1894: William Whaley, “the horror of the situation”
June 22nd, 2018 H.M. Fogle
This ghastly description of a botched hanging comes courtesy of the out-of-print The palace of death, or, the Ohio Penitentiary Annex: A human-interest story of incarceration and execution of Ohio’s murderers, with a detailed review of the incidents connected with each case by H.M. Fogle (1908):
Chapter 19
William Whaley
June 22, 1894A negro robber who beat out the brains of Allen Wilson, near Yellow Springs, Ohio, with a dray pin. Hanged June 22, 1894
A Brutal Robber Meets a Just Fate
William Whaley, serial number 25,257, was executed in the Ohio Penitentiary Annex twelve minutes after the birth of a new day, June 22, 1894, for the brutal murder of Allen Wilson, a thrifty and hard working colored man.
The crime was committed near Yellow Springs, Greene County, Ohio, on the night of June 6, 1893. Robbery was the motive for the crime, and a dray pin the instrument of destruction. He sneaked upon his victim in the dark, and literally beat his brains out.
Whaley was a young man not over twenty-five years of age, and with perhaps one exception, was the most profane man that was ever incarcerated in the Ohio Penitentiary Annex. He refused all spiritual consolation, and cursed his executioners almost with his dying breath. He was a cowardly cur, and betrayed his cowardice while on the scaffold. Three times he sank to his knees as the noose was being adjusted. The attending Guards were compelled each time to assist him to his feet, and finally to hold him up by main strength until the rattle of the lever shot his body through the open trap. Being almost in a total state of collapse, the body instead of plunging straight through the opening, pitched forward, striking the side of the door, thus breaking the force of the fall. For this reason the neck was not broken, and death was produced by the slow and harrowing process of strangulation.
Reader, if you have never seen a sight of this kind you cannot understand or comprehend the horror of the situation. Time after time the limbs were drawn up with a convulsive motion, and then straightened out with a jerk. The whole body quivered and shook like one might with the ague; while the most hideous and sickening sounds came from the throat. This continued for eighteen minutes; but to one looking on it seemed an age. After eighteen minutes the sounds ceased; the body became perfectly still; the limbs began to stiffen; the heart-beats to weaken. In just twenty-six minutes after the drop fell the last pulsation was felt, and the doctor solemnly said: “Warden, I pronounce the man dead.”
The outraged law had been avenged, and a soul unprepared had been ushered into Eternity.
On this day..
- 1918: Captain Alexey Schastny - 2020
- 1568: Weyn Ockers, slipper slinger - 2019
- 1936: Edward Cornelius, vicarage murderer - 2017
- 1940: Three saboteurs and a spy, "Fusilles et oublies" - 2016
- 1906: Richard Ivens, hypnotized? - 2015
- 1310: Badoer Badoer, Venetian rebel - 2014
- 1934: William Cody Kelley, the first in Colorado's gas chamber - 2013
- 1627: Francois de Montmorency and his second, for dueling - 2012
- 1535: Cardinal John Fisher - 2011
- 1669: Roux de Marsilly, employer of the Man in the Iron Mask? - 2010
- 1920: Dennis Gunn, hanged by a fingerprint - 2009
- 1711: Ifranj Ahmad, Janissary - 2008
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Botched Executions,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,Guest Writers,Hanged,Murder,Ohio,Other Voices,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Theft,USA
Tags: 1890s, 1894, june 22, william whaley
