HANGMEN'S DIARIES

Evening Star, Issue 19330, 17 August 1926, Page 2

HANGMEN'S DIARIES

THE ETHICS Of TBSTIKSE AVe do not loot for penmanship in r hangman. His work is done in secret, nnc avd ate not often reminded of his existence Hut .-in tho. old days, when all criminals suffered in pubb'c and the oxecutioneor had many opportunities of showing his shill as a highly-trained and practised performer we may allow lilm -a liii'e pride in jus work. Tim sources for tho study of Mitt activities in England arc 'scanty. Possibly, sines torture was far loss common here than on, the Continent, real masters of (lie art were not easy to find. But in. Germany and the Netherlands, for instate, where opportunities for 'rrmt achievement were more frequent, the hangman has a literature of his own. We know from many sources what his duties were, how ho looked e and wns clad, and what his neighbors Bought of him; and here and there a valuable diary has survived t° tell us in the writer's own words the actual details of his daily work. The ‘Menioires’ of the Paris | family of Sanson, although extremely m- | (cresting, are of doubtful authority ; but I Franz Schmidt, the Nuremberg cxccutioneer, | whose activities covered the years 1575 to 1615, has left us a genuine day book—a work at once attractive and repulsive, of extreme importance .to the criminologist and to tho student of social history, and by no means well known.

Of tiro man himself not much has been discovered except that his father had filled a similar office before him. Many of his contemporaries were men of blood and slaughter. Even Wisseulus, the Bruges hangman of the sixteenth century ,_ of whom it was said that his virtues might have graced a monastery, was a convicted murderer, and a special pardon was necessary before ho could begin, ids duties. But of iMoister Franz we know only that ho was appointed to the office and that ho filled it to the satisfaction of the antiiorite far thirty-seven years. He was a man of little education and few words. The wonder is that he ocnrld road at all. Ho seems to have written up Ids diary each day imniediately after his duties were ended, but be lacked any real power of expression, and lie has often only a hazy idea of the crimes for which his victims suffered. It is at times impossible to follow his moaning. With practice, however, came a certain degree of facility, and his records grow in length, if not in clearness, with the years. At first we have the bare names of the criminals, the offence, the time and manner of the execution. Then he expands until scarcely a page suffices to register ail ho is struggling to say. His outlook is naturally limited. His business was to free the world of malefactors, and ho worked with a fine sense of duty and a keen eye for the shape and thickness of the human' nock. No feelings of pity are allowed to creep in. it .was a part of his duty to slay children. We kriow from other sources that he was a hardened torturer, and in 1585 he broke his brother-in-law on the wheel. But to ms credit be it said that he made an end of the honrid business of drowning women convicted of child murder, an ordeal which might endure for an hour if the water was shallow or the victim lusty, and slew them mercifully with tho sword. And Dr Knapp, the Nuremberg criminologist, claimed for Schmidt that it was due to his sanity of outlook that Nuremberg was spared the horrors of the witch persecutions _ and judicial murders which darken the history of so many Berman towns in the sixteenth century. Schmidt retired in 1615, haying slain 361 of his fellow-creatures and maimed and whipped as many more. He was received back into the community, and died honored and respected in 1654. It is said of him that no wine or beer ever passed Ws lips. LAnother hangman’s record his survived from the eighteenth century, the diary of Pranz Joseph Wohlmuth, of Salzburg, it has never been printed, but Dr Keller gives some extracts in his book on the ‘ Schnrfrichter.’ Like Schmidt, Wohlmuth kept a note of all his executions, from his first employment as a youth of nineteen to his final task, sixty years later, when this hale old man of seventy-nine whipped off_ tho head of a matricide who was sealed in a chair. The diary is not as full as Schmidt’s record; but in his sixty years of office his viciims numbered only ninety-two, an indication either of tho good lives of the citizens of Salzburg or of some mitigation in the rigors of the law. To the same age belongs Karl Muss, of Eger, a man of considerable note in his day, and a studious collector of coins and natural curiosities. Tho son of the cxecutioneer of Ilrux, Huss was horn in 1761. His mother intended him for the church, but family tradition was too strong, and at tlie , ago of fifteen lie was assisting his father. From Brux he drifted to Eger, where his unde was similarly employed; and not -long afterwards Huss succeeded to his post. Then oarne the blow. in 1787 the death penalty was abolished; and as no self-respecting hangman could bo expected to cement himself with whipping, branding, the pillory, and the stocks, Huss turned Iris attention to anatomy and 1 bonesetting, a science with which every hangman was supposed, from his acquaintance with the rack, to be familiar. He had Hie whole medical profession against him, but he persevered and succeeded. Having married well, his social position was assured, and he was able to apply himself to the subject nearest his heart, his collection of coins and curiosities. Groat men sought him out, and Goethe was his friend for many years. Tho question of the social status of the hangman is one of considerable interest. Schmidt was an outcast, living, eating, drinking, and worshipping apart from his fellow-men. Huss would not have had a single visitor of note to his cabinet had he still been professionally employed. That there were honest men engaged in the chopping off of heads is clear. Reference has already been made to the model hangman, Wisselns, of -Bruges; of another official of the eighteenth century it was said at his grave that by his piety while lulling the body ho bad saved many a soul from eternal damnation, and that heaven had endowed him with special qualities for his task. His sword oven was piously inscribed. Peter Mundy made the acquaintance of the Danzig executioner, Merx Gregory, in 1642, a magnificent person with his sable cap and plush ooat—h, very genteel kind of follow. Jio rode about on a gallant horse, while his assistants carried out the sentences of (.lie court and performed also certain other duties connected with his calling, such as tho removal of sewage from the houses. Herr Gregory was clearly an aristocrat among hangmen; but when Mundy goes on to say that lie kept company with the burghers and dined and drunk with them in tho best taverns, wc may well ask for further evidence. The fight for soda! recognition was still being waged in Germany and olscwhc.ro at tho .time of the Trench Revolution. Possibly Herr Gregory himself imparted tho information to Mundy over a bottle of wine, but certainly not in one of the best taverns. A great deal of learning has been expended in the inquiry why and to what extent, the hangman was imehrlich; hut the matter is, after all, one of common sense. At no .age, in no country, was ho likely to bo a pleasant table companion. It is possible from a number of recent works to form a fairly dear estimate of the hangman's duties in the past, at least in Germanic countries, where live subject has received much attention; and. some interesting statistics can bo compiled. Mcistor Iran* executed 561 persons in. tlarty-scven years—an average roughly of ten a year. In 1589, in Augsburg, ten persons were executed; in 1571 the number rises to thirteen, and in 1373 it falls to five. In Frankfurt, between 1101 and 1550, there were 317 executions. In Bruges, between 1477 and 1488, when the town was normally quiet, we have an average of something less than one execution a month; and tho figures for several other towns in tho fifteenth and sixteenth centuries give much the same result. In an age of violence (his is not a very frightening total; and it helps to dispel the illusion which a study of cany criminal records always tends to create—that (ho scaffold and the block were never ohsent from the towns of the Middle Ages, that the hideous business of flaying was daily renewed, and that to attend an'execution was the constant diversion of the people. The times wore evil indeed; crime was terribly frequent; and a perusal of each a nightmare work as Dr Fehr's ‘Das Rncht im ’Bildc’ leaves one appalled at the horrors which, greeted our forefathers at every turn; but in the face of such evidence as this it behoves us to be wary

The executions, Sf course, took place in ■public, and crowds assembled from ail quarters to witness the spectacle. Moister -Fianx records no instances of drowning, burying alive, or boiling-—all forms of execution which were common in the preceding century. One of his predecessors refused to burv a woman alive in 1513, and we do not ■meet with it again at Nuremberg. Schmidt onoa burnt a coiner, but for the rest his methods were the .callows, the sword, and the wheel. The Nuremberg Maiden, wish its horrid appeal to the imagination, still stands placidly in the castle, but she is a if rand. Even if the instrument were ever used, which may bo doubted, it is clear that it formed no part of the administration cl justice. Tire chroniclers know' nothing of it, jaay-ibfrtsara. swuifli

scorned to use such an invention. . A 1 times he bungled, is always honest’ ■ encash to note the fact fin his record. These slips “'cannot have been very nerious, or wo, should hauv heard more about them. lap crowd was always ready to take vengeance' on a 'careless .werkihahj; and Schmidt’s successor, ' who blundered" horribly in 1&.0, would huve been stoivod to dcuth. if th<3 sUmcs had not been frozen into the ground. Our diarist also escaped the fate which m 1595 befell the Rolhouburg hangman, who was so moved by the cries of a murderess that to save her from Ins own clutches ho took her home and married her. callows matches, much beoved of novel writers do actually a-ppear m a number of records; and one st ? r iJ! worth wspeaUnfc. i\ young girl offered her hand to a thief who waT about to bo hanged. He g-azed at her for some moments, ana then si.enily adiusted the rope and leapt oft the ladder. Mcistof Franz has much to say concerning branding, manning, and Branding was inflicted in cases o£ fraud and minor thefts, and was intended to go nght, through the check to too teeth had a distinctive mark-that of Mrremtwr being an eagle. Hands and fingers were out oft for swearing false oaths and tohes of tbo -peace, and whipping for minor offences was an almost daily Whether this fo T m of punishrMni d d moic than degrade the culprit still further is a matte oi opinion; butthatsomero^.esat least took small account of H is dear fro the history of a youth of , twenty-one wJ o came to an untimely end an IW9- He did not pass through &hmdts hands, itrue, but his record is remwkabio. He was whipped at Ghent m _ January, ogam, u Mav and in the following December, Ja Sand June. On the last banished for twenty years; but hack h« came, and in August ho was wluppO<i 'M^ n _ and banished for forty years ber he was once mono at Ghent, lies U be was whipped in tlm court room _ through the streets, and banished tor bt<7 years. In the following January the author* tics had to deal with him for the eighth time. He was now whipped- with th ® “'te Plan’s rope round his neck. After this ho pursued his activities elsewhere He « whipped, and branded at LiUe an<J- BmsseU, and finally, not more than six 'years after his first offence, ho was executed as one whom neither God nor justice could- menu. Keister Franz does not tell us the secrets, of the torture chamber, and we may be grateful for his silence. Torture was resorted to in practically every scrams enme. ' Tbo law demanded such complete proot ot guilt that nothing short of confession would satisfy it, and the culprit was tortured until ho gave evidence against himself. His con teas! on had then to be repeated in open court, and on that confession he was executed. Dr P. Van Heijnsbcrgen has examined the records relating to torture m Hie Low Countries. He shows how lb? system arose, the restrictions under which it was practised, and the various forma ot sutferine with which the patients were plagued, ft was said even in the sixteenth century that Satan himself could scarcely h™ s ? creased its rcftrwmcnts, and tbo FoUertenroer at Nuremberg is still one of the roost gruesome places in Europe. Aft hangman and his assistants had to he me , (for the victim must not ho killed nor ms body disfigured. And yet the torture had to bo oontmued until the last possible moment— 1 Times Literary Supplement.