was no great orator usually, but when on the 2d
January, 1793, he attempted to speak a few words in the Place De la
Revolution, it was found necessary to drown his voice in a harsh roll
of soldiers' drums. Not without a meaning do people come forth to see
men die. We stand in the valley, they on the hill-top, and on their
faces strikes the light of the other world, and from some sign or
signal of theirs we attempt to discover or extract a hint of what it is
all like.
To be publicly put to death, for whatever reason, must ever be a
serious matter. It is always bitter, but there are degrees in its
bitterness. It is easy to die like Stephen with an opened heaven above
you, crowded with angel faces. It is easy to die like Balmerino with a
chivalrous sigh for the White Rose, and an audible "God bless King
James." Such men die for a cause in which they glory, and are
supported thereby; they are conducted to the portals of the next world
by the angels, Faith, Pity, Admiration. But it is not easy to die in
expiation of a crime like murder, which engirdles you with trembling
and horror even in the loneliest places, which cuts you off from the
sympathies of your kind, which reduces the universe to two elements--a
sense of personal identity, and a memory of guilt. In so dying, there
must be inconceivable bitterness; a man can have no other support than
what strength he may pluck from despair, or from the iron with which
nature may have originally braced heart and nerve. Yet, taken as a
whole, criminals on the scaffold comport themselves creditably. They
look Death in the face when he wears his cruelest aspect, and if they
flinch somewhat, they can at least bear to look. I believe that, for
the criminal, execution within the prison walls, with no witnesses save
some half-dozen official persons, would be infinitely more terrible
than execution in the presence of a curious, glaring mob. The daylight
and the publicity are alien elements, which wean the man a little from
himself. He steadies his dizzy brain on the crowd beneath and around
him. He has his last part to play, and his manhood rallies to play it
well. Nay, so subtly is vanity intertwined with our motives, the
noblest and the most ignoble, that I can fancy a poor wretch with the
noose dangling at his ear, and with barely five minutes to live,
soothed somewhat with the idea that his firmness and composure will
earn him the approbation, perhaps the pity, of the spectators. He
would take with him, if he could, the good opinion of his fellows.
This composure of criminals puzzles one. Have they looked at death so
long and closely, that familiarity has robbed it of terror? Has life
treated them so harshly, that they are tolerably well pleased to be
quit of it on any terms? Or is the whole thing mere blind stupor and
delirium, in which thought is paralysed, and the man an automaton?
Speculation is useless. The fact remains that criminals for the most
part die well and bravely. It is said that the championship of England
was to be decided at some little distance from London on the morning of
the day on which Thurtell was executed, and that, when he came out on
the scaffold, he inquired privily of the executioner if the result had
yet become known. Jack Ketch was not aware, and Thurtell expressed his
regret that the ceremony in which he was chief actor should take place
so inconveniently early in the day. Think of a poor Thurtell forced to
take his long journey an hour, perhaps, before the arrival of
intelligence so important!
More than twenty years ago I saw two men executed, and the impression
then made remains fresh to this day. For this there were many reasons.
The deed for which the men suffered created an immense sensation. They
were hanged on the spot where the murder was committed--on a rising
ground, some four miles north-east of the city; and as an attempt at
rescue was apprehended, there was a considerable display of military
force on the occasion. And when, in the dead silence of thousands, the
criminals stood beneath the halters, an incident occurred, quite
natural and slight in itself, but when taken in connection with the
business then proceeding, so unutterably tragic, so overwhelming in its
pathetic suggestion of contrast, that the feeling of it has never
departed, and never will. At the time, too, I speak of, I was very
young; the world was like a die newly cut, whose every impression is
fresh and vivid.
While the railway which connects two northern capitals was being built,
two brothers from Ireland, named Doolan, were engaged upon it in the
capacity of navvies. For some fault or negligence, one of the brothers
was dismissed by the overseer--a Mr. Green--of that particular portion
of the line on which they were employed. The dismissed brother went
off in search of work, and the brother who remained--Dennis was the
Christian name of him--brooded over this supposed wrong, and in his
dull, twilighted brain revolved projects of vengeance. He did not
absolutely mean to take Green's life, but he meant to thrash him within
an inch of it. Dennis, anxious to thrash Green, but not quite seeing
his way to it, opened his mind one afternoon, when work was over, to
his friends--fellow-Irishmen and navvies--Messrs. Redding and Hickie.
These took up Doolan's wrong as their own, and that evening, by the
dull light of a bothy fire, they held a rude parliament, discussing
ways and means of revenge. It was arranged that Green should be
thrashed--the amount of thrashing left an open question, to be decided,
unhappily, when the blood was up and the cinder of rage blown into a
flame. Hickie's spirit was found not to be a mounting one, and it was
arranged that the active partners in the game should be Doolan and
Redding. Doolan, as the aggrieved party, was to strike the first blow,
and Redding, as the aggrieved party's particular friend, asked and
obtained permission to strike the second. The main conspirators, with
a fine regard for the feelings of the weaker Hickie, allowed him to
provide the weapons of assault,--so that by some slight filament of aid
he might connect himself with the good cause. The unambitious Hickie
at once applied himself to his duty. He went out, and in due time
returned with two sufficient iron pokers. The weapons were examined,
approved of, and carefully laid aside. Doolan, Redding, and Hickie ate
their suppers, and retired to their several couches to sleep,
peacefully enough no doubt. About the same time, too, Green, the
English overseer, threw down his weary limbs, and entered on his last
sleep--little dreaming what the morning had in store for him.
Uprose the sun, and uprose Doolan and Redding, and dressed, and thrust
each his sufficient iron poker up the sleeve of his blouse, and went
forth. They took up their station on a temporary wooden bridge which
spanned the line, and waited there. Across the bridge, as was
expected, did Green ultimately come. He gave them good morning; asked,
"why they were loafing about?" received no very pertinent answer,
perhaps did not care to receive one; whistled--the unsuspecting
man!--thrust his hands into his breeches pockets, turned his back on
them, and leaned over the railing of the bridge, inspecting the
progress of the works beneath. The temptation was really too great.
What could wild Irish flesh and blood do? In a moment out from the
sleeve of Doolan's blouse came the hidden poker, and the first blow was
struck, bringing Green to the ground. The friendly Redding, who had
bargained for the second, and who, naturally enough, was in fear of
being cut out altogether, jumped on the prostrate man, and fulfilled
his share of the bargain with a will. It was Redding it was supposed
who sped the unhappy Green. They overdid their work--like young
authors--giving many more blows than were sufficient, and then fled.
The works, of course, were that morning in consternation. Redding and
Hickie were, if I remember rightly, apprehended in the course of the
day. Doolan got off, leaving no trace of his whereabouts.
These particulars were all learned subsequently. The first intimation
which we schoolboys received of anything unusual having occurred, was
the sight of a detachment of soldiers with fixed bayonets, trousers
rolled up over muddy boots, marching past the front of the Cathedral
hurriedly home to barracks. This was a circumstance somewhat unusual.
We had, of course, frequently seen a couple of soldiers trudging along
with sloped muskets, and that cruel glitter of steel which no one of us
could look upon quite unmoved; but in such cases, the deserter walking
between them in his shirt-sleeves, his pinioned hands covered from
public gaze by the loose folds of his great-coat, explained everything.
But from the hurried march of these mud-splashed men, nothing could be
gathered, and we were left to speculate upon its meaning. Gradually,
however, before the evening fell, the rumour of a murder having been
committed spread through the city, and with that I instinctively
connected the apparition of the file of muddy soldiers. Next day,
murder was in every mouth. My school-fellows talked of it to the
detriment of their lessons; it flavoured the tobacco of the fustian
artisan as he smoked to work after breakfast; it walked on 'Change
amongst the merchants. It was known that two of the persons implicated
had been captured, but that the other, and guiltiest, was still at
large; and in a few days out on every piece of boarding and blank wall
came the "Hue and cry"--describing Doolan like a photograph, to the
colour and cut of his whiskers, and offering 100 pounds as reward for
his apprehension, or for such information as would lead to his
apprehension--like a silent, implacable bloodhound following close on
the track of the murderer. This terrible broadsheet I read, was
certain that _he_ had read it also, and fancy ran riot over the ghastly
fact. For him no hope, no rest, no peace, no touch of hands gentler
than the hangman's; all the world is after him like a roaring prairie
of flame! I thought of Doolan, weary, foot-sore, heart-sore, entering
some quiet village of an evening; and to quench his thirst, going up to
the public well, around which the gossips are talking, and hearing that
they were talking of _him_; and seeing from the well itself IT glaring
upon him, as if conscious of his presence, with a hundred eyes of
vengeance. I thought of him asleep in out-houses, and starting up in
wild dreams of the policeman's hand upon his shoulder fifty times ere
morning. He had committed the crime of Cain, and the weird of Cain he
had to endure. But yesterday innocent, how unimportant; to-day
bloody-handed, the whole world is talking of him, and everything he
touches, the very bed he sleeps on, steals from him his secret, and is
eager to betray!
Doolan was finally captured in Liverpool, and in the Spring Assize the
three men were brought to trial. The jury found them guilty, but
recommended Hickie to mercy on account of some supposed weakness of
mind on his part. Sentence was, of course, pronounced with the usual
solemnities. They were set apart to die; and when snug abed o'
nights--for imagination is most mightily moved by contrast--I crept
into their desolate hearts, and tasted a misery which was not my own.
As already said, Hickie was recommended to mercy, and the
recommendation was ultimately in the proper quarter given effect to.
The evening before the execution has arrived, and the reader has now to
imagine the early May sunset falling pleasantly on the outskirts of the
city. The houses looking out upon an open square or space, have little
plots of garden-ground in their fronts, in which mahogany-coloured
wall-flowers and mealy auriculas are growing. The side of this square,
along which the City Road stretches northward, is occupied by a
blind-asylum, a brick building, the bricks painted red and picked out
with white, after the tidy English fashion, and a high white cemetery
wall, over which peers the spire of the Gothic Cathedral; and beyond
that, on the other side of the ravine, rising out of the populous city
of the dead, a stone John Knox looks down on the Cathedral, a Bible
clutched in his outstretched and menacing hand. On all this the May
sunset is striking, dressing everything in its warm, pleasant pink,
lingering in the tufts of foliage that nestle around the asylum, and
dipping the building itself one half in light, one half in tender
shade. This open space or square is an excellent place for the games
of us boys, and "Prisoner's Base" is being carried out with as much
earnestness as the business of life now by those of us who are left.
The girls, too, have their games of a quiet kind, which we held in huge
scorn and contempt. In two files, linked arm-in-arm, they alternately
dance towards each other and then retire, singing the while, in their
clear, girlish treble, verses, the meaning and pertinence of which time
has worn away--
"The Campsie Duke's a-riding, a-riding, a-riding,"
being the oft-recurring "owercome," or refrain. All this is going on
in the pleasant sunset light, when by the apparition of certain waggons
coming up from the city, piled high with blocks and beams, and guarded
by a dozen dragoons, on whose brazen helmets the sunset danced, every
game is dismembered, and we are in a moment a mere mixed mob of boys
and girls, flocking around to stare and wonder. Just at this place
something went wrong with one of the waggon wheels, and the procession
came to a stop. A crowd collected, and we heard some of the grown-up
people say, that the scaffold was being carried out for the ceremony of
to-morrow. Then, more intensely than ever, one realised the condition
of the doomed men. _We_ were at our happy games in the sunset, _they_
were entering on their last night on earth. After hammering and delay
the wheel was put to rights, the sunset died out, waggons and dragoons
got into motion and disappeared; and all the night through, whether
awake or asleep, I saw the torches burning, and heard the hammers
clinking, and witnessed as clearly as if I had been an onlooker, the
horrid structure rising, till it stood complete, with a huge cross-beam
from which two empty halters hung, in the early morning light.
Next morning the whole city was in commotion. Whether the authorities
were apprehensive that a rescue would be attempted, or were anxious
merely to strike terror into the hundreds of wild Irishry engaged on
the railway, I cannot say: in any case, there was a display of military
force quite unusual. The carriage in which the criminals--Catholics
both--and their attendant priests were seated, was guarded by soldiers
with fixed bayonets; indeed, the whole regiment then lying in the city
was massed in front and behind, with a cold, frightful glitter of
steel. Besides the foot soldiers, there were dragoons, and two pieces
of cannon; a whole little army, in fact. With a slenderer force
battles have been won which have made a mark in history. What did the
prisoners think of their strange importance, and of the tramp and
hurly-burly all around? When the procession moved out of the city, it
seemed to draw with it almost the entire population; and when once the
country roads were reached, the crowds spread over the fields on either
side, ruthlessly treading down the tender wheat braird. I got a
glimpse of the doomed, blanched faces which had haunted me so long, at
the turn of the road, where, for the first time, the black cross-beam
with its empty halters first became visible to them. Both turned and
regarded it with a long, steady look; that done, they again bent their
heads attentively to the words of the clergyman. I suppose in that
long, eager, fascinated gaze they practically _died_--that for them
death had no additional bitterness. When the mound was reached on
which the scaffold stood, there was immense confusion. Around it a
wide space was kept clear by the military; the cannon were placed in
position; out flashed the swords of the dragoons; beneath and around on
every side was the crowd. Between two brass helmets I could see the
scaffold clearly enough, and when in a little while the men, bareheaded
and with their attendants, appeared upon it, the surging crowd became
stiffened with fear and awe. And now it was that the incident so
simple, so natural, so much in the ordinary course of things, and yet
so frightful in its tragic suggestions, took place. Be it remembered
that the season was early May, that the day was fine, that the
wheat-fields were clothing themselves in the green of the young crop,
and that around the scaffold, standing on a sunny mound, a wide space
was kept clear. When the men appeared beneath the beam, each under his
proper halter, there was a dead silence,--every one was gazing too
intently to whisper to his neighbour even. Just then, out of the
grassy space at the foot of the scaffold, in the dead silence audible
to all, a lark rose from the side of its nest, and went singing upward
in its happy flight. O heaven! how did that song translate itself into
dying ears? Did it bring, in one wild burning moment, father and
mother, and poor Irish cabin, and prayers said at bed-time, and the
smell of turf fires, and innocent sweethearting, and rising and setting
suns? Did it--but the dragoon's horse has become restive, and his
brass helmet bobs up and down and blots everything; and there is a
sharp sound, and I feel the great crowd heave and swing, and hear it
torn by a sharp shiver of pity, and the men whom I saw so near but a
moment ago are at immeasurable distance, and have solved the great
enigma,--and the lark has not yet finished his flight: you can see and
hear him yonder in the fringe of a white May cloud.
This ghastly lark's flight, when the circumstances are taken in
consideration, is, I am inclined to think, more terrible than anything
of the same kind which I have encountered in books. The artistic uses
of contrast as background and accompaniment, are well known to nature
and the poets. Joy is continually worked on sorrow, sorrow on joy;
riot is framed in peace, peace in riot. Lear and the Fool always go
together. Trafalgar is being fought while Napoleon is sitting on
horseback watching the Austrian army laying down its arms at Ulm. In
Hood's poem, it is when looking on the released schoolboys at their
games that Eugene Aram remembers he is a murderer. And these two poor
Irish labourers could not die without hearing a lark singing in their
ears. It is nature's fashion. She never quite goes along with us.
She is sombre at weddings, sunny at funerals, and she frowns on
ninety-nine out of a hundred picnics.
There is a stronger element of terror in this incident of the lark than
in any story of a similar kind I can remember.
A good story is told of an Irish gentleman--still known in London
society--who inherited the family estates and the family banshee. The
estates he lost--no uncommon circumstance in the history of Irish
gentlemen,--but the banshee, who expected no favours, stuck to him in
his adversity, and crossed the channel with him, making herself known
only on occasions of death-beds and sharp family misfortunes. This
gentleman had an ear, and, seated one night at the opera, the
_keen_--heard once or twice before on memorable occasions--thrilled
through the din of the orchestra and the passion of the singers. He
hurried home, of course, found his immediate family well, but on the
morrow a telegram arrived with the announcement of a brother's death.
Surely of all superstitions that is the most imposing which makes the
other world interested in the events which befall our mortal lot. For
the mere pomp and pride of it, your ghost is worth a dozen retainers,
and it is entirely inexpensive. The peculiarity and supernatural worth
of this story lies in the idea of the old wail piercing through the
sweet entanglement of stringed instruments and extinguishing Grisi.
Modern circumstances and luxury crack, as it were, and reveal for a
moment misty and aboriginal time big with portent. There is a
ridiculous Scotch story in which one gruesome touch lives. A
clergyman's female servant was seated in the kitchen one Saturday night
reading the Scriptures, when she was somewhat startled by hearing at
the door the tap and voice of her sweetheart. Not expecting him, and
the hour being somewhat late, she opened it in astonishment, and was
still more astonished to hear him on entering abuse Scripture-reading.
He behaved altogether in an unprecedented manner, and in many ways
terrified the poor girl. Ultimately he knelt before her, and laid his
head on her lap. You can fancy her consternation when glancing down
she discovered that, _instead of hair, the head was covered with the
moss of the moorland_. By a sacred name she adjured him to tell who he
was, and in a moment the figure was gone. It was the Fiend, of
course--diminished sadly since Milton saw him bridge chaos--fallen from
worlds to kitchen-wenches. But just think how in the story, in
half-pity, in half-terror, the popular feeling of homelessness, of
being outcast, of being unsheltered as waste and desert places, has
incarnated itself in that strange covering of the head. It is a true
supernatural touch. One other story I have heard in the misty
Hebrides: A Skye gentleman was riding along an empty moorland road.
All at once, as if it had sprung from the ground, the empty road was
crowded by a funeral procession. Instinctively he drew his horse to a
side to let it pass, which it did without sound of voice, without tread
of foot. Then he knew it was an apparition. Staring on it, he knew
every person who either bore the corpse or walked behind as mourners.
There were the neighbouring proprietors at whose houses he dined, there
were the members of his own kirk-session, there were the men to whom he
was wont to give good-morning when he met them on the road or at
market. Unable to discover his own image in the throng, he was
inwardly marvelling whose funeral it _could_ be, when the troop of
spectres vanished, and the road was empty as before. Then, remembering
that the coffin had an invisible occupant, he cried out, "It is my
funeral!" and, with all his strength taken out of him, rode home to
die. All these stories have their own touches of terror; yet I am
inclined to think that my lark rising from the scaffold foot, and
singing to two such auditors, is more terrible than any one of them.