This 2004 episode from Manx Radio gives us the story of John Kewish, hanged on this date in 1872 for killing his father with a pitchfork. Kewish is the last person ever executed on the Isle of Man — indeed even at his own time such a punishment was so passe that the local gallows-makers were vexed by the contract.
Interestingly, because this Irish Sea island is a crown dependency rather than a part of the United Kingdom proper, capital punishment did not end on the Isle of Man when Westminster abolished in the 1960s. Death sentences continued to be handed down there until 1992, and thus it is that a Manx judge holds the distinction of being the last person in the British Isles to pronounce a death sentence from the bench, and a Manx criminal that of being the last to hear it. (Such latter-day sentences were always commuted by Queen Elizabeth II’s royal prerogative.)
It’s the old, old story: conniving war profiteer helps client get divorce, conniving war profiteer installs divorced client as mistress, rival lover also awaiting divorced client’s divorce shoots conniving war profiteer, rival lover winds up on Executed Today.
It’s the story of George Botts (hanged January 27, 1872) and D.C. Civil War gadabout Oliver “Pet” Halsted. Friends of the site Murder By Gaslight has the details.
Spanish seaman Joseph Garcia was hanged at Usk Prison on this date in 1872, for the Llangibby Massacre.
It occurred in the Welsh village of that name, inland from the mouth of the Severn where Garcia had alit as a mariner at Newport nearly a year before.
He’d committed a burglary there, and been committed to jail for his pains. His sentence was nine months … followed by release to a foreign land whose language he barely spoke, his ship long gone and no friend or occupation to direct him.
A “short, thin man, just five feet five inches tall, with a swarthy complexion, coarse black hair and beard,” Garcia trudged the road in to the farming town. Several times he was observed loitering there but his presence was really announced by the billows of smoke pouring from the home of William Watkins, a farmworker — and neighbors who rushed to the scene beheld the horror of its owner dead from a stab wound through his throat, his wife similarly dealt with, and all three of their small children also put to the blade — their wee corpses already partly charred from the fire.
The stranger’s foreignness invited attention, of course, and when he was arrested back at Newport circumstantial evidence appeared to confirm the connection: he had some injuries and bloodstains that suggested a scrap, a pair of boots that might have been stolen from Watkins, and some stolen household articles that a surviving daughter of Watkins fortunate enough to be away from the house at the fatal hour recognized as the family’s own. He also possessed a knife that he hadn’t been discharged with.
Then as now the fury for a swarthy outlander come uninvited to go a-viking among law-abiding Britons was potent; while legal proceedings were entirely regular, “the noise outside the court was powerful enough at times to prevent the witness from being heard, and from the character of the exclamations which permeated to the interior of the court the crowd appeared ready to lynch Garcia.” (Period press quoted here.) Indeed, such a sentiment was openly published in at least one broadsheet murder ballad:
May the murderers to justice quickly be brought,
And suffer the penalty they surely have sought,
Lynch law in some countries they would very soon find,
And their bodies be swinging on the trees to the wind.
Venezuelan caudillo Matias Salazar was shot on this date in 1872.
A commander who had adhered himself to Antonio Guzman Blanco‘s 1870 “April Revolution”, Salazar gradually became alienated from his chief and in 1871 orchestrated an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Guzman.
The resulting exile Salazar used as an opportunity to mount an invasion — but he was intercepted trying to march into Venezuela through Colombia’s bordering Arauca region and given over to a war council for his fate.
There’s a Spanish-language public domain biography of Salazar here.
Deeply in debt, Marlow improved his asset balance when he lured the more solvent William Bachmann to his place (he also lived at his brewery), then took him to the cellar where he poisoned his guest’s drink and finished him off with an iron bar.
You could take our word for it, but better still is friends of the site Murder By Gaslight. Those archives have the full details on this momentary crime sensation — including the Clue-like charge sheet catching 11 different possible means of the mysterious murder, the hung jury, the hanging’s-eve confession, and the “Polander” boarder who overheard the murder and blew the whistle on the whole thing.
The first legal hanging in Gibson County, Indiana, took place on November 22, 1872, of a careless boy named Thomas Camp (“Kemp” by some early reports) l, ruined by an insupportable debt.
From the St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat of August 12, 1871, channeling a story published two days previous in the Evansville, Ind., Journal:
Great excitement prevailed in Haubstadt yesterday over the discovery of a murder that was perpetrated about two miles west of that place on Monday, the 31st of July. Persons arriving on the noon train yesterday, brought word of the affair, and a reporter for the Journal went up to investigate the case. From the confession of the murderer at the inquest, and from other evidence before the Coroner, the follwoing appears to be the story, for the full relation of which our reporter is indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Michael Ulsomer[?] of Haubstadt and others who were present at the inquest.
Some time during July the murderer, whose name is Kemp, bought a pair of ponies from a man named Bilderbeck, both being residents of Lynnville, Warrick county. Kemp was to pay for the ponies when he received a sum of money, which he represented was due him from a third person who was known to Bilderbeck as a reliable man.
A few days afterwards Bilderbeck […] the pretended debtor, and asked him about the debt […] he denied any indebtedness to Kemp whatever.
Bilderbeck as soon as possible […] Kemp and reproaching him with his dishonesty, threatened him with a prosecution for false pretenses if his debt was not at once paid or secured.
Kemp was very much alarmed at the threat of prosecution, and to conciliate Bilderbeck told him that he would try to get some money from a relative, named Chas. Monroe, whom he said lived near Stacers, a few miles south of Haubstadt, and representing that he would be more likely to get the money if Bilderbeck went with him, he induced him to accompany him. When they arrived at Haubstadt, Kemp called upon a son of the man whom he claimed as a relative, and it is said was discouraged in the project to get money from that source. He concealed this circumstance from Bilderbeck, and feigned to proceed on his journey. When the two left Haubstadt it was getting quite dark. Kemp took the road leading westward instead of southward, and when about two miles west of Haubstadt he pleaded fatigue as an excuse for going no further that night, he being on foot, while Bilderbeck was mounted on a mare. He also told Bilderbeck that Monroe kept savage dogs, and it would be dangerous to approach the house at night. Thus persuaded, Bilderbeck dismounted, and both lay down under a tree. Kemp says he watched until Bilderbeck was asleep, when he arose stealthily, and with a heaby club about two feet long, beat Bilderbeck about the head until he was dead. When the first blow was struck, Bilderbeck partly raised up, when a second blow stunned him, and the blows he continued until the victim’s life was battered out.
Having killed him, he set about concealing the crime, and to that end, he dragged the body further into the woods, and stripping it of the clothing, threw it into the bushy top of a fallen tree, throwing the shoes and pants in with it, and hanging the hat and shirt on a tree, took the coat with him, and, mounting the mare, rode off toward Poseyville, Posey county, where he traded the mare off for a horse, and returned to Lynnville, taking the murdered man’s saddle and coat with him.
When Bilderbeck’s absence was remarked, people naturally looked to Kemp to account for it, and he answered that the last he saw of him was that he drove off in a buggy with two other men when they were in the neighborhood of Poseyville. People were not well satisfied with the answer, but did not openly accuse him until some one discovered that he was in possession of Bilderbeck’s saddle and coat. This coming to the knowledge of Bilderbeck’s brother he at once demanded an explanation of Kemp, who still persisted in saying that he knew nothing of him, but on closer questioning acknowledged that he knew where the mare was, and after considerable urging and in the face of what looked ominously like a disposition to lynch him, he agreed to go with the brother and show him where the mare could be found.
They started in a hack, accompanied by a couple of neighbors, and arrived at Haubstadt about daylight yesterday, when, for the first time, the facts became known. On the way to Haubstadt Kemp’s story was considerably varied, and he admitted that Bilderbeck was dead, but denied having killed him, saying that he was killed by two members of a gang to which he belonged, and he named two persons whose reputation was such as to give some color of truth to the story.
At Haubstadt, where they stopped for breakfast, it is aid he admitted that he had killed Bilderbeck, but begged the man to whom he confessed not to reveal it, as he was sure the people would kill him, and his fear did not seem to be ill grounded when the story ran about among the people. His confession was not then made known, and he proceeded to the place where he traded off the mare, where a deputy sheriff of Posey county appeared, and taking Kemp aside, told him if he would confess and turn State’s evidence, it would be better for him. He then made a complete confession, volunteered to show where the body was concealed, and at once proceeded with the officers and attendants to where he had thrown it, and where the remains were found, the flesh having been devoured by the buzzards, except a little that still clung to the bones of the legs.
It will naturally be supposed that the witnesses of this were almost beside themselves with horror and indignation, but no violence was offered the wretch.
The party returned to Haubstadt with the remains. The inquest was held, the wretched Kemp, trembling with fear, made a full confession, during which the indignation of the people rose to a fearful hight [sic], but was wisely restrained, even the brother of the murdered man assisting to keep down the indignation.
Mr. Bilderbeck, the brother of the murdered man, afterwards confessed that it was with the greatest difficulty he resisted an impulse to shoot the murderer on the spot, although he could not countenance any interference by others.
At the close of the inquest the murderer was conveyed to Fort Branch, three miles distance, for examination before a justice, whence he was sent to Princeton to jail.
It is said that great excitement prevails in the neighborhood of Lynnville, where Bilderbeck lived, and where he leaves a wife and three children. He was about thirty-one years old, a farmer, and was much respected.
Kemp is only about nineteen years old, although he is married. He is small in stature and slight build, light complexion, and sandy-haired, smooth-faced, and said to be of tolerably fair countenance. He told a gentleman that he never thought of murder until he came to Haubstadt and found that his chance to get the money from Monroe was slim, when believing that he was in danger of going to the penitentiary for the fraud, he determined to kill Bilderbeck and thus get rid of his evidence.
The story, taken all together, is one of the most shocking that has occurred in thes parts, and ranks with the murder of Miss Carson and Lizzie Sawyer for brutality.
Camp, the murderer of Bilderbeck, who escaped from the Gibson county jail some time since, is now in jail, on a charge of horse-stealing, at Owensboro, Kentucky, and will be returned to his old quarters on this side of the Ohio.
From the Indianapolis Sentinel, July 26, 1872.
The trial of Thomas Camp for the murder of Belderbech [sic], is in progress at Princeton. The defense set up is insanity.
From the Indianapolis Sentinel, July 29, 1872.
The trial of Thomas Camp, for the murder of Haubstadt, was concluded at Princeton on Friday, the jury returning a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree.
From the Indianapolis Sentinel, August 23, 1872.
Mrs. Camp, mother of Thomas Camp (the murderer of Bilderbeck, who is now under sentence to be hung on the 4th of October), died at her residence in Warrick county on the 11th. Her death was caused by the shock to her system on learning of the sentence of her son. She was a highly respected, Christian lady.
From the Indianapolis Sentinel, November 25, 1872.
Princeton, Ind., November 22, 1872. — The execution of Thomas Camp for the murder of John R. Bilderbeck in August, 1871, took place here to-day. Early in the morning the Sheriff informed Camp that there was no hope of commutation of his sentence, the Governor having refused to stay the execution. For the first time the prisoner seemed to realize his terrible position. Turning to the Sheriff he said, with a faltering voice, “I suppose it must be so.” Being asked at what o’clock he would like the execution to take place, he said, “I am not particular; just use your own pleasure.” The hour chosen was 2 o’clock. At 1 the representatives of the press, and those persons to whom the Sheriff had given passes, were admitted to the jail yard. An enclosure had been erected around the yard to guard the terrible scene to be enacted from the public gaze. The clergymen in attendance, the Rev. John McMaster and the Rev. D.B. Baharree [sic: it’s T.G. Beharrel/Beharrell], together with a few others, were permitted to enter the jail for a short conversation with Camp. The latter we found standing in the doorway of his cell, nervously adjusting the white cottong loves with which he had been provided. He was clad in a full suit of black. His brother-in-law was with him, and had taken the prisoner’s directions for the disposal of his worldly effects, and his last messages to friends and relatives. At 1:50 the sheriff, the clergymen and physicians in attendance, and the reporters, formed the procession to accompany the doomed man to the scaffold. There was no hesitation in his tread. He stepped upon the planks like one who wished to be relieved from a long suspense. The boyish innocence of his face made it almost impossible to believe that he was the hardened wretch which the evidence in the trial proved him to be. At either side of him were the ministers.
ON THE SCAFFOLD.
The Rev. Mr. McMaster read in a clearly audible voice a portion of the fifty-first Psalm. An earnest prayer was then offered by the Rev. Baharrel, the prisoner kneeling, and following the services with calmness and attention. Immediately upon their conclusion, Camp stepped to the front of one platform, and said, with visible emotion:
My friends, I will speak a few words. I am now going to leave you. I confessed to a crime of which I am not guilty. I was there when the deed was committed. I hope to meet you all in heaven, where I hope to meet my mother.
At one minute past 2 Camp placed himself in front of the drop. His limbs were bound, and the usual black-cap drawn over his face. The fatal noose was adjusted, Camp stepped upon the trap, and a moment later he was dangling in the air. For about four minutes there was a slight contraction of the arms and legs, and two minutes later there was another trembling of the body. In about fifteen minutes the physicians pronounced pulsation to have ceased, and the body was lowered in the coffin. The face was calm and peaceful, and looked as if Camp had died without great suffering. The face was calm and peaceful, and looked as if Camp had died without great suffering. The remains were given to friends, and will be taken to Warrick county for burial. Camp had barely passed his twenty-first birthday. A few months before the crime for which he was hung was committed, he was married to a young wife, a person of unblemished character. Camp’s mother died of a broken heart in a month after his sentence was pronounced. Eighteen months ago he was himself a respectable, well-to-do young man, the owner of a good farm left to him by his father. But he fell into evil associations, and as a consequence lies in a murderer’s coffin. It is generally believed that he was not the only guilty party in the Bilderbeck murder. There are others who are being watched, and Camp’s partners in the crime may yet be brought to punishment.
Camp detailed his implausible non-confession in greater detail shortly prior to his execution; you can read about the alleged gang that made him murder his creditor in this two-parter posted to ancestry.com: part 1 | part 2
On this date in 1872, John Barclay hanged in Ohio for murder — and was almost reanimated for science.
Barclay was a late-twenties knockabout of the area whom the Cincinnati Enquirer judged “does not look the diabolical murderer he is charged to be.” (“except his eyes”: from the May 23, 1872 edition, as are the subsequent quotes in this section)
Charles Garner, his victim, was a livestock merchant who specialized in supplying the Columbus butchers. On November 28, 1871, Garner headed out of Columbus rich with cash from a successful business trip. Barclay knew both Garner and the butcher with whom he was transacting business, one J.B. Rusk, and had hung about with them during the day — even holding open the bank door as Garner entered to cash Rusk’s check.
In the evening, hearing that Garner was about to depart, Barclay ducked into a nearby general store, inquired about buying a hatchet, and not being able to find a suitable one, settled for buying a yellow-handled hammer instead. Then he apparently hopped on the back of Garner’s wagon just as it set out, where a great heap of merchandise obscured him from the driver’s view.
Four miles out of town, at a bridge over Alum Creek, Barclay presented himself to his unknowing chauffeur and bludgeoned him with the hammer, “crushing in the skull so that the brain was exposed” — then fled on foot, having relieved the victim of several hundred dollars. The mortally wounded Garner somehow managed to drive the wagon to a house two miles further down the road, where he died five days later. A surgeon who attended him later testified that “brain, matter and blood [were] issuing from head and nose … a portion of forehead was an open wound; a portion of the brain was broken in and a portion lost.” Barclay would eventually confess the crime.
A most unusual postscript was appended to the execution of the hanging sentence.
The dream, of course, was to reanimate the corpse altogether — although a history mused that the Supreme Court judges who also took enough interest to attend the experiment “might have to pass upon the uncanny question of Barclay’s legal status as a living person who had already suffered the death penalty.”*
Barclay hanged at 11:49 a.m.; by 12:23 p.m., his flesh was on the table under Mendenhall’s probes. Notwithstanding the dispatch of the scientists they did not accomplish his resuscitation, although the Cincinnati Commercial (Oct. 5, 1872) reported some ghoulish simulations of life:
The first test was on the spine. This caused the eyes to open, the left hand to become elevated, and the fingers to move, as if grasping for something. The hand finally fell, resting on the breast. The battery was then applied to the nerves on the face and neck, which caused the muscles of the face to move as in life. The test was next applied to the phrenic nerve of the left arm, and afterward to the sciatic nerve.
The next year, Mendenhall was hired as a physics instructor by the new Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College in Columbus: while he would go on to a varied and widely-traveled career in the sciences, Mendenhall has the distinction of being the very first faculty member at the institution known today as Ohio State University, and the namesake of its Mendenhall Laboratory building. (Starling Medical College, site of the galvanic experiments, would also be absorbed into OSU’s college of medicine.)
* It ain’t like they’d be the only ones to ever confront that difficulty.
On this date in 1872, a faltering John Presswood Jr., “nearly 18 years old,” was publicly hanged in Smithville, Tenn., for a still-infamous crime there. He’s the last person to suffer that fate in DeKalb County.
This image (click for a larger version) of the Presswood hanging — in which the gallows practically disappear into the scenery — comes from the Library of Congress.
It was all the way back in late 1870 that Presswood murdered 36-year-old Rachel Fowler Billings, a Civil War widow remarried to a man who unfortunately was away rafting the Caney Fork River. Presswood savagely axed the woman to death in her house, in the presence of her three children — and bashed 11-year-old Inez, the oldest of them, with the axe as well.
Inez survived, but hadn’t seen the attacker. Her three-year-old (!) half-sister provided the identification: “It was Bill Presswood.” While the assailant calmly cleaned himself up with the family water bucket, the traumatized kids comforted each other around the butchered corpse of their mother. (Later, other women of the community would shrink from the neighborly job of tidying up poor Rachel for burial — so horribly had she been mauled.) In the end, the badly injured Inez had to hoof it half a mile to the nearest neighbor to summon help.
An estimated 8,000 people crowded Smithville’s courthouse square for the execution. The sheriff charged with conducting it made sure to give them a pulse-pounding, excruciating (especially for Presswood!) show.
Immediately following the sermon and reading of the confession, Sheriff Henry Blackburn put a hood over Presswood’s head, attached the rope tightly and stood back.
With his hand on the trip bar, he intoned, “Presswood, you have five minutes to Live.”
The crowd surged forward, and then relaxed.
Again Sheriff Blackburn said, “Presswood, you have four minutes to live.”
Beside the lonely figure in the hood, Sheriff Blackburn stood out in sharp contrast. He was a handsome figure, tall, well proportioned and filled with the dignity of his office. He was “High Sheriff” of Dekalb County.
After seemingly hours Sheriff Blackburn announced, “Presswood, you have three minutes to live.”
Occasionally a sob as if a heart were being torn from a body was heard, but there was no outburst from the crowd. The stillness of the May morning was again broken by the commanding voice of Sheriff Blackburn, “Presswood, you have two minutes to live.”
By now several persons in the crowd, no doubt from a pang of conscience, were shifting from one foot to another. Neighbors look guilty at neighbors and the calmest man of all was Sheriff Blackburn as he announced, “Presswood, you have one minute to live.”
Brave members of the crowd gazed intently, wonderingly as the still form with the hood on his head stood torically on the scaffold just a few feet above their heads.
Suddenly Sheriff Blackburn shouted, “Presswood, you die” and sprung the trap. The body jerked at the end of the rope, quivered slightly, and was still.
Little remembered today, Great Britain shipped tens of thousands of Indian convicts to that Bay of Bengal archipelago in the latter half of the 19th century (and continuing into the 1930s).
One of them was Sher Ali.
This former cavalryman in the UK’s Indian military forces had murdered a relative in a private feud, and was dispatched to the prison colony for his trouble. Evidently he nursed a terrible grudge at being judicially punished for what, in his opinion, was no crime at all. The standard story* is that he dreamed of wreaking revenge on the person of “some high British official.”
They don’t come much higher than the Viceroy to India.
So despite his sterling conduct record as a prisoner, Sher Ali was ready with an opportunistic blade when Lord Mayo took the wrong pause at the wrong spot.
Notwithstanding the enormity of the blow — the Viceroy of India was literally one of the most powerful figures in the British Empire — the incident was relatively downplayed, perhaps to avoid stoking any wider sectarian martyr-making or conveying the impression of colonies in turmoil. Arrested on the spot, Sher Ali was condemned quickly and hanged with little fanfare.
An Indian paper quoted by the April 15 London Times reported the assassin’s last hours thus:
I had a long interview with the prisoner the evening previous to his execution. He talked quite freely, and appeared to think he had done a fine thing. He had been told about an hour before I saw him that he was to be hanged next morning. We got up steam early next morning and went to Chatham, passing him with his police guard in a boat on the way. As soon as we were moored we got over to Viper Island, where the gaol is. There was no unusual preparation for the affair, and the convicts were at work as usual. Indeed, it was not generally known that it was to be. There were from 30 to 40 Europeans present, no natives except the police and sepoys, and no European soldiers. About a quarter to 8 the fellow was led out. He was smiling and quite collected. The police officer who came down to investigate the affair, as he ascended the steps leading up to the scaffold, asked him a question. He shook his head with a smile, as he said nahin sahib. As soon as he got up he asked the hangman to turn his face towards Mecca, and then began to pray very loudly and quickly. He said two prayers, and kept on repeating the Mussulman’s creed. The drop fell at seven minutes to 8 o’clock exactly. The knot slipped round to the back of his neck, and although he had nearly seven feet of a drop, his neck was not broken, so he died very hard. He was hanging about ten minutes before he ceased to struggle. As he was scantily clothed, and his legs and most of his body naked, his struggles were distinctly visible. We were quite close to the scaffold. After he was dead we adjourned, and returned to see him cut down at 9. His face was not distorted in the least, but wore an expression of pain. We afterwards went to see the post mortem examination. There were only eight persons present. The prisoner’s lungs, liver, heart, &c., were taken out and weighed. The top of his head was cut off, and his brain taken out: the latter weighed 47 ounces.
Despite not making a particularly big deal about Lord Mayo’s murder, the Empire did favor its Indian subjects with a Calcutta equestrian statue of the assassinated viceroy.
This monument and other former public memorials from the British imperial period now squirreled out of view in independent India can be found on a fun Flickr gallery, Forgotten Statuary of the British Raj. Brits can find the Earl of Mayo in marble closer to home in Cockermouth.
Mayo was also the namesake of the Mayo School of Arts in Lahore, present-day Pakistan (it’s now known as the National College of Arts). The school’s first principal was Lockwood Kipling, and this man was able to hook his 16-year-old son up with an assistant-editorship at a Lahore newspaper … from which young Rudyard Kipling launched his literary career.
* The “lone nut with a grudge” version has been latterly disputed with attempts to reconstruct Sher Ali as an Islamic revolutionary.
We take this story from the dispatch filed the same day for the London Telegraph and reprinted in the New York Times. Paragraph breaks have been added for readability.
Dilatory as the French authorities are in bringing culprits to trial, they dispatch them with terrible haste so soon as their guilt has been certified by the final Court of Appeal. No public notice is ever given of an execution, and few people ever hear of it until it is all over.
A paragraph appeared in an evening paper last night to this effect: “The Commission of Pardons has commuted the sentenced passed on PASCAL and LUCIPIA; the appeals of SERIZIER, BOIN and BOUDIN have been rejected.” To the world at large this paragraph conveys no hint as to the date of execution; the initiated read between the lines that on the following morning, dawn will rise on a dismal military pageant on the plains of Satory.
There is, nevertheless, a certain amount of uncertainty in the matter, so very closely are all such secrets kept in France; and it was only on the receipt of a hint from a high authority that some time after midnight I determined to start with a friend for Satory. The impression made upon me by the ghastly spectacle I shall try to describe in the plainest possible language.
SATORY.
A finer exercising ground than the plain of Satory it is not possible to imagine. The ground is as flat as a billiard-table, and it is not devoid of a certain beauty — the thick turf being singularly fresh, and he vast square plain surrounded by a belt of fine trees.
Troops are marching in companies to take up their appointed positions on the ground. A raised battery is a prominent object, and opposite to it, at some distance, is a huge earthen mound, against which a target stands out distinctly in black and white. The troops are forming in three sides of a square, which is completed by this butt.
It is not until you get quite close to the mound that you perceive on the lower ground immediately in front three white sticks ranged in a line, each about four feet high and five feet apart. These are the poteaux against which the culprits are to stand.
A good many soldiers, not on duty, have turned out en amateur to see the show; they collect on the top of a mound near the butt, but they are driven down by the artillery sentinels and mounted police, who, dressed in a little authority, canter about with superfluous fidgety zeal.
The morning air is chill, and everybody on duty or off duty tries to comfort himself with a smoke. “Nous avons encore trente-cinq minutes,” says a sergent-de-ville, in a grumbling, querulous tone. And the condemned men? They only had thirty-five minutes, and methinks they had as much reason to complain.
A soldier proceeds to work at the target, sqwing it off short; he is going to take it away, perhaps, that it may not divert the soldiers’ aim; and one feels irritated with him for being so slow.
One wonders, too, that they have allowed the red signal flag to remain at the top of the butt. Would not a Communist see an omen or an augury in the accident?
An engineer close to me is coolly fashioning wedges, in preparation for the artillery practice, which is to begin “aussitot que cette affaire est finie.”
Another protests impatiently that he wants his breakfast. Three dogs, which are perpetually frightening the horses of the mounted police, as well as the riders, excite continual merriment. There are scarcely more than a dozen civilians present, but I observe two women.
One — a brazen-looking creature, with a black mustache, and wearing that peculiar kind of hooded cloak which you see constantly in Belgium — was laughing a hoarse, harsh laugh, that chilled one’s blood. The other was charmingly dressed in black silk, and looked like a lady; she spoke to nobody; her face was deadly pale; her eyes were large with tears, and yet there was a strange compression about the lips that told of intesnse firmness of purpose. Her bearing was rigidly calm, but I fancied that the stick of her dainty black parasol was snapped in two.
What had that woman to do at such a scene? I know not; but, assuredly, it was not curiosity that brought her there. There was now a slight diversion. A cart drove up covered with black cloth, and hid itself away to the left of the poteaux.
THE EXECUTIONERS AND THE CONDEMNED.
Then the pelotons or firing parties marched in and piled arms opposite the same slim sticks about which everything in that huge plain seemed to gather of its own accord.
The pelotons were taken, one from the line, two from the Chasseurs de Vincennes. Hardened though they must be by this time and embittered though they are against the Communists, I do not think, to do them justice, that they liked their duty. They looked pale, they were perpetually falling out, and they smoked with suspicious eagerness.
I tried to impress on my own mind that these fellows were murderous ruffians who had slain unoffending fellow-creatures in cold blood. SERIZIER and BOIN, Colonel and Lieutenant in the Communist army, had tortured and killed the very priests who had devoted themselves to the task of tending the wounded on both sides, for no reason but that they were good men. BOUDIN had actually shot down a chemist in the Rue Richelieu because he protested against his son, a mere lad, being impressed into working at a barricade.
But, with the best will in the world, I could not persuade myself that it was right and proper for 5,000 soldiers to be brought out under arms for the mere sake of killing three defenceless wretches. Meanwhile the minutes passed on; the officers rolled up cigarettes, compared watches, and consoled each other with the reflection, “Soyez tranquille, mon cher, ca sera l’heure militaire.”
And so it was; for just as the first silvery tones of a distant church clock were wafted across the heath, striking the hour, the trumpets rang, the drums beat Aux champs, the troops dressed up, and the three ambulance wagons dashed into the square at a sharp trot.
The prisoners had not been apprised of their appeal hvaing been rejected until four o’clock in the morning, but they seem to have accepted their fate with singular philosophy. They had all eaten and drunk, and SERIZIER had asked for a “pipe of tobacc” for the last time. In driving along he said to the two gendarmes by whom he was accompanied, “Wat a mistake I made to quit Belgium! Quelie belle affaire j’ai fait la. C’est egal, je saurai bien mourir.”
Strangely enough, he confessed to a Dominican, a priest of the ver order against which he had shown such diabolical hatred.
Each man was accompanied by two gendarmes. And here I cannot help noting one of the strange peculiarities of an over-excited state of mind. When the drums beat “Aux champs,” the merely dramatic feeling of the scene was intensely moving.
And yet when, a moment later, I first caught sight of the tops of the jack-boots of the first tell gendarme who appeared at the ambulance doors, I was so forcibly reminded of “Le Petit Faust,” and scores of other pieces wherein these functionaries are held up to ridicule, that I almost burst out into hysterical laughter.
The tragedy, however, soon proved too terrible, for the gendarme was closely followed by BOIN, who had scarcely touched the ground before he exclaimed, waving his hat in the air, “Vive la Commune!”
The three men walked quickly to the poteaux, and placed themselves in position as coolly as though it were the most natural thing in the world. They then, as though with one accord, flung their hats or caps into the air, and shouted several times in thrilling tones, “Vive la Commune!”
They all three were smoking. SERIZIER threw away his pipe, but BOIN kept his cigar in his hand, and BOUDIN was actually smoking as he fell. The face of the latter was so covered up by the handkerchief with which he alone allowed his eyes to be bandaged that his features could not be discerned.
SERIZIER, who was in the middle, indignantly threw down the handkerchief with such force as to cast it far beyond him. BOIN also refused the bandage wherewith the soldier stationed beyond him offered to cover his eyes, and by an involuntary action he put it into his pocket.
BOUDIN was coarsely clad; and SERIZIER, an undersized man, with heavy sensual features, looked like the type of a London rough. BOIN was a tall, well-built man, having good, clean-cut features and black mustaches. He was dressed in a light-brown velvet coat, Garde Nationale trousers, and a colored-scarf round the waist.
THE EXECUTION.
The priest, going up to each in turn, kissed him on both cheeks, in what seemed to me a hurried and perfunctory manner.
Then, while the sentence was being read to the prisoners in a quick, low, quite inaudible tone, BOIN made a long harangue, much of which was lost in the perpetual rolling of those ghastly drums.
But one could distinguish snatches of sentences such as “Soldiers, you are children of the people as we are, and we will show you how children of the people can die. Nous mourons innocents,” and then opening wide his light coat — he wore no waistcoat — he offered his white shirt-front for a mark, and, striking his heart with his open palm, he exclaimed: “Portez armes en joue! feu! tirez au coeur!”
This he repeated several times, and while he was yet speaking, standing out clear away from the poteaux and looking death at ten paces literally in the face, a sword flashed in the sun, and the three men leaped from the ground only to fall to it in horrible contortions.
The smoke and the report were unheeded, for all the senses of the horrified spectator were arrested by the awful spectacle of writhing limbs and twisting hands.
BOIN seemed to be rewarded for his bravery by suffering less than the others, but SERIZIER literally rolled over, and BOUDIN also moved. The surgeon then went up, examined BOUDIN first, and then directed one of the sergeants in reserve to give the coup de grace in the ear. Then SERIZIER was examined and treated in the same way; and lastly, after a considerable interval, BOIN was dragged into position and dispatched.
I cannot give you any idea of the sickening impression produced by this seemingly deliberate butchery.
I say seemingly, for the men may have been dead, but, in any case, surely if the coup de grace must be given, it should be done at once. I did not time the proceedings, but, long as my description is, I believe that not more than two minutes elapsed from the time that the ambulance wagons came on to the ground to the time that the volley was fired.
Several more minutes, however, elapsed before the dull thud of the last coup de grace delivered a bout pontant right into the poor wretch’s ear struck upon the ground. I have seen something of the horrors of war at Sedan and Strasbourg; I have witnessed the degradations of a public hanging in England, but have never seen anything so horrible as this supplemental butchery of the coup de grace.
AN AFTER SCENE.
When the surgeon and his attendants retired fro the poteaux, it became evident that painfully long as the interval had been, he had not been sparing of trouble. For with an eye to dramatic effect, he had disposed the bodies symmetrically, so that their feet should point towards the defiling troops.
Then the trumpets struck up a lively tune, and all the troops present — three batteries of artillery, carbineers and other caalry, four or five battalions of the line, engineers, &c. — some five thousand men — marched at quick step before the stark, stiff, staring bodies.
I cannot think that such a sight can have any other effect than that of exciting sympathy for the guilty. To see a man lying on his back there, his head a shapeless mass and the large red spot on his breast growing every moment larger and larger, and to think that not ten minutes ago he was speaking with passionate eloquence — this tended rather to make one forget his crimes than to remember his cruelty.
Yet I am bound to confess that this feeling is not shared by all, for when the troops had passed by, and the black van had driven up and unladen its dreadful burden of plain coffins, I saw an officer point with his foot at the yet warm brains of BOIN, and I heard him say, “C’est avec celui qu’il a fait son discours.”
A commander who had adhered himself to 
Deeply in debt, Marlow improved his asset balance when he lured the more solvent William Bachmann to his place (he also lived at his brewery), then took him to the cellar where he poisoned his guest’s drink and finished him off with an iron bar.
