Sheffield.
There is a record of a person being alive immediately after hanging, in the
_Local Historian's Table-book_, vol. ii. pp. 43, 44., and under the date
May 23, 1752. It is there stated, Ewan Macdonald, a recruit in General
Guise's regiment of {455} Highlanders, then quartered in
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, murdered a cooper named Parker, and was executed on
September 28, pursuant to his sentence. He was only nineteen years of age,
and at the gallows endeavoured to throw the executioner off the ladder. The
statement concludes with--"his body was taken to the surgeons' hall and
there dissected;" and the following is appended as a foot-note:
"It was said that, after the body was taken to the surgeons' hall, and
placed ready for dissection, the surgeons were called to attend a case
at the infirmary, who, on their return, found Macdonald so far
recovered as to be sitting up. He immediately begged for mercy; but a
young surgeon, not wishing to be disappointed of the dissection, seized
a wooden mall, with which he deprived him of life. It was farther
reported, as the just vengeance of God, that this young man was soon
after killed in the stable by his own horse. They used to show a mall
at the surgeons' hall, as the identical one used by the surgeon."