A HANGING REHEARSAL.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 21, 15 September 1911, Page 8

A HANGING REHEARSAL.

OFFICER'S STAGE FRICHT.

WFST AFRICAN EPISODE.

"In some—l think lam right in saying in all—of the West African colonies there is no official hangman, and when there has to be an execution his gruesome duties devolve upon the district officer of the district where the crime was committed. Certainly it is so in the Cotton Coast Colony," says a writer in 'Blackwood's.'

"I had been district officer at Akia, the headquarters of a very newly opened part of that colony, for some 10 months, so my year's tour of service was nearly over, and in West Africa that means that neither health nor nerves are up to much. The official population of Akia consisted of an assistant district officer, Treherne by name; a doctor, Robertson, and myself. "Year after year, now in one part of the colony, now in another, at irregularly regular intervals home on leave, I had been hammering away at my job. I had hammered roads through the forest; hammered some gentlemen who once tried to eat me; hammered, too, a little elementary common sense into the curly heads of the rising generation. I had married some people, buried more, imprisoned still more, built rest houses, examined in government schools, organised sports in faraway villages, and generally tried to do my share in raising the fabric of empire. But till now—curiously enough, for murder is rife on the cotton coast—none of my multitudinous duties had included a hanging.

"For many months there had been frequent cases of child stealing in and near a place called Ugu. Undoubtedly a gang of child thieves was at work, who only too probably hurried their poor little victims up to the far off borders of the colony whither law and order had not yet penetrated, and there sold them—or rather the survivors—to nomadic traders. A Double Murder.

"One night in March a family, consisting of a father, mother, a little girl nine years old and another about six, shut themselves as usual into their mud walled, palm leaf roofed hut and went to sleep, the mother and the elder child on one mat, the father and the younger on another. A small native lam]? —an iron pan holding a little wick afloat on palm oil—hung from the rafters. Somewhere about three o'clock in the morning a tornado came on. In the midst of it the door was pushed open—it appeared subsequently that the fibre woven hinges had been cut through—and a man crept into the room. By the light of the lamp he seized the smaller child and handed it to an accomplice outside. The child whimpered. The father leaped up with a yell and rushed t out after it. Simultaneously the thief ran to the other mat and tried to seize the elder child. In an instant he must have realised his mistake. Roughly pushing the terrorstricken little wretch behind a pile of mats that stood in a corner of the room, the woman—all her maternal instincts roused—flew at him like a tigress. She clutched him round the waist and loudly shrieked for help.

"It was a lurid story of tins scene that the child subsequently narrated to the court; the screams of the maddened woman—the man had drawn his machete and was slashing at her weakening arms —the curses of the baffled brute himself, and the moans of the dying father on the threshold, for he had been struck down by the tinseen accomplice outside. At last the poor woman was forced down on to her knees, and weak from loss of blood, released her hold. The man made a movement to escape, but with a last effort she flung herself upon him and seized him with her teeth just above the knee. With a howl of pain he struck as her again and' again, till she fell back on to the floor dead, and out he rushed. "But he was subsequently identified by the child and arrested, and that was how he came into my hands to be executed according to the law of the white man.

"Immediately I received the warrant I set about the preliminary arrangements. They consisted mainly in digging a large hole in the ground, in concocting a, trap door that would open when —and only when—wanted to do so, and in fixing firmly the two necessary side posts and crossbeam. Rehearsing the Hanging. "My native inspector of police had had similar experiences previously, and the station carpenter happened to be a man of some sense and ingenuity. They worked with a will, for your West African negro loves nothing so much as death in its crudest forms, except perhaps marriage—in its crudest form. \ All promised well. We had two or, three rehearsels with weighted sacks, and, save that every piece of rope in the place was found to be old and useless, nothing untoward occurred. I substituted a length of telegraph wire for the rope, and rehearsed again. There wag no earthly reason to anticipate failure, but the possibility of it haunted me and played on my battered nerves. !

"All that day and the next I was obsessed with old and half-forgotten coast stories of other hangings. It was always something so inappropriate as to> be funny that seemed to have taken place at them, and I hoped most desperately that I shouldn't be reduced to laughter at the critical moment. One district officer told me of a man in a. non-British coast colony with the rope> round* his neck .being sent up a tree» and told to jump. When he not unnaturally hesitated —'If you don't jump,.; was shouted to him in fluent non-Eng-lish, 'l'll pull you down and have you: flogged.' And the man jumped. . "Another was told me by my immedv-' ate predecessor, Sterrard. A Frencfc Roman Catholic father who had attended the condemned man since his sentence, mounted the scaffold with' himu Sterrard, completely unnerved at the last', went behind a tree, and said to the head warder: 'When I drop nay hand pull the lever.' He dropped Iras hand, and there was a crash and a squeal. The French father also hx<h disappeared into the earth), but whs pomptly hauled out, horribly frighten-'

Ed, but otherwise tinlyirt. AH night long theso and similar stories haunted me. I "I had a wretched night, and, Was up and di eased at the first streak of dawn. Everything was in order. I saw the condemned man. A padre was already with him. He was quiet,.'apparently callous, but fee looked most 'horribly alive. His eyes gleamed with unnatural intensity, and every muscle of him magnificent physique seemed strained and tense. I asked if he wanted anything, and he curtly demanded something to drink. There was still no sign of the doctor, under whose advice alone I was allowed to supply him with alcohol, but I disregarded that point, and promised to send him what toe wanted. I went back to my quarters and swallowed some food.' Then I called my boy and ordered him to take a bottle of whisky down to the prison at j once. I had; none, it appeared, so I 1 told him to borrow one from Treherne, ! who was ill in bed with fever, and to ; take it dOAvn instead.