CLXXIII. THE EXECUTIONER’S STORY――A QUIET CHAT WITH MARWOOD
Shortly after the execution of Charles Peace the following interview took place between a journalist and Marwood.
“The Irish call me the Prince of Executioners!” A gentleman of medium height, with a ruddy face, puckered in humorous wrinkles, and with bright eyes, shining with a merry light, utters these words to me in a voice sweet and low――almost gentle as a woman’s.
It is Marwood, the executioner; he has just washed his hands of Peace’s death, and now sits opposite me in the cozy drawing-room of a gentleman’s villa, not far away from Armley gaol.
As he entered the room in his black suit of clerical cut I had an idea that he dropped a carpet-bag in the passage――a bag containing the rope and straps by the aid of which he had taken the life of a fellow-being an hour ago; but he advanced towards me in such a pleasant way, and bowed so politely, that my dread soon vanished, and in a few minutes we were in the midst of a quiet chat on the subject of Peace’s execution.
Without, the snow fell thickly, and a piercing wind swept round the house, with an angry, stormy sound; but within the curtains were drawn; a bright fire sent its glow throughout the room, and now and then gleamed on Marwood’s face, making it look quite benevolent.
Seated by the fireside, conversing earnestly, we did not notice that the gentleman whose guest he was had tired of knocking, and entered the room to welcome his old friend.
Seeing him, Marwood immediately rose from the arm-chair in which he had been seated, and, bowing, said: “My kind regards. I pray that we may have happy lives, and that our work will be well done on earth.”
A rosy-cheeked, chubby-face boy toddled into the room as he was speaking, and, seeing the little fellow, Marwood patted him on the head kindly, and with a smile on his face said: “I hope you will make a very good man.”
A kind-hearted man enough, despite his profession, the executioner had promised me a private interview, and as soon as we were alone again he referred to the great skill he had attained in the science of hanging, and told me how Peace met his death.
“A firmer step never walked to the scaffold,” he said. “I admired his bravery; he met his fate like a man; he acknowledged his guilt, and his hope in God with regard to his future was very good.”
“But,” I asked, “don’t you think he feared death?”
“No,” replied Marwood; “during the seven years I have officiated as executioner I never met a man who faced death with greater calmness.”
“You mean to say then that he met his fate without a tremour?”
“Yes,” responded the executioner. “It’s true he shivered a bit; but not through fear. It was a bitter winter’s morning, and he complained of the cold.”
“It is not surprising,” I said, “that a man like Peace, who has been face to face with danger so often should endeavour to die without betraying any weakness or timidity.”
“The bravery was an outcome of his nature,” replied Marwood. “He was ignorant alike of weakness and timidity. I will prove it to you. He had been suffering from a bad cough for some days. The night before his execution he said to one of his warders, ‘I wonder whether Mr. Marwood can cure this bad cough of mine?’ The warder replied, ‘I have no doubt he could.’ And I can tell you that a man who jokes about getting hanged to cure a cough is no coward.’
“Do you think he suffered much?” I asked.
“Not in the least; he was dead instantly. But perhaps I had better tell you what occurred just before the execution.
“It is a most curious thing. He had got hold of the idea that I should terribly punish him at the scaffold, and he repeatedly asked the chief warder to be sure and tell me that he wished for an interview about a quarter of as hour before he was led out to die.
“Accordingly at ten minutes to eight o’clock I went to the condemned cell, which stands about in the centre of the gaol, some hundred yards from the place where the scaffold was erected. Peace was seated――he was in his convict dress, and there were several officials attending upon him. The bandage had been removed from his head; and he did not wear spectacles.
“He was neither weak nor prostrate, but sat upright on his chair, as if he had never known a moment’s illness. When I appeared in the doorway he seemed pleased, and holding out his hand said, ‘I am glad to see you, Mr. Marwood. I wish to have a word with you. I do hope you will not punish me. I hope you will do your work quickly.’
“‘You shall not suffer pain from my hand,’ I replied; and then Peace, grasping my arm, said, ‘God bless you. I hope to meet you all in Heaven. I am thankful to say my sins are all forgiven.’
“It was now time to pinion him,” continued the executioner. “He stood up at my request, but did not really need the support of the two warders by his side. He was not at all nervous, and quietly submitted to my operations. Pinioning is a very ingenious process.
“I run a main strap round the body; and connected with it are two other straps, which take the small of the arm, so that the elbows are fastened close to the body and the hands are free.
“Peace complained, saying, ‘The straps fit very tight.’ I replied, ‘It is better so; it will prevent you from suffering.’ He made no further objection; and taking hold of the main strap, so as to keep my hand on him, we started for the scaffold.
“The governor and the under-sheriff went first, then came the chaplain; and I followed with the condemned man, two warders attending him, one on each side. They grasped him by the arms, but did not support him. He was bare-headed. His face was pale, but pinched with cold rather than fear.
“As he arrived near the scaffold he gave a very wistful look at my arrangements. They were all right, and seemed to satisfy him, for he made no remark. He went up the steps leading to the drop with a firm tread, whilst the chaplain read the burial service. I brought him to a proper stand under the crossbar, and then strapped his legs.
“When that was done he wished to say something to the reporters, and made a beautiful speech. Such a speech has never come from a condemned man I have executed.
“It was really a good speech. When he had finished it he asked for a drink; but you know that was unreasonable, and it could not be admitted, for the time fixed for the execution had fully expired.
“So I placed the cap over his face, and adjusted the rope, when he said――‘I say, the rope fits very tight.’ I replied, ‘Never mind; it’s all for the best; hold up your chin,’ and he did so immediately, so that I could properly fix the rope. ‘Good-bye, all; God bless you,’ he kept repeating as I went towards the lever.
“At this time he did not require anyone to support him, but I told one of the warders to take hold of the back strap.
“Whilst he stood in this manner on the drop, with the noose around his neck, I pushed the lever forward; it withdrew the bolt from the swinging doors, and Peace’s body fell through the aperture beneath the platform. The drop was exactly nine feet four inches.
“Peace was dead in a moment; he never moved a finger or a muscle after he fell; so I carried out my promise to do it well and quickly.”
I must admit that I was rather astonished at the matter-of-fact and yet complacent way in which Marwood described the execution, and modestly referred to his own dexterity; but I was anxious to know by what method he had obtained such success as an executioner, and endeavoured to glean from him the mysteries of his art.
The explanation is explicit, but rather embarrassing. The old system on which Calcraft rested his faith was, he told me, the system of strangulation, which frequently resulted in great suffering, especially when the short drop did not kill the man, and the executioner had to pull at his legs until the miserable being was lifeless.
“But my process is humane,” says Marwood, “for it entails no suffering whatever. My principles are rapidity and dislocation.
“When the neck is dislocated the man does not suffer at all――at least, that is my opinion. I have no doubt that if you examined Peace you would find the spinal cord severed. It is done in this way. I attach the rope to the cross-bar; the noose at the opposite end is formed by a brass ring woven in the rope, and this is placed on the left side of the neck towards the chin.”
Anxious to give me a correct idea of his process, he placed his finger on my own neck to signify the exact locality, and I began to grow nervous, and to wonder whether I had committed some diabolical murder or other, and was about to suffer for my sin. I suddenly became very wise as to the adjustment of the noose, and told Marwood that I had a very vivid idea of the perfection of the arrangement, with the intention of leading him to speak on some topic not quite so personal, but he said he had made this subject the study of his life, and he continued to point out the merits of the long drop, compared with the short drop, and to speak earnestly of the advantages derived from the alteration.
I am not very easily frightened, but I found this dissertation on the science of hanging oppress me. I had a desire to get outside the house――to get into a freer atmosphere.
I could almost imagine that if I didn’t, and that speedily, I should not escape the long drop myself.
Still there was nothing terrible about Mr. Marwood, as he reclined in his easy chair, and spoke in his soft, pleasant tones of the strange experiences he had gone through.
“I am doing God’s work,” he said, “according to the Divine command, and the law of the British Crown. I do it simply as a matter of duty, and as a Christian, and I think no more of it than I do of chatting to you now.”
Such is the affable man who executed Peace. Conscious that he is doing his duty, the character of the profession he follows has no influence upon him, and he claims to be a benefactor to society.
I asked him what induced him to adopt such a mode of gaining his livelihood, and he replied: “Oh, when I heard the old gentleman, Calcraft, was breaking down, and I saw the accounts of his bungling work, I thought if I could carry out the sentence of the law more mercifully it would be a service to the public.
“I always had a love of anatomy, and even when a boy was greatly interested in executions, but it is a most singular fact that I never saw an execution until I myself became an executioner. I do my duty with a kind hand, and with firmness, and believe I really render a benefit to society. I have been successful in every engagement, and I am respected wherever I go.
“I have told you that in Ireland I am known as the Prince of Executioners;’ in Scotland I have received the kindest treatment, and if I were really a prince I could not be better served. In the past seven years more than 100 persons have died at my hand; but I cannot tell you the exact number, as I do not now keep a record.”
“Are you ever haunted by the features of those you have executed?” I asked in desperation, thinking that perhaps I might surprise him into some expression of feeling.
“Bless your life, no,” he said, smiling. I sleep as soundly as a child, and am never disturbed by phantoms. Where there is guilt there is bad sleeping, but I am not disturbed in the least, for I am conscious that I try to live a blameless life.
“The other night I slept in the warder’s apartments in Armley gaol peacefully and undisturbed, although I had superintended the erection of the scaffold, and knew I had to execute Peace in the morning. It is a matter of duty with me entirely.”
“Have all the criminals who have received your attentions acted courageously on the scaffold?”
“Well,” Marwood replied, “taking them altogether they are a brave lot. The worst job I ever had was with a Spaniard, a sailor, at Usk, in Monmouth. He had murdered a man, his wife, and three children, and then set the house on fire. He was sentenced to death; and when he saw me enter the cell with the straps he fainted, and was saved from falling by two warders.
“I put the straps upon him; and said in an authoritative voice, ‘Stand up, sir.’ It was only a sham faint. I told him I would not have such nonsense, and he stood up immediately. With this lesson he walked out, and was hanged quietly. Peace, however, gave me no trouble of this kind, but met his fate like a man.”
I now ventured to ask the executioner if he was not looked upon with some degree of loathing when he became the successor of Calcraft, and he freely admitted that such was the case.
“I was frequently jeered at,” he said, “at first; but I put it down to people’s ignorance, and now I am received with the greatest kindness wherever my services are needed.”
“How does it affect you in your own town?” was the last question I put to Mr. Marwood.
“Oh!” he replied, “at Horncastle I was looked upon as one of the first men in the place. I was treated well by one and all. Detesting idleness, I passed my vacant time in business; and worked in my shoe-shop near the church day after day, until such time as I was required elsewhere. It would have been better for those I executed if they had preferred industry to idleness.”
I had passed nearly two hours in the society of the hangman when our quiet chat was over, thanked him for his kindness, and bade him adieu. As I left the room he shook me heartily by the hand, then said, “Good-bye, God bless you,” and bowed me out of the villa with that polished courtesy which is always so becoming in a Crown official.
Chapter CLXXIV
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT――MERCIFUL AND MERCILESS MODES IN DIFFERENT AGES.
In this chapter we propose giving a short review of the methods by which obnoxious criminals have been, at various times, among various peoples, invited to “shuffle off this mortal coil.”
Capital punishment, like Cleopatra’s charms, has been of “infinite variety”――the variety, however, as a rule, being simply among the most horrible possible methods. No records remain to tell how the contemporaries of the Saurians and the Megatherium, the ingenious dwellers in caves, and warriors of the flint age, disposed of their malefactors, but the fullest accounts have been preserved of the proceedings of our more modern ancestors, since the days of Adam, in the way of executions.
The Jews, who led the bead-roll of antique nations, appear to have usually stoned the criminals of their own race――a democratic sort of penalty, where every good citizen had a finger in the pie, and hurled his righteous rock, and even the little Hebrew boys could enjoy the fun of the stoner. To the stoned it must have been something of a lingering torture, requiring much patience to bear. For their enemies they reserved the sharper practice of hewing them in pieces, or they burned them alive, or turned them to agricultural account, and fertilised the sites of their smoking cities by harrowing them in with considerable vehemence.
The Chinese, another ancient and highly cultured race, have been similarly merciless. It is singular how little difference there has been in this respect of ingenious cruelty between the most cultivated peoples and the wildest savages.
Decapitation is the mildest of Chinese extreme penalties, and is usually performed with much skill and sang-froid by means of a sword, the criminal, male and female, taking the matter most philosophically, and making no indecorous remonstrances at their summary taking off.
There is a tariff, too, for substitutes――a plan which might commend itself to our wealthier homicides. But our Celestial neighbours across the Pacific prefer killing the doomed by not allowing them to sleep, or starving them to death in cages or straightened limits, in which they are exhibited during the process of skeleton-formation, in peripatetic rambles on the shoulders of the local deputy sheriffs.
And chopping them deliberately into fragments, at intervals of an hour or so, is much to their taste. There is a cage, part of the spolia opima of the first Chinese war, among the archives of the Royal Artillery, at Madras, India, in which they carried about Colonel Rowlandson, and the London Times had a liberal annual payment on its pension list for the family of Mr. Bowles, a special correspondent, similarly disposed of just before the last Chinese war.
The torturing propensities of the pleasing red man, whom Cooper immortalised, and Custer has occasionally assisted to the happy hunting grounds, are too well known to require much notice.
The use of fire is a prominent feature in their social circles, complicated with the facetious tomahawk and the insinuating scalping-knife. But we know the Modocs, the Sioux, and others like them, only too well.
The Assyrians, Medes and Persians, ancient Egyptians, and other Orientals seemed to have employed similar agencies to their Israelitish neighbours for lopping off the rotten branches of their family trees.
The processes are faithfully depicted and chiselled on the walls of Thebes, Persepolis, and Nineveh.
The Greeks were somewhat tender-hearted in some cases; for instance, they allowed Socrates to poison himself comfortably among his friends.
They objected to parricides, however, and for them reserved a punishment adopted from the Egyptians, like their alphabet, and naturalised at a later date by the Romans. They confined the too impetuous slayer of his father in a bag with a snake, a monkey, and a cat, to keep him company, and then gently dropped the congenial party into the sea.
The Romans seem first to have hit on the idea of crucifixion, a singularly torturing refinement of internal, external, and mental pain.
It was esteemed an ignoble death, and must have been anguish to a sensitive mind; the cruel nails rending the flesh, barely supporting the weight of the writhing body, must have been severe, while the dreadful thirst of the fevered victim must have been a culminating horror.
The State criminals sometimes came floating over the Tarpeian rock, and smashed into pulp below.
This has been emulated by Theodore of Abyssinia, at his mountain fastness of Magdala, and by Tippoo Sahib at the Droorg, one of the peaks of the Neilgherry mountains in Southern India, where is a convenient precipice over 1000 feet clear of sheer natural wall.
The Roman taste for the joys of the circus stimulated their imagination to devise novel torment, and criminals or Christians, or simply prisoners of war, were exposed to combat wild beasts, or each other, to “grace a Roman holiday.”
They sometimes, however, executed distinguished folks in polite fashion, merely sending a polite message for them to “stand not on the order of their going, but go” out of the world at their earliest convenience.
A good deal of bleeding to death in warm baths and sudden insertion of the “bare bodkin” resulted.
The chivalric Japanese custom of harikari is a similar concession to the conventionalities of society, and is also eminently useful as a duelling agent necessitating the absolute retirement of both disturbers of the peace and their friends’ serenity.
It is hardly necessary to dilate on the ceremonious surroundings of these interesting occasions, when the accomplished gentleman who has offended the laws, or has been offended by a friend, calls his relatives and acquaintances together and, supported by a second, a veteran in the punctilio of the local code of honour, makes his little speech, drinks his farewell toast, and then proceeds to carve himself in the most approved style, proudly feeling as he dies that he has done his duty to his country, his family, and the world at large, and that the gentleman he had the difficulty with cannot survive him.
The Druids, like the Huns, the Aztecs, and the Ashantees and Dahomeyans in the present day, were rather sanguinary.
Funerals were fittingly honoured by the sacrifice of a proportionate number of slaves and criminals, to form a retinue for the worthy departed in the world of spirits. The Druids usually burned a few hundreds in a great wicker image of the human figure.
It is recorded that many thousands of men, women, and children, with horses, jewels, arms, and domestic necessaries, were sacrificed when Attila, “the Scourge of God,” died, and were buried with him in the bed of a river, diverted temporarily from its course for the purpose, and similar formalities are observed in the African kingdoms mentioned, on any one event, but repeated annually as a “custom,” to keep the manes of the deceased in good humour by the polite remembrance implied by the observance.
But Christian Europe, in the Dark Ages, could vie with any race or century in the ingenuity and refined cruelty of capital punishment.
The preliminary tortures of the rack, the boots, the thumb-screws, the strappado, must have tended to make the recipient of these attentions desirous of death.
The noble Barons who harried each other, and revolted at brief intervals throughout their tumultous lives, pressed air, earth, fire, and water into their service for the purpose of execution.
Men were judicially pressed to death as late as the Titus Oates conspiracy, in the reign of Charles II. They were hanged in chains to starve; they were burned alive, half hanged, mutilated, and then burned; they were scorched with hot irons, their eyes seared out, their limbs plunged into molten lead or tar; they were spitted like cockchafers on stakes, they were drowned with unmerciful rapidity, or chained to stakes at low water to be more slowly suffocated by the rising tide; they were broken on the wheel, or torn apart by wild horses, while the axe for the noble kept up a perpetual refrain like the ticking of a clock.
The Inquisition, in the garb and under the name of religion, invented and applied more exquisite barbarities. To drive a man mad first and into a grave afterwards by the incessant trickling of a single drop of water was a torment worthy of Satan himself.
The thousands burned to death in Spain, France, England, China, India, Germany, attest the gusto with which the reverend brethren of the Holy Office snuffed in the flavour of roasting humanity, and were enraptured with the shrieks of the martyrs, as now-a-days we are when Capoul or Tamberlik rouses our enthusiasm with the ringing C in alt.
In those good old days men were slain for sneezing in improper places, for constructive disrespect, or for stealing a loaf, and the severity remained till within comparatively recent times.
Some of the middle-age methods still survive. In Naples, three years ago, of three women condemned for infanticide two were beheaded; the third, the principal culprit, was mazzolated, or knocked on the head with a trace, like an ox, her abdomen then slashed open, while the executioner executed a “pas de fascination” on the quivering trunk, spurting the blood out like a fountain.
In Spain, Spanish colonies, and the sister Republics who once owed allegiance to that haughty country, malefactors are garrotted, or strangled in an armchair with a steel cravat, which is jammed to the choking point by the dexterous twisting of a screw behind.
They also shoot considerably, evincing a peculiar fondness for shooting people in the back with a remarkably bad aim, and then finishing them with a shot in the ear at close quarters, or a dagger under the fifth rib.
It was in this way they disposed of William Walker, “the grey-eyed man of destiny,” at Truxillo, in 1860. The French weakness for the guillotine, an aggravated edition of the domestic bread or meat chopper, has disposed of many multitudes of kings, queens, nobles, ragamuffins, petroleuses, and others, with business-like rapidity and cleanliness.
The baskets, sawdust, and brightly-polished cheese-knife employed are familiar, and almost inviting in comparison with the gallows adhered to by Anglo-Saxons.
Hanging nowadays seems a “lost art.” The Americans have improved the machinery with patent drops and weights warranted to jerk up the hanged with satisfactory promptitude.
But the education of the hangman has been sadly neglected. The knot is rarely tied with scientific accuracy, or the rope in as good condition as it might be.
The consequence is, but a small proportion of the sufferers enjoy the sudden death they would prefer, if they must die in so hasty a manner, and instead of their necks being broken they are slowly strangled, if the rope does not break and necessitate a repetition of the performance.
Physicians and anatomists say this slow strangulation must be exquisitely painful.
Humanitarians have accordingly suggested “painless extinction.” Chloroform applied long enough would soothe the slumberer to wake no more here below, with absolutely no pain.
An overdose of laudanum might be an improvement, as bestowing positive pleasure before he lapsed into unconsciousness.
Both these and other plans are warmly recommended, and discussed with some heat by their respective advocates. Some gentlemen have even hinted at the possibility of doing good at the same time by dissecting the brain of the living but unconscious subject, during the calm retreat from the sins and follies of his life.
Another method of painless extinction is by blowing the patient from a gun. This was invented by the Mahommedans of India, was employed by the British during the mutiny of 1857, and is still in favour with the Ameer of Afghanistan.
It has one great advantage as a preventive of crime in its application to Hindoos, as they believe, when a man’s body is split into filaments, as it must be by such a process, that his chances of future existence are very slim.
Their ideas of resurrection are peculiar and Pythagorean, but they object to this total obliteration, and accordingly dread the blowing-from-gun procedure above all other penalties. Physically, it cannot hurt, however.
The conclusion and distribution of the fragments are so sudden and complete that pain must be entirely wanting as an element. Destroying a hanged Brahmin’s body with quicklime is also objectionable to Hindoos, on account of similar doubts as to his future rehabilitation.
A Hindoo punishment, of gradually crushing a criminal under the foot of a trained elephant, is repulsive, and is discountenanced by the British Government. Any rajah who reverts to these ancestral amusements renders his tenure on the throne insecure. It has not been practised for some years.
The guillotine, of which such horrible use was made in the past French Revolution, has been said to be the most merciful mode of putting malefactors to death, but this is by no means certain.
Dr. Tuc and some German physicians and surgeons after him held that there does indubitably remain in the brain of a decapitated head some degree (un reste) of thought, and in the nerves something of sensibility, and the case of Mademoiselle Corday was alleged as proving that doctrine.
We abstain from any details of the thousands of murders by the guillotine at this time. One fact will enable our readers to understand something of its horrors.
It was proved on the trial of Fouquier Tinville that 160 persons of all ages and ranks, and of both sexes, were tried and executed on a charge of conspiracy, not merely false but absurd, visionary, and impossible――forty-five of these persons, who were utterly unknown to each other, were tried and condemned within twenty minutes, and executed on the same evening in almost as short a space. These executions were for many months the amusement――the spectacle of the people――we wish we could say the populace of Paris. Chairs were stationed round the instrument of death, where women, in a station of life to be able to pay for that amusement, used to have seats, and sit, and chat, and work, while waiting for the tragedy, which they had looked at as a farce. We find in the Revue Retrospective a curious letter incidentally descriptive of this elegant scene of Parisian amusement.
“The Procureur-Général Rœderer to Citizen Guidon. “13th May, 1793.
“I enclose, Citizen, the copy of a letter from Citizen Chaumette, solicitor to the Commune of Paris, by which you will perceive that complaints are made that, after these public executions, the blood of the criminals remains in pools upon the place, and that dogs come to drink it, and that crowds of men feed their eyes with this spectacle, which naturally instigates their hearts to ferocity and blood.
“I request you, therefore, to take the earliest and most convenient measures to remove from the eyes of men a sight so afflicting to humanity.”
Our readers will observe the tender regret――not that all this blood was shed, but that it was not wiped up; and they will be startled when they recollect that at the date of this letter not above a dozen persons had been yet executed there, but that within one year the blood of a thousand victims had saturated the same small spot of ground.
In one of the foolish modern-antique processions of the Convention, the whole cortège was delayed and thrown into confusion because the cattle that were drawing some of their theatrical machines could neither be induced nor forced to traverse this blood-tainted place.
This Chaumette was one of the most impious and sanguinary of the whole tribe, and we could almost believe that he envied the dogs the blood they drank. He it was that bullied the wretched idiot Gobel, revolutionary Archbishop of Paris, to come to the bar of the Convention to abjure Christianity, and proclaim himself an impostor, at the head of a procession in which asses were insultingly decorated with the sacred emblems of religion.
Chaumette himself it was who introduced to the Convention a prostitute in the character of the Goddess of Reason. Robespierre sent this whole clique to the guillotine, and on the 13th of April, 1794, Chaumette’s own blood flowed to increase the horrors of which he had complained.
The guillotine remained in permanence in the Place de la Révolution till the 8th of June, 1794, when the inhabitants of the streets through which the batches (“fournées”), as they were called, of sufferers used to pass, became at last tired of the agreeable sight, and solicited its removal.
Robespierre seems at this time to have adopted a new policy, to have formed some design of founding a dictatorial authority in his own person on the basis of religion and morals.
On the 7th June he made his famous report acknowledging “l’Etre Suprême,” and appointed the 20th June for the great fête in the gardens of the Tuileries, which was to celebrate this recognition.
Of this ceremony Robespierre was to be the “Pontifex Maximus,” and it can hardly be doubted that it was to remove the odious machines from the immediate scene of his glorification that it was――the day after the decree and ten days before the celebration――removed to the Place St. Antoine, in front of the ruins of the Bastile; but that a day might not be lost, it was removed on a Decade, the republican Sabbath.
[Sidenote: No. 100.]
In the forty-nine days in which it is said to have stood at the Barrière du Trône it despatched 1270 persons of both sexes, and of all ages and ranks, and it became necessary to build a kind of sanguiduct, to carry off the streams of blood; and on the very last day, when the tyrant had already fallen, and that the smallest interruption would have sufficed to have stopped the fatal procession, forty-nine persons passed almost unguarded through the stupified streets to the place of execution.
And here we have the last occasion to mention Sanson; and it is to his credit, as indeed all the personal details related of him seem to be. On the 9th Thermidor there was, about half-past three in the afternoon, just as this last batch of victims was about to leave the Conciergerie, a considerable commotion in the town, caused by the revolt against Robespierre.
At that moment Fouquier, on his way to dine with a neighbour, passed through the court where the prisoners were ascending the fatal carts. Sanson, whose duty it was to conduct the prisoners to execution, ventured to stop the Public Accuser, to represent to him that there were some rumours of a commotion, and to suggest whether it would not be prudent to postpone the execution till at least the next morning.
Fouquier roughly replied that the law must take its course. He went to dinner, and the forty-nine victims went to the scaffold, whither in due time he followed them.
After the accession of Louis Philippe, for whom the guillotine must have been an object of the most painful contemplation, sentences of death were also very rare, and certainly never executed where there was any possible room for mercy.
The executions, too, when forced upon him, took place at early hours, and in remote and uncertain places; and every humane art was used to cover the operations of the fatal instrument with a modest veil, not only from motives of general decency and humanity, but also, no doubt, from national pride and personal sensibility.
What Frenchman would not wish that the name and memory of the guillotine could be blotted from the history of mankind?
“The word Guillotine,” says the author of Les Festes de l’Anarchie, “should be effaced from the language.” But the revolutionary horrors which France is naturally so anxious to forget, it the more behoves us and the rest of Europe to remember and meditate.
Such massacres as we have been describing will probably never be repeated: they will, no doubt, stand unparalleled in the future, as they do in the former annals of the world; but they should never be forgotten as an example of the incalculable excesses of popular insanity.
The invention of this instrument of death (the guillotine) is thus described by a graphic writer:――Joseph Ignace Guillotin lived to deplore his own ingenuity in inventing or suggesting a machine which besides being effective for the immediate purpose intended, was the result of a really kind feeling. The stern irony of fate occasionally rewards inventors in this way.
Born in 1738, Guillotin received a medical training; he became a physician of much repute, and was chosen professor in one of the French universities. In 1789, when France was beginning to feel the first throes of the Revolution, Guillotin was elected member of the National Assembly, and took his seat among the Liberals or Reformers.
He proposed a resolution declaratory that capital punishment ought to bear no relation to the rank of the culprit; that when a criminal is condemned to death, for any crime whatever, the mode of execution should be the same whether he were peer or peasant.
Until then, nobles and privileged persons, when condemned to death, had the honour of being decapitated, either by the axe or by the sword; whereas the common people were left to the tender mercies of a hempen rope. Dr. Guillotin at the same time proposed a second resolution.
He wished to save the unhappy being from the additional punishment existing from the uncertainty, nervousness, or clumsiness of the executioner, whether axeman or swordsman.
He cited historical incidents in which two, three, or even more cuts were given, by the axe or the sword, before the head of the miserable sufferer was finally severed from the body. He proposed to do away alike with the gibbet, the sword, and the axe, and to substitute a decapitating machine, in which a sharp, heavy knife should descend on the neck of the condemned.
Feeling assured that bodily pain could not be felt during this brief operation, he was quite carried away by his subject, and said, enthusiastically, “I could cut off your head with my machine in the twinkling of an eye, without your suffering the smallest pain!”
Poor Dr. Guillotin had to bear the shafts of ridicule, always a terrible weapon to a Frenchman. Many of the members of the Assembly smiled at his ardent words; and the Royalists out of doors made rare fun of him. One of their journals gave a song, “On the inimitable machine of Dr. Guillotin for chopping off heads called after his name the Guillotine.”
Poor Dr. Guillotin had to bear the shafts of ridicule, always a terrible weapon to a Frenchman. Many of the members of the Assembly smiled at his ardent words; and the Royalists out of doors made rare fun of him. One of their journals gave a song, “On the inimitable machine of Dr. Guillotin for chopping off heads called after his name.”
This name, started in this bantering way, has clung to the machine from that day till now. The doctor protested against the designation, but in vain. He did not even invent the machine; he merely pointed out that the chopping action could easily be produced by a sharp, heavy blade descending from an upright frame.
The National Assembly, on receiving Dr. Guillotin’s two propositions, at once adopted the first of them, by decreeing equality of punishment for all ranks of society; but left the mode of execution for further consideration. It was not till nearly two years afterwards, that, on the motion of MM. Lepelletier and Saint Fargeon, a decree was issued, declaring that the mode of capital punishment should be by decapitation. Even then the merits and demerits of the axe, the sword, and the falling knife were left in abeyance. In March, 1792, the Assembly sought the advice of Dr. Antoine Louis, a celebrated surgeon, and secretary of the Paris College of Surgeons.
He explained, scientifically, how far the various decapitating instruments acted like knives, and how far like scissors; and expressed himself decidedly in favour of a chopping machine.
He showed that the idea of such a machine was by no means a new one. An Italian book by Achille Bocchi, dated 1555, gives an engraving of an Italian nobleman being beheaded; a heavy blade, suspended by cords from a crossbar at the top of a frame, is represented as falling on the neck of the victim.
In 1632 some such apparatus was employed in Languedoc, for decapitating Duc Henry de Montmorenci. It was also ascertained that Scotland in the North, and Persia in the East, had employed machines bearing a resemblance to this.
Among the strange scenes of the French revolutionary days, not the least strange was that of the National Assembly listening gravely to the details given on these matters.
Dr. Louis conferred with Dr. Guillotin, and also with the famous executioner Sanson. Sanson specially urged that, if all executions henceforth were to be by beheading, a machine would be greatly needed, as he distrusted his own power of using the sword or the axe so frequently and so accurately as would be necessary.
After hearing all the explanations and suggestions, the Assembly passed a decree for the use of a decapitating machine, in substitution of the halter, the axe, the sword, and the various instruments of torture such as the rack.
One Schmidt, a German musical instrument maker, residing at Paris, was taken into council; and he, Guillotin, Louis, and Sanson, settled among them the details of the machine.
Nay, there was even a fifth adviser. The king, always fond of lock-making and amateur engineering, requested to have the designs shown to him; and he suggested an improvement which was practically adopted.
A sum of five thousand five hundred francs was paid for the machine, constructed for the National Assembly by Guidon, the carpenter. An attempt was made to give the name of Louisette, or Louison, to it, in honour of the learned doctor; but the name Guillotine had been current in the public mind for two or three years, and nothing could supplant it, although Dr. Guillotine certainly never sought to have his memory thus perpetuated.
The apparatus was first tried in decapitating the dead bodies of three men, and some live animals, at the prison of the Bicêtre. Dr. Louis, after seeing the efficacy of the invention tested in this way, died just before the terrible days of the revolution came on; and was therefore denied the pleasure, or spared the pain (whichever it might be), of seeing the guillotine employed as the most dreaded of political instruments.
The first victim was an ordinary criminal, an highwayman named Nicholas Jacques Pelletier, who was guillotined on the 25th of April, 1792.
The Chronique de Paris, in its next day’s issue, stated that “The novelty in this mode of execution caused a considerable augmentation in the number of persons who usually witness such scenes.
“The machine is with good reason, preferred to other modes of putting to death. One human being is not directly employed in decapitating another; and the promptness with which the operation takes place is more consistent with the spirit of the law, which is often severe, but should never be cruel.”
The first political guillotining took place four months later, when Louis David Collinot d’Augremont was executed by torchlight for the crime of having been among “the enemies of the people” on the 10th of August, the day on which “the people” broke into the Tuileries, expelled the royal family, and filled the palace and its surroundings with blood.
The National Assembly was succeeded by the National Convention, and by this Convention was founded the Revolutionary Tribunal, in April, 1793. Then, indeed, commenced the fearful period, always since recorded in history as the Reign of Terror, which lasted until July, 1794. How many unhappy persons were guillotined during these fifteen months is not accurately known; but in the final six weeks preceding the fall of Robespierre more than eleven hundred heads rolled in the dust of Paris alone.
Whether M. Guillotin had the heart to join in these discussions we do not know――he continued his practice as a physician, and was much respected. A popular notion prevails that he himself fell a victim to the machine which he had suggested――nay, that he was its first victim. Such was not the case; he was in prison as a “suspect” during the later days of the Terror; but the fall of Robespierre occurred just in the nick of time, and M. Guillotin survived to the days of the Consulate and the Empire.
He wrote a portion of autobiography, marked by the omission of all notice of his much-regretted suggestion of a beheading machine. The indifference to death, induced by an almost daily familiarity with descriptions and spectacles relating to it, showed itself in ways which we in our quiet country and quiet times can hardly regard as credible.
During the Terror the guillotining of several persons every day――sometimes many scores a day――became so much a matter of course as to be treated by the Parisians as an ordinary element in city business. In the prison, to “play at guillotine” was a favourite amusement among the prisoners, and many jokes were manufactured about the “national razor.”
Some of the shopkeepers went so far as to display earrings shaped like little guillotines. Two years before the fall of Robespierre, when violence had begun but had not yet assumed its more fearful aspect, aristocratic or royalist families kept a good deal within doors in their Parisian mansions, and sometimes amused themselves in a strangely morbid way.
Dolls or puppets were provided with features resembling those of the chief popular leaders. After dinner, during dessert, a small mahogany guillotine was introduced, and wheeled along the table from guest to guest; one by one the puppets were placed under the knife and their heads chopped off.
Inside the trunk or body of the puppet was a liquid, vinous and fragrant enough to be tasteful to the palate, but blood-red; this flowed out over the table, and the guests, including ladies, dipped their handkerchiefs into it, and applied it to their lips! In all probability this strange game was played but seldom, but opposition journalists magnified it into a regular habit of “les aristocrats.”
They do these things differently in France, even as regards hanging and head chopping, to what we do in England, observes a writer while noticing the well-known work, entitled “The Memoirs of the Sansons.”
There the office of public executioner is hereditary, and has been held by one of the same family from 1681 down to 1867.
Here, when Mr. Calcraft resigned his post, Mr. Marwood, a person in no way connected or related with his predecessor, succeeded him.
In this instance merit alone, and not hereditary right or title, we presume, assured to the present hangman his high office.
M. Sanson, whose memoirs are here translated from the French, is the last of his line. As the translator informs us, “he was the lineal descendant of a race of headsmen through whose hands every State victim, as well as every common criminal, had passed during two centuries. They had hung, beheaded, guillotined, quartered, and tortured, from father to son, without interruption.”
The grandfather of the author executed King Louis the Sixteenth and his queen, besides a host of nobles and others.
He likewise had to carry into execution part of the sentence passed on Madame de la Motte, who had been found guilty of cheating two jewellers out of a valuable necklace on pretence that Queen Marie Antoinette had commissioned Cardinal de Rohan to purchase it for her.
She was sentenced to be whipped, branded, and imprisoned for life. M. Sanson thus describes how his grandfather performed the duties imposed on him:――
WOMAN-WHIPPING.
Madame de la Motte shuddered; she clenched her hands, looked down, and then raising her head, “Very well,” she said. The two assistants, who had at first tried to secure her, came forward, but she motioned them away, and advanced before them.
When the procession reached the hall, where a parliamentary committee were sitting, the clerk read out the judgment. At the very first which proclaimed her guilt, the strongest emotion appeared on Madame de la Motte’s face.
Her eyes rolled in their sockets; she bit her lips, and the hitherto pretty face now seemed to be the mask of fury.
Charles Henri foresaw a storm and approached her; and it was well that he did so, for as the clerk came to the penalties, the unhappy woman’s rage burst out with extraordinary violence.
She fell backwards so suddenly that her head must have been fractured on the stones had not my grandfather caught her in his arms. Madame de la Motte’s strength increased as the consciousness of her fate flashed through her mind; and a protracted struggle ensued between her and the assistants who attempted to pinion her.
She was at length carried down to the court. The scaffold was erected opposite the gate, which had been left open. But it was six o’clock in the morning, and only a limited number of persons were looking on.
She was stretched on the platform, and received twelve stripes. She never ceased shrieking while the punishment was being inflicted. She invoked vengeance on the head of Cardinal de Rohan; and she added that it was her own fault that she had suffered the disgrace which had been inflicted on her, since, had she said but one word, she would have been hanged instead of having been flogged.
The second part of the sentence had no doubt escaped her, for when she was seated on the platform she remained motionless, as if completely subdued and powerless. Charles Henri Sanson thought the moment was well chosen for the completion of the penalty.
Her dress had been torn, and her shoulders were bare; and he took an iron from the grate and applied it to her skin. Madame de la Motte uttered a wild shriek, and, writhing in the grasp of one of the assistants who were holding her, she bit his hand with such fury that she took a piece of flesh off.
She struggled again, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the iron could be applied to the other shoulder. Justice was now satisfied. Madame de la Motte was put into a fly, and taken to the Salpetriere. As she was alighting she tried to run under the wheels, and a few moments afterwards she thrust the sheet of her bed into her throat in a frenzied attempt to choke herself. Her imprisonment lasted for months.
AN AMATEUR HEADSMAN.
On August 20, 1792, the Tuileries were invaded, and the king incarcerated in the Temple. A revolutionary tribunal was instituted. This tribunal, although it numbered men like Fouquier-Tinville, used the guillotine with comparative moderation. It applied severe laws with severity; but it acted with justice, and respected the forms of law.
It had chiefly to deal with common malefactors. From 1771 to 1792 the number of raids on persons and property considerably increased. Paper-money, which was of recent creation, excited the cupidity of forgers. During a period of seven months, fifteen forgers were executed on the Place de Greve. On August 19, 1792, one Collot was condemned to death for forgery, and the guillotine was erected on the usual spot selected for executions.
The Place was, as usual, well attended. As the cart, in which were Charles Henri Sanson and the culprit, drove up, a tremendous clamour greeted their appearance, and my grandfather distinguished a cry of “To the Carrousel!” The horse continued to advance, but a man seized the bridle and asked the driver why he did not obey the popular order.
Charles Henri Sanson interposed; but the man declared that the will of the Commune was that the guillotine should henceforth be erected opposite the palace of the late king, and that he must immediately transfer his tools there. My grandfather replied that his duty was to carry out the orders which were transmitted to him, and not to meet the wishes of the magistrates before they were expressed. But the clamour became more vociferous, and the horse’s head was turned in the direction of the Tuileries.
Charles Henri Sanson’s position was very perplexing.
He asked, and at length obtained, leave to drive up to the Hotel de Ville to ask for instructions. After some hesitation the Procureur of the Commune authorised my grandfather to act according to the wishes of the mob.
The scaffold was taken down and transferred to the Place du Carrousel; and the cart repaired thither, escorted by the crowd. But a considerable time elapsed before the guillotine could be erected again; and the culprit, who had hitherto been calm, began to struggle violently.
As the carpenters had gone away the people helped my grandfather to reconstruct the instrument of death. This reconstruction, however, progressed so slowly that night came on before it was finished, and my grandfather, apprehending desperate resistance on the part of the doomed man, requested some of those who worked around him to go to the Commune and ask for an adjournment of the execution.
The request was received with jeers of anger and derision, and the public indignation became ominously threatening.
A beardless young man, who wore the red cap, came forward, shrieking that my grandfather was a traitor, and that he should taste of the guillotine himself unless he “operated” without more ado. Charles Henri retorted with some warmth that he could not execute the culprit without special assistance.
“Your assistants are drunk?” exclaimed the young man. “You can find as much help as you require here. The blood of aristocrats cement the happiness of the nation, and there is not one man in the crowd who is not ready to lend you a hand.”
A general cry of assent followed these words; but the circle around the scaffold became wider, and it appeared obvious that few were prepared to stand by their word. My grandfather perceiving this, had hastened to prevent the first speaker from retreating, by accepting his offer.
The culprit was led to the steps of the scaffold, which he refused to mount, and Charles Henri was obliged to take him in his arms and carry him up the platform. When the unfortunate man saw the dark outline of the machine, his resistance became most desperate, and he shrieked for mercy. The crowd was now silent. The improvised executioner did not budge, but he was very pale.
At last, after a final struggle, the culprit was strapped to the plank, but his contortions were so violent that an assistant had to sit upon him.
Charles Henri Sanson now told the young man that he could not furnish a better proof of his patriotism than by taking a leading part in the execution; and he put in his hand the rope which communicated with the knife.
At his bidding the young man gave a tug; the knife fell, and the head rolled in the basket. This was not all; it was customary to show the head to the multitude after the decapitation, and loud cries reminded my grandfather of the custom. He explained to the young man what he was to do, at the same time proposing himself to do the horrible duty.
But his substitute refused; he took the head by the hair, and advanced to the edge of the scaffold; but as he was raising his arm to show the bloody trophy, he staggered and fell back. Charles Henri Sanson came to his assistance, thinking that he was fainting, but he discovered that he was dead! Violent emotion had brought on an apoplectic fit, which killed him instantaneously.
Notwithstanding all that had been said upon the efficacy of the guillotine, we much question its being a more merciful mode of death than Mr. Marwood’s “long drop,” as it is termed, as in many cases death has taken place instantaneously, and as a sequel to this chapter we subjoin a correct account of the leading phrenological characteristics of the present public executioner.
Mr. Max Greger, our local phrenologist, whose description of the “casts” of the convicts Wardlaw and Docherty was contributed at the time of the executions, has just added the following analysis of the phrenological characteristics of the “dread finisher of the law”:――
General size of head――very large. Temperament――fibrous-nervous. Posterior lobe of the brain――small. Anterior lobe of the brain――rather large. Portion of the brain above Cautiousness――moderate. Portion of the brain above Causality――moderate. Circumference at the base――23¾ inches.
He is only 5 ft. 5 in. in height; as to age, he will be on the shady side of fifty; of remarkable muscular power, which is lost sight of in the face, the narrowness of which, compared with the enormous width of head, is strikingly peculiar――the disproportionate size of the latter giving a drooping posture to the body, and seemingly indicating that Nature had not intended this personage to hold up his head in society.
Though fully developed in the region of the reflective powers, those faculties which judge of the relative size, shape, and design of things, and which constitute the understanding proper, are conspicuous by their absence――accounted for in him by want of education and sedentary nature of previous calling (shoemaker). There is also a decided want of balancing power, which, taken in conjunction with his possession of large imaginative powers, and stimulated by his active temperament, constitute him an enthusiast, and consequently he is naturally prone to an erratic course of life, and to be in some respects impracticable and visionary.
His large acquisitiveness denotes an inordinate desire to acquire wealth, while his enormous caution will assist in holding fast the same. His large reflective faculties will confer considerable penetration and perception of character and events. His sense of the ludicrous, with humour and mimicry, is large.
He, however, must be considered a somewhat grim joker, and he is not at all likely to desire to be made the subject of his own fun. He is ambitious of being thought knowing and deep. He has an inordinate amount of vanity and self-conceit――must be foremost in his business: “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”
Being highly sensitive to praise or the admiration of his fellow-men (which, however, he seldom gets), he is likely to consider the execution of Wainwright――a criminal of the first degree――as bringing both himself and his office still more prominently before the public; but this weakness, which is manifested in the manner in which he gloats over the modus operandi of his profession, may in time bring his office more and more into contempt, and thus defeat the very object he is anxious to attain.
From the development we find he is not wanting in energy, with considerable shrewdness and tact, and his mechanical and constructive talents would have enabled him to succeed in life either as a manufacturer, a machinist, or an agriculturist.
MARWOOD’S CARD.
The following is a copy of Mr. Marwood’s professional card, in the last line of which there will be found a touch of grim――and, doubtless, unconscious――humour:――
WILLIAM MARWOOD, EXECUTIONER, CHURCH LANE, HORNCASTLE, LINCOLNSHIRE, ENGLAND.
ALL ORDERS PROMPTLY EXECUTED.
CLXXV. CONCLUSION
We have seen the last of the miscreant whose career we have shadowed forth, and our task is all but completed.
The celebrated Peace, says a journalist, terminated his disgraceful career on Tuesday morning on the scaffold at Armley Gaol, Leeds. He seems to have kept up his pluck and his appetite to the very last, and concluded all by making a pious and edifying speech to the reporters. We should be sorry to criticise too closely a production which was given to the world under circumstances most trying to the nerves of its author. It would be obviously absurd to judge the statement of a man of Peace’s antecedents by the canons of good taste; and as for the genuineness and sincerity of them they must be ascertained by a higher tribunal than public opinion. Nevertheless there is a little too much tendency to glorify a great criminal into a great hero. Peace was well aware of this and naturally acted consciously or unconsciously, upon the assumption. Several millions of people were kept from day to day in a perfect flutter of excitement to know all that the convict was saying, doing, writing, and almost thinking. Even the composition of his breakfasts and the way in which he enjoyed them were telegraphed for the information of an expectant public. For one who was not altogether insensible to his own merits as a professional burglar and murderer, there was a strong temptation to pose before the world. He was almost as closely watched as Louis XIV., who walked, ate, slept, dressed, and, Macaulay tells us, even vomited majestically before a crowd of distinguished spectators. With the knowledge that everybody’s eyes were upon him, he may perhaps have been a little too self-conscious, and a little too solicitous not to spoil a reputation which he evidently considered splendid. His repentance may have been perfectly sincere, and his latest statements quite truthful. But it would be obviously unwise to take all his revelations for gospel verity without sifting them thoroughly. We trust that no pains will be spared in the investigation of his latest confessions, and that if they are found consistent, with known and undisputed facts, prompt reparation will be made to the man who has, or may have, suffered for his crimes. A more terrible fate than that of one who has been convicted and punished for an offence which he has not committed, on the strength of a chain of plausible circumstantial evidence, can hardly be conceived. The lawyers are, no doubt, right in their dictum that circumstantial evidence is the best of all evidence, always supposing that it is strong enough. But, after the recent statements of Peace, the public will naturally be tempted to re-open the question of the Whalley Range murder, in order to ascertain whether every link of the chain was complete; and if there is a single unsatisfied doubt, they will not remain content until the prisoner Habron receives the benefit of that doubt.
The last scene of what some exuberant journalists had delighted in calling Charles Peace’s “life-drama” was thus enacted to the mild satisfaction of everybody whose hopes had not pictured a sensation of the type furnished by Mr. Meritt’s “New Babylon.”
There was the orthodox last dying speech and confession, ready to be turned into what has now become the fashionable literature of the period; there was the moribund posturising of nice old Newgate days; and, to increase the likeness to that Saturnian period, there was a crowd close at hand whose murmurs one could hear, and which the parson’s and the patient’s voices could reach.
The “celebrity” Mrs. Thompson so coyly deprecates, and which her paramour loved with all his little heart, was worthily crowned at the end.
The unkind prudishness of the prison officials refused to admit more than four reporters to the sickening ceremony; but those four were found quite sufficient to flood every newspaper in the land with funereal “flimsy.”
The descriptions resulting from these reports were literary gems which, when he digs them up, will afford the coming New Zealander a curious insight into the niceties of contemporary taste and the peculiarities of contemporary syntax.
The most “thorough” descriptions took the convict very early indeed――in fact it might almost be alleged that they never quite let him go.
They informed us that his sleep was troubled and his supper hearty; they dwelt on the poor wretch’s feeble endeavour to emulate his betters in a silly and sickly “improving of the occasion”――which apparently is achieved by an abundant use of the second person singular, and frequent references to the Gospel of St. Chadband; they hovered about his last sleep, and peered into the cups and egg-shells of his last breakfast.
And the occasion was one of such surpassing interest, the opportunity for distinguishing oneself in the appraisement of the criminal’s linen, or the analysis of the criminal’s countenance, that at least one gentleman, intoxicated with his sublimity, fairly forgot whether the subject of his essay was hanged or not, and used “he is” and “he was” in the same sentences with perplexing impartiality.
But that lucubration appeared in the Daily Telegraph, a journal which is happy in the possession of a class of readers who do not require good grammar to help down nasty stories. And this time the story was nasty enough to suit the palate of an epicure in Topsyturvydom.
Every step, every pause on that vulgar via dolorosa that leads from the prison door to the scaffold was counted, criticised, described. Little scraps of the beautiful Burial Service were desecrated by being quoted beside the doomed man’s call for drink.
The demeanour and voice of the hangman, the culprit’s dress, his tremours, his appetite, his letters, his speeches, the scaffold itself, with its draping of black sacking or black glazed calico (authorities differ), all this forms as pretty a page of contemporary history as confirmed Daily Telegraph writers will ever care to dwell upon.
Well might the moribund hypocrite address his last whimpering to “you reporters;” the reporters make the “celebrity” of such as he was.
And we may add that the journalist just mentioned not only makes the celebrity but suggests imitation by its morbid habit of manufacturing monsters out of such sorry rascals as Charles Peace.
Its epitaph on the dead sinner is, “We hanged his detestable body because it was in the highest degree expedient to rid the world of a monster of iniquity.” Common gratitude to a subject that has filled its most readable columns and suggested its most high-flown homilies for a long three months might have moved even the Daily Telegraph to tardy and temporary charity.
It is pleasant to record that the unfortunate young Irishman Habron has received her Majesty’s pardon, and is at present in Ireland, a small yearly stipend having been settled upon him sufficient to support him in comparative comfort for the remainder of his life.
This is as it should be. A great wrong was done to the ill-fated young man, but every possible means has been taken to place him in a respectable position, for which it is understood he is duly grateful.
It will be needful before concluding to take a cursory glance at the other characters who have figured in this strange eventful history.
None of our hero’s quondam companions was more pained and mortified on discovering the depth of guilt into which he had been plunged than “Bandy-Legged Bill,” who, however, despite the overwhelming weight of evidence, stuck to his friend “Charlie” to the last, but after Peace’s trial and conviction Bill Rawton became an altered man.
The change, we are happy to say, was for the better; Rawton reformed and became an altered character. He was never at any time what might be considered hopelessly bad; indeed, to say the truth, he possessed many good qualities, which, under different circumstances and conditions, might have done much to lift him out of the slough of despondency into which he had fallen, and in which he remained for so many dark and miserable years.
But Bill saw the errors of his way. Mrs. Bourne was very good to him and strove as best she could to lead him towards the right path, and eventually succeeded. Bill Rawton is at the present time engaged as handy man in one of the travelling circus companies.
No one knew better than he how to manage horses, and by diligence, adroitness, and attention he has contrived to give general satisfaction in his new vocation.
Brickett still continues the obliging host of the “Old Carved Lion,” but the halo of crime with which the name of Peace has become associated is still a puzzle to old Brickett, who, when the name of our hero is mentioned, shakes his head, heaves a sigh, and says he “can’t make it out rightly――the fellow must have gone off his chump, or summat of the sort.”
Mrs. Brickett’s ghost is still said to haunt the precincts of the “Lion,” and, in addition to this apparition, two others are at times visible in Marshgrove-lane; these being the spirits of the late Mr. Philip Jamblin and of Giles Chudley. This is, of course, only village gossip, or superstition; nevertheless, the rustics have full faith in the truth of the report.
Mr. Jakyl, full of years and honours, passed away tranquilly some months before the arrest of Peace; and the radiant footman (now radiant no longer) drives a prosperous business in the greengrocery line, and is the father of five pledges of affection.
Lord Ethalwood got himself into a host of entanglements, both monetary and amatory, and his life was none of the happiest for a very long time.
One night a strange circumstance happened to his lordship, which might, and indeed would, have proved fatal had it not been for a sudden and strange intervention. Lord Ethalwood had left Somerset-street after having paid a visit to Theresa Trieste.
He walked carelessly along until he reached Grosvenor-square. While crossing the road he was suddenly attacked by some person behind, who had aimed, what doubtless was intended to be, a fatal blow; but the point of the knife of the would-be assassin struck against the shoulder-blade, and did no further mischief than inflicting a long superficial gash, which proved afterwards to be painful and troublesome, but it was not dangerous.
Lord Ethalwood, young, active, and resolute, turned nimbly round upon his assailant, whom he struck several violent blows on the head and shoulders, at the same time shouting lustily for the police.
In a moment or so he was tripped up by another ruffian, who was evidently in league with the others, and it was equally clear (so his lordship thought) that their intention was murder.
He was not far out in his reckoning. The men who had been companions of the young mountaineer, Janot, had sworn to have Lionel Ethalwood’s life, and for this purpose they had lain in wait for him.
What the issue would have been, had not timely assistance arrived, it would be impossible to say. Luckily, for his lordship, a passenger on the other side of the way saw the position he was in, and at once hastened to the rescue.
With one well-delivered blow he knocked down with his clenched fist one of the mountaineers. Upon the instant the other closed with him, and a short but desperate struggle ensued, the end of which was that both combatants fell, the stranger undermost and the mountaineer on the top.
Lord Ethalwood rose to his feet, whereupon both the foreigners scampered off without further ado. Now that the struggle was over two policemen came.
Lord Ethalwood was found to be bruised and wounded, but his rescuer was in a still worse plight; he was stretched on the pavement in a senseless condition, his head resting on the broad stone steps which led to the vestibule of a palatial mansion.
The policeman stooped down and examined the features of the stranger, from whose head a dark stream of blood was flowing. He was evidently a man slightly past the middle period of life. Lord Ethalwood was greatly concerned when he saw the lamentably prostrate condition of the gallant gentleman who had risked his own life to preserve his.
The stranger was taken to the accident ward of the nearest hospital, whereupon Lord Ethalwood jumped into a cab and proceeded at once to his own residence. The family doctor attended to his wound, and declared that his young patient had had a narrow escape.
In a few days, however, his lordship was convalescent. Not so, however, was the ill-fated man who had come so opportunely to his rescue. He had received from the fall a fracture of the skull, and for some days he alternated between life and death.
Earl Ethalwood was constant in his visits to the hospital where the patient lay, and it was on one of these occasions that a terrible and harrowing fact became manifest.
He discovered that his preserver was his own father, Tom Gatliffe, who, the reader will remember, had come upon the scene just in time to save his son. When the fact was clearly established the Earl was almost frantic.
Lady Batershall, Lady Marvlynn, and a host of other persons were in close attendance on the sufferer, who, despite skill and unremitting attention, breathed his last in the ward of a metropolitan hospital.
But very little now remains to be told. Mr. Kensett at his decease left all his worldly wealth to him whom we have known as Alf Parvis, who squandered his patrimony as he had heretofore squandered his ill-gotten gains, and died in poverty and wretchedness while yet in the springtime of his life.
Our story hath a mournful ending, but we trust that those who have perused these pages have yet been able to derive entertainment and instruction from the many noteworthy facts contained therein. One fact has been clearly established――
“A life of crime is always a life of sorrow and care, for the hearts of the guilty tremble for the past, for the present, and the future.”
THE END.
Transcriber’s Note:
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, like this. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the end of the chapter in which related anchors occur. Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside down, transposed or partially printed letters, were corrected. Except for transcriptions of Peace’s letters, final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were added. Duplicate words and syllables at line endings or page breaks were removed. Where unprinted or illegible words could not be discerned, an elipsis was inserted. Typesetting vagaries and use of quotation marks have been standardized for ease of reading. One mid-sentence paragraph break was removed, and several paragraph breaks were added between change of speakers.
Names of some people and places have multiple spellings. Dialect, obsolete words and misspellings were left unchanged. Inconsistent hyphenation was not changed. Occasional words omitted in the text were not inserted. There is no CHAPTER XXII and there are two CHAPTER CV’s. Unprinted III was added to CHAPTER XXXVIII; CHAPTER XXCII was changed to CXXII; and CHAPTERX was changed to CHAPTER. There are several numbers mistyped in the table of Pence’s cypher.