1910: Mathias Muff, reproached by 15 orphans
May 2nd, 2015 Headsman
Thanks to the outstanding Trove digitized records of Australian newspapers, we have this item from the Advertiser (Adelaide) published May 4, 1910, concerning an affair from two days previous on the other side of the globe.
The death penalty was barely in use in Switzerland at this point; Muff’s execution would be the fifth-last for common crimes in Swiss history.
LONDON, May 3.
Mathias Muff, who some time ago murdered four persons in the canton of Lucerne, was executed in Lucerne, the capital, yesterday, the guillotine being used.
This is the first execution which has taken place for many years in Switzerland, Lucerne being one of the cantons which have re-enacted the death penalty after its abolition. Muff, when urged to sign a petition to the President for the commutation of the death sentenced, refused, saying, “I cannot live to hear the voices of fifteen orphans reproaching me.”
There was some difficulty in obtaining a guillotine, there being none in existence in Switzerland, and the authorities were compelled to secure the loan of one from the French Government. In France there are but two official guillotines, and both are kept in Paris, but one is specially reserved for executions in the provinces. Neither of these could be spared, but one was obtained from the French colonies, which between them have nine.
The cost of the guillotines is said to be £250 each, but they are well made, for the two now in use in France were made in 1870 in the place of those burnt during the Commune and by all accounts they still work as well as when first tested on a bundle of straw.
On this day..
- 1919: Gustav Landauer, anarchist intellectual - 2020
- 1230: William de Braose, bold paramour - 2019
- Unspecified Year: Vilem, the Forest King - 2018
- 1821: Tommy Jemmy executes Kauquatau - 2017
- 1612: The slave rebels of Mexico City - 2016
- 1923: Florence Lassandro, unwilling feminist - 2014
- 1883: Heinrich "Henry" Furhmann, oldest hanged in Montana - 2013
- 1942: José Abad Santos, Chief Justice - 2012
- 2000: An adulteress, by stoning - 2011
- 1960: Caryl Chessman - 2010
- 1450: William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk - 2009
- Unspecified Year: Faust's Gretchen - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Beheaded,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Guillotine,Murder,Switzerland,Volunteers
Tags: 1910, 1910s, lucerne, mathias muff, may 2
