SAME OLD CROWD

Grey River Argus, 27 July 1925, Page 3

SAME OLD CROWD

LOVE or A SPECTACLE. THE SAME SPIRIT IN ALL AGES. The advanced state of our civilisation was brought home to be the other day by the gathering of a crowd in I linders lane to watch two small boys fighting (says a correspondent of the Melbourne Argus). Two exceedingly small boys and as large a crowd as the part of the street would hold, with not a constable about, of course, to disperse the mob anl prevent blood, shed by the arrest of the miscreants. Quite frankly, I was in the crowd myself— not in the forefront of it, for the affair had started before my arrival. One small, tearful boy was defying the other equally tearful urchin. What lie origin of the dispute was I don’t know, but the one small boy was challenging the other to hit him with the little bit of rock clenched in his fingers. il Sling it! Go on—sling it. r vou wanter! Hit he. Go on.” And a large adult, when the opponent hesitated —obviously wanting only to scoot away as quickly as his little legs could carry him—supplemented toe invitation with the cheerful ad. vice. “Go on, sonny! Give it him.” So the hesitant opponent did sling the rock at him. and did hit him, and iw’unptlv tb<* challenger yelled with pain, and filing himself tooth and nail ><>n Ins assailant. Immediately the two were at hammer and tongs. The crowd was cheering and laughing: windows of offices went up; heads were roKed out- steps offering a reasonable view of the highly diverting spectacle of two very sail boys, each doing his utmost to acquict himself with dis.

nm-tion ami destrov the enemy, and each roaring very Loudly in evidence of his own punishment, were fully

occupied. Yes, we were all thoroughly enjoying ourselves, when a misguided person interfered —a young woman. She thrust her way into the ring. She caught one contestant by the collar, and the other by his shirt collar, ana presently was standing between* two

sobbing small boys, each of whom had had mere than enough of it, and she was an dressing herself to them in terms of good advice and solace. We did not stay to hear what she said. She had spoilt our amusement. And the other day, when the dls_

ns.er ocru ad at the British Australian Tobacco Company’s building, the crowd was naturally so great that the efforts of the rescuers was impeded. Rescue work did not matter; satisfaction of curiosity was the sole consideration. Just through sheer thoughtlessness or gross selfishness, love of the spectacle, or something new and strange, without concern for the troubles and the sufferings of the

principals of the disaster. W’e have not progressed so very far after all, many of us, from the folk of the times when Governments provided a sufficiency and variety of brutal spectacles to meet the tastes of the public. We form—many of us—the same old crowd. Nowadays the State does not hang its malefactors in the full sight of Ihe mob as a form of popular amusement under guise of a. moral lesson. But it did so not so many years ago. Dickens offers vivid descriptions of these crowds —those crowds assembling the night before the execution, and in the morning watching the fearful pleasure the malefactors swung off into the next world. Sixty years ago Monday morning was fixed in London for the display of the art of the public eeeutioner Cal_ craft. In 1864 he officiated at the execution of five mutineers and murderers. Vast crowds camped all Sunday night outside Newgate for the appearance of executioner ami victims. All five, when the drop fell, were left struggling in the air. “The fall then given was short; necks were seldom dislocated, and strangulation was the usual result.” MORBID CIRIOSITY. But affairs like this shocked the worthy and pious folk of Victoria’s reign. It was not so much that the majority of them objected to the spectacle. but they did object to Sabbathbreaking. Here w T ere thousands of people absent from church or chapel and assembling and camping outside

Newgate, so as to have a good view in the morning. So, through the in. fluence of right-minded folk, the Government, in 1865, was compelled to change a time-honoured practice. In order that the Sabbath peace might not be disturbed, it fixed Wednesd.;y as the day for public executions. The crowds might have been content with this, but certain genuine reformers happily were not. Three years later executions were instituted, and the mob of morbid-minded was com. polled to satisfy itself with gathering outside prison walls at the hour of the execution in precisely the same way as crowds have assembled outside Melbourne Gaol within recent years when murderers have met the penalty of their crimes. Ghastly and morbid this curiosity, of course, and eloquent of the true state of civilisation oi a -itgh percent, age in the average community. Iho’ ii he average person will profess himself shocked at the barbarities of past generations, side prison walls suggest that the reforms instituted have been attributable always to the few folk n advance of their age. and that if D were possible for the spectacles of horror, whether in ancient da's or in he not so far distant past, to b« restaged, they would not lark still a sufficiency of spectators. The crowds gathered for the puobc executions of last century were T * far remote from the crowds assemo.e<l to watch the cruelties of the days o religious persecution, little if at all removed from the crowds along the way to Tyburn watching the be rm bon ed highwayman driving to the tr'e <• glory. The expressed sympathy ot a crowd outside a gaol with the v hanged for ghastly crime differs little from the spectators’ pretended N •». ->athv with thn nietnrpsnue rentier-”' of the road, driven in the cart, with his coffin in readiness tor him. ami the chaplain mumbling his prayers. If the highwayman had good looks and bore himself gallantly, many might, pretend it a pity that so pretty a fellow’ should be turned off. but they probably did not think so. They’ did not

want him reprieved. His execution was the climax of of the entertainment. “LADIES OF QUALITY AND FASHION.” The mind of the reader of 44 A dale of Two Cities” may be stricken w/fii horror at the merciless account of the mob of revolutionaries awaiting the victims of the guillotine. But d es th** average reader pay much lie.•<! to th<» ghastly’ stories told at the meeting of Defarge and his associates. The countryman is telling of the punishment of the poor wretch condemn'd for the murder of Monseigneur, the whispering among the peasants before the execution: ‘‘One oil man * says that his right hand, armed with the knife, will be burnt off before b ,s facer that into the wounds to be made in his arms, breast, and his logs there will be poured burning oil, melted lend, hot resin, wax and sulphur: finally, by four strong horses. All this was that be will be torn limb from limb actually done to a prisoner who wi<! • an attemnt on the life of Louis XV.” Jacques Three breaks in: “The mu •* of that prisoner was Damiens, and nothing was more noticed in t! ■ vast concourse that saw’ it done than <be crowd of ladies of quality ami fashion, who were full of eager attention to the last.” Fine ladies and gentlemen in England watched the trial of Impb'-s wretches at the Ohl Barley in eighteenth century, as folk of a si • •- lar quality attend revolting trims today. For sheer amusement just as the Bomans watched th<> glad .ator’m 1 contests, or as they delight- lin tio horror of the spectacle- pr<»v’.d-'d by a Nero. Sienkiewicz, in “Quo V devotes many pages to the torments of the Christians. II ' tells of the <rowdI in holiday t with : flowers, jovous, Aiming, and some • I them drunk, going t » ti e i cw spectacle Hn Caesar’s | burning f the Christians. He tells of their vlti. jmate 1 > piece of sheer imagination. Lytton, in I magnificent description of the am] bi_ ! theatre on the last day of Ponq.ini, estimates the crowd more shrcwdlj..