HANGING A WOMAN.

Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 7, 9 January 1889, Page 4

HANGING A WOMAN.

The people of Sydney have had such an extensive experience of executions that w e should nofc have expected them to have serious qualms about carrying out the extreme sentence of the law. Much less would we have looked for the executioner bungling his job, as appears to have happened in the case of Louisa Collins, who was hanged yesterday for murdering her husband. It is stated that, between 1825 and 1877, as many as 544 people were executed in New South Wales. The average in 1832 was three executions every two days. In 1829 and 1830, the average was about one a day. On one occasion, in August, 1821, the hangman made almost a daily job cf executing nineteen men, out of 26 sentenced to deatli afc one Criminal Court sitting in Sydney. Moreover, although forty years have elapsed since a woman was executed in New South Wales, prior to Louisa Collins, four females have been hanged in that colony since 1842, all for murder. In these circumstances, it is surely a sign of growing sus ~~~ ' v * , ility to find that a

widespread and powerful movement was set on foot to obtain a reprieve for the woman Collins, who was convicted of a cruel and unnatural murder on evidence of the clearest description, though necessarily circumstantial. Of course the arguments based on the unreliabiJity of such evidence were carefully marshalled, but all the eloquence and ability of the prisoner's counsel (a former Auckland solicitor) failed to awaken doubts of guilt in the mind of a single juryman, although one dissented from the verdict of " Guilty " on the ground that ho was opposed to hanging a woman. This, indeed, appears to have been the chief objection to the banging of Louisa Collins, the tender-hearted ones apparently forgetting that if she had not been a woman it would have been impossible for her to have poisoned her husband. It may be objectionable to hang a woman, but that is an argument in favour of the adoption of electrical execution, not for the reprieve of Louisa Collins or any other cold blooded murderess. Similarly, it maybe wrong to hang anybody, but that is a reason for altering the lav,-, not for interfering with its coiu.se in any particular case. It is therefore satisfactory to find that tho New South Wales Executive firmly resisted all attempts to stay the execution of Louisa Collins, and though the absence of any confession on her part may create a doubt of her guilt in the minds of a few people, the great majority will be satisfied that she has justly suffered for her terrible crime against society.

There can be no doubt whatever of the unfitness of the gallows as an instrument of execution. There have been many wcrse and more revolting bungles than that which took place yesterday at Sydney ; but this latest failure, following close upon the agitation in New South Wales and Victoria against the hanging of a woman, will do much to hasten the abolition of that rude and uncivilised method of executing justice. All unseemliness, all torture and all mutilation of the body would be averted by adopting the electrical process of execu tion now in vogue in the Slate of New York. With the adoption of more humane methods of extinction, and the conducting of executions in private, will come a further adjustment of the law to popular sentiment. The idea that the killing of _ a criminal deters others from crime, which still lingers, will cease to bo acted upon, and the capital sentence will be carried out only in the case of irreclaimable convict?, or those in whom the murderous passion amounts to uncontrollable ferocity. For these reasons, humane people will hail the introduction of electrical execution as a decided advance in civilisation. As for those who are opposed on principle to capital punishment, thoy musb dissociate their agitation from particular sentences if bhey wish to succeed.