DEFYING THE HANGMAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 72, 26 March 1921, Page 19

DEFYING THE HANGMAN.

AMAZING ESCAPES FROM DEATH. There Iβ no man living to-day who has actually t>een hanged, but there are many records of res-uscHati-on after hanging. One of these behmga to the year 1-G4. M.mc. de Balsham -was condemned to death for harbouring thieves. STie -was hanged ami left suspended on the jiUlo'wb from Monday morning until sunriee on■ Thursday Yet, on being taken down, she revived. Henry 111. granted her a pardon. In lOTiO an Oxford servant girl was hanged, for the murder of her child. Wlien handed over to the doctors for dissection alie revived. Inquiries were made as to her sensations during suspension, but she remembered nothing. Baying her revival was Just like waking from a.deep sleep. A housebreaker named Smith -was hnnged at Tyburn in? 1705, and a re-prieve arrived after he had been suspended for fifteen minutes. On being taken down Be revived. A man named William Duell bad a hard fate. He was hanged in London in 1740, and was carried to Surgeons' Hall to be anatomized. Before th« doctors* could start he to. life agiiin. That ought to have won him another chance, but it did not. He was transported, a ft>te not always preferable. At Cork a man was liangi-d :n 1767 for street robbery. On betog taken iown he was hurried to a surgery, where an incision was made in his windpipe. He recovered so rapidly that he went to t3ie theatre the same evening. After Fauutleroy, banker aaid forger, was executed in IS2I. a rumour sot about that be had escaped death by the insertion of a silver tube in his throat. This prevented strangulation. an<3 he was restored to consciousness. There is, however, no confirmation of this strange story. A "prisoner tfas taken frt>m Cardiff. Prison and placed in the docV in London on a charge of m-nrdertng his wife. Till then he had never heard of 'her death, but befon? he conld realise nis position he was convicted and sentenced to death! Then he implored the -warders and the governor to tell Win the date of his wife's death. "My good man." said, the governor, "you have only a short time to lire. I>on't worry about such a detail." Day after day. however, the prisoner asked this question, until he got the answer. "But I -was safe In prison on that date," he exclaimed. "Then why didn't you say so at the trial?" "Because t was neither asked nor allowed to say anything." lie was released