The Roll of Villains.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 102, 30 April 1892, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Roll of Villains.

The World's Woest Men

Ik the over-flowing tide of modern crime the world is apt to think thit the present; day does nob compare favourably with the past. But a glance at the newspapers of the last century or two disprove the pessimistic theory. Still the advance of civilisation has not altogether extirpated that awful and insatiable love of cruelty that marks the groat scoundrels of the world and writes their name in history. Our fathers and many of us remember tho terrible dceda of the Indian mutiny, the horrors that ai tended tho path of Nana Sahib, when ho called in tho butchers of Cawnporo to slaughter the hundreds of women and children who had fallen into his demon grasp. The bodies of these poor creatures were, as wo know, subsequently hurled down one of tho wells of the city, where the awosfcrieken soldiers found them, and prayed that they might be spared to bring the inurdoror to justice. The East truly is the home of cruelty. For political reasons Great Britain entertained one such recently, and he was toasted and made much of by all whom he met. Here is one little instance of his humour. In the days of his youth and semi-banish-mont five staunch friends suppliod him with money and tended him. Coining to the throne, ho fearod lost they knew too much of Ilia concerns, so ho had their eyes put out, Btill keeping them about his person, and amusing himself each morning by turning them into a courtyard and making them play blindrnan's butt'; their falls and bruise 3 delighted his jovial old heart. In the recent French operations in Tonquin, the general of tho Chinese had but one remedy for all the French prisonors that fell into hie hands. They were carried info a small house, laid upon a table, and skinned alive, the operation being performed with the greatest slowness, and the fearful criee of the tortured men hailed with the utmost enthusiasm. Let us turn to private life and unearth a few monsters of the kind we are talking about. Marcus Clarke, speaking of Daniel Morgan, the Australian bushranger, says he was ' the most bloodthirsty wretch that ever carried arms.' This villain had no comrades, but stalked the country alone, shooting down every man with whom he camo in contact. Once he walked into a peaceful household in Now South Wales wheioa farmer and his family wero gathered about the fire.

Morgan demanded brandy, and made himself very affable, until of a sudden ho locked tho door, and commenced to shoot, killing every soul in the room, and pausing for minutes between each shot to laugh at the prayers of the unfortunate women and children about him. Luckily for Australian society, he repeated his experiments once too often, being shot down whilo visiting another farmhouse. And now for a glance at our criminal records. The female sex has given us some monsters. Take the instance of Mary Ann Cotton, hanged on March 24th. 1873. Tho hope of the gain of a few shillings led tins wretch to poison husbands, children, friends. Not a grain of human feeling eoemed to linger in her body. Tho child fiho rocked on her knee to-day was poisoned to-morrow. She poisoned one husband to marry another, and poisoned tho second for the sako of pence.

Well entitled bo distinction, too, in such a list are Burke and Hare, the former being hanged at Edinburgh in the year 18Z6. Ab the time these villains flourished there was a great demand in the University for corpses for the purposes of dissection. A few pounds were paid for each corpse, and it occurred to rascals thatn little money might be made in a novel way. So they would hang about in the outskirts of tho cifcy, in tho suburbs and quiec streets, armed with pitch plasters. As the umyaiy? pedestrian approached they would spring upon him, covering bhe pitch plasber Lightly over his mouth and nose and suffocating him in a few moments. Dozens of citizens were so treated, their bodies subsequently being sold to profeseora of anatomy.

A universal alarm spread throughout the city, until at length a discovery was rnaoe and the pair were arrested. Hare turned King's evidenco ; Burke was hanged. But the former did not entirely escape the penalty of his atrocious deeds. _ Ho entered, a lime works as a common artisan, bufrni? , identity was discovered by his fellow workmen, and they flung him into a pit of lime, where he was blinded. For many years aftSr that he might have been seen beting in the streets of London, a white-haired, innocent-looking old man. Strange to say, Burke and Hare were much alike ; small men, both ot them, with ferocious-looking eyes and horribly ragged black coats ; rude comforters around their necks, giving them a savage and brutal aspect. Phrenologists may like to know that they had little heads enormously developed at the back, where the animal instincts are shown. A pretty pair of scoundrels were Dumollard and bis wife. They would advertise for young women under pretence that they wero to get them situations, and having secured their victims they decoyed them to a wood near Lyons in France. Here they brutally garrotted them in the most barbarous manner, stripping them of their clothes, and laying their bodies in graves already dug. "The total of their victims amounted to about 20, and happily, when they were taken, the male prisoner had his head cut off, and the female was sent to the galleys for life. There was executed at Aylesbury, in 1870 a gentleman of the name of John Jones, alias Owen. This inhuman liend murdered a family of seven people with the greatest deliberation and cruelty. Nothing but a desire to take human life can bo put forward as an excuse for him, since he murdered the victims one after the other with a huge sledge-hammer. The slain included one man, one old woman, the grandmother of the family, the man's wife, and three innocent little children, who had their brains dashed out with the fatal hammer. Mr James Bloomfield Rush was a gentleman who walked into Stanfield Hall during the year 1848 and deliberately attempted to murder every ooul in the place. He succeeded in killing Air Jenny, the owner, and his son ; also shooting at Mrs. Jenny and the housemaid, dangerously wounding the pair of them. But burglars were daring fellows in those days, and as they were 3hot down without pity, perhaps they held that an unlimited fiat to murder attended their profession. The case of William Palmer is too recent to describe in detail. Ke was one ot the most cold-blooded rascals that our criminal courts have seen for a long wliiie. Ho would sit ab his victims' bedsides, watching their agonic?, and coolly calculating the strength of the next dose of poison that lie would administer. His defence was one of the finest, ever recorded in the annals of the criminal court. In writing such an article as this, it is, of course, impossible fco forget that the leaders of the French Revolution wereamongst the greatest monsters that the world has ever seen. And without dwelling on these histories, it is perhaps just worth while to recall a few of their most atrocious acts. Foquier Tinville, the public accuser, in less than four hours once sentenced 80 people to immediate death. Defence wa3 idle before his insatiable demand for victims ; and on one occasion when a gaoler remonstrated that the prisoner waa not the man accused he coolly remarked, ' One man is as good as another.' Garner was of a kindred spirit. This brute was sent as the emissary of the republic into the provinces, and there the guillotine proved utterly useless to cut off tho heads ct his victims in the given time.

At lasb he resorted to open and speedy butchery ; ordering the condemned out in great batches, and then turning squads of soldiery, who snob down the masses with repeated discharges, putting a bullet at leisure into any form that seemed to quiver and yet retain a little life.

Young children and young women were his favourite victims, and he would gloat over their agonies as he sentenced them to the knife or the bullet. It is a happy tiling to read that the same knife at length severed his head from his shoulders.

Lot us conclude by crossing tho sens to the land of the American Indians. Their names have nob come down to us, though a tremor may often have taken possession of our hearts at the reading of their ferocities. No race that ever lived exceeded in sheer brutality the Aztecs or kindred tribes.

A prisoner in their hand was a delight, his tortures tho delectation of the whole tribe. And how terrible was the slowness with which they proceeded. The man was tied to a tree, hatchets wero thrown at him, clipping his ears and cutting pieces of flesh from his body. Then came the more refined part of tho entertainment. Holes were cut in tho body, and little twigs, covered with a resinous substance, placed in the holes and lighted ; or molten metal was allowed to pour into great jraehes mado with spears. But detail is horrible in such cases, and had better be left to the imagination.