THE "FLOWERY LAND" MURDER AND PIRACY CASE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1233, 10 May 1864, Page 3

THE "FLOWERY LAND" MURDER AND PIRACY CASE.

At the Central Criminal Court, on Thursday, February 4, John Lyons, Francisco Blanco, Ambrosio (alius Maurico) Duranno, Basiiio de les Santos, Mercos Watto, Miguel Lopez (alias Joseph Chauces, alias the Catalan), Marchelino, and (xeorgo Carlos were charged with the murder of the captain and live of the crew of the merchant ship Flowery Land. The prisoners all elected to be tried by a jury of Englishmen. From the evidence it appeared that the Flowery Land lcl't the Port of London on the 28th July last, bound for Singapore, with a cargo of wines, and carrying twenty persons. Notwithstanding some previous symptoms of insubordination, nothing occurred to create the supposition that any organised plan of mutiny existed among the crew, or that they had secretly organised a conspiracy to murder the captain and any other persons who opposed their design, and to take possession of the vessel, aud after plundering to destroy her. The time selected to carry out the design was the night of the 9th of September, when the first mate (Carswell) kept the watch on deck, aud the whole of the prisoners were there; the captain, his brother, aud the second mate being in their berths in the cabin below. The rest of the crew were sleeping on deck. The first mate was suddenly attacked and felled to the deck by a blow with a handspike, and his dead body was then thrown into the sea. The captain, aroused, got out of his berth and was about to go on deck when he was killed with knives or daggers. The captain's brother was attacked in the same manner. All the prisoners were concerned in these proceedings, and after the captain had been -killed a proposition was made that he should at once be thrown overboard. The second mate, however, interposed, and requested permission to sew the body in some canva9, in order that it might be consigned decently to the deep. The prisoners then proceeded to plunder the captain's cabin, where they obtained possession of a considerable sum of money, and a proposal was made that this money should be divided among the whole of the crew. One of the prisoners (Watto), however, objected to this, and said that it ought only to be divided among the eight who had organised the conspiracy to seize the vessel. One of the witnesses for the prosecution was the second mate, who had taken a share of the money, influenced by fear of the prisoners, and if he had not i been the only person on board who was competent | to navigate the vessel his life would also have been sacrificed.—Mr. Metcalfe and the other learned counsel retained by the respective Governments of the prisoners made able addresses on their behalf, and Mr. Baron Bramwell having summed up, the jury acquitted Carlos and returned a verdict of guilty against the remaining seven. Sentence of death was then pronounced in the usual form. On the following day Carlos was arraigned on the charge of having scuttled the vessel. The evidence was the same as that in the murder case. The prisoner was found guilty, aud sentenced to ten years' penal servitude. THE EXECUTION.

On the morning of the 22nd February, five of the above seven pirates were hanged in front of the prison of Newgate, in the presence of an immense concourse of people. Basiiio de los Santos and Marchelino were reprieved on the evening of February 19, their sentence having been commuted to penal servitude for life. The whole of the convicts were natives of Manila, except Watta, who was a Levantine. From the extraordinary degree of interest which the trial of the "criminals excited, and still more, perhaps, from the circumstance that so many as five men at one time had not before been executed at the Old Bailey for thiity-six years—since March, 1828, —it was apprehended that an enormous crowd would assemble, and the sheriffs, with Colonel FrastT, the city commissioner of police, made such arrangements as appeared commensurate with the occasion for the maintenance of order and the protection of life. Happily, in the result these were most effective, and well suited to the emergency. About 500 of the city police were on duty, aided by a considerable number of the metropolitan force. At some executions in recent years, as, for instance, at that of Mullens for the Stepney murder, almost as great multitudes have assembled in the Old Bailey A 9 that on Eebruary 22, but rarely, if ever, one where, upon the whole, more order prevailed. By common consent this result is attributed to the arrangement by which the spectators were penned up in manageable numbers within, barriers. As usual, besides the vastconcourseof people whocongregated in the streets, there were hundreds more, among whom were to be seen here and there welldressed women, who witnessed the spectacle from the opposite windows and housetops. From au early hour in the morning the priests who had been in attendance on the doomed men since their conviction were again with them, and remained until the last. M. Morphinos, Archimandrite of the Greek Church in London-wall, attended upon the convict Watto, and the other four received the consolations of religion from the Rev. James Hussey, of the Roman Catholic Chapel in Moorfields. and Fathers Joseph Louis and Hermann, Spanish priests. At twenty minutes to eight o'clock, all who had any duty to perform in this last dreadful act drew together in a little room, when one of the gaol officials appeared, and said that the condemned would soon be ready. They were " quite comfortable," he added, and were finishing their breakfast. At a quarter to eight Mr. Jonas, the Governor of Newgate, entered and said quietly, "we are all ready, gentlemen," whereupon, in obedience to an old custom of the juniors proceeding first on these occasions, the under-sheriff led the way, followed by the sheriffs and about a dozen officials and spectators, in a kind of rough procession, two and two. In this order they passed out from the Sessions-house, and descended the flight of steps into the court-yard of Newgate, where from beyond the massive stone walls the shouts and cries and uproar of the mob came with a loud indistinct noise like the roar of an angry sea. It was a positive relief to escape from hearing this ravening crowd, and to pass at once into the dim quiet of the narrow i toituous and almost underground passages which ' lead from the court-house to what is called in the gaol the New Wing. Fot a short length the passage is quite subterranean, and so narrow that there wai scarcely room for two to pass abreast. A.t nearly every forty feet there is a massive iron door, and even when the passages do at last emerge into the cold half-daylight of the early winter's morning, they are so closed in over head with massive iron bars that the day is almost excluded. One passage, though wider than them all, was gloomier, in fact, than any, and absolutely terrible in its associations. Its walls were of extra height; the thick black iron grating crossed above it seemed almost close enough to keep out the half thawed snow which came floating down; the pavement was ruinously uneven, and on the whitewashed walls at either side rough capital letters, coarsely carved in stone, could just be deciphered. In this forlorn, dim, close-barred prison alley, the horrors of Newgate seemed to culminate, for this is the Aceldama of the metropolis, the burying place of London murderers, the miserable spotwhich is horrible and infamous even to prisoners, where almost immediately after coming from he gallows the corpses of felons are huddled naked into shells full of quicklime, and thrust beneath the pavement as soon as cold. It was impossible to pass along this dreadful place of sepulture, where death is associated with whatever is dark and terrible in human destiny, without a feeling of as one looked at the significant m-egulau y of the pavement, and read at a glance the dreadful tales of blood which, without words, the " 6 for Greenacie, or the " C " for Curvoisier, seemed to be always disnlosinir. .

Passing through this and the place were women murderers also find a last asylum, where even their infamy is in time forgotten, the way winds on throu"h courts and passages till the last grated dooi is silently opened, and the little procession passed suddenly into a lofty, warm, and spacious building lighted from the top, and with a series of stone balustrades or balconies one over the other running in front of the cells built into the walls around. A large black board marked with the single word "Silence" hung in the centre _ of this the New Wine But the injunction 011 this occasion was unnecessary, for not a word was spoken as the little Lrrouu of officials stopped in front of the condemned The silence from this time was almost unbroken but all the rest of the dreadful incidents of the execution were hurried rapidly to a close. A short, thickset, shabby man, with venerable white locks and beard which his sinister face belied, shuffled rapidly in, cringing with a fawning deference to all lie passed, and opening a cell, proceeded to pull out several black leather straps, with thongs and buckles that looked at first like harness. With one of these in his hand he proceeded to the first cell, which was at once opened, and Watto was called forth to be pinioned by the common hangman. With the first call of his name Watto stepped forth into the corridor, and stood meekly before the executioner, a slight, fair, and very good-looking young man of twenty-one or twenty-two—a lad whom, to iudge by physiognomy alone, one would have chosen out of a thousand for a kind and gentle disposition. His real name was Marcos Vartos, and in his indictment lie was designated as of Turkish origin, but in religion he was a Greek, and was, in fact, one of that numerous class known in the Levant as low Franks, a class which comprises within its ranks the

offscourings of most that is had in Europe. In spite of his mild appearance and now mi't'k hearing, he was, if evidence is ever to be trusts!, one of the most ruthless of all these men—foremost j among the plotters—most, merciless of the assassins. | He was attended by Mr. Morphinos, and looked peri fectly resigned and subdued as the hangman drew; j the straps and buckles rigidly around, after which he retired slowly to his cell. The next to step forth from his room was Lopez—the adviser of all the murders, the determined perpetrator of at least one—the worst-looking in countenance, and to the very moment of his death the most defiant in gesture and in bearing of them all. It seemed almost as if Lopez had been hanged before, so lightly did he ail just his every movement to the necessities of the hangman, and thrust his hands almost by anticipation into the straps that were to confine his dying struggles. Yet not for a second did his mere swagger impose on those accustomed to see really brave men going to their death. So unsteady was he that every movement, even the least the hangman made to buckle the straps around him, threatened to tilt him over ; his fingers were almost buckled in the way the hands were clasped together; his eyes sought every face with an anxious, dreadful glance ; his lips trembled, though he tried almost incessantly to wet them with his parched tongue, but in vain. Duranno, who so cruelly assassinated the mate, was the next to come out. and he, like the two that followed him, were what are called Manila men —that is to say, they were born in the East, and spoke indifferent Spanish. They were all, however, of the pure Tartar type, flat-nosed, sinall-eyed, with low, retreating foreheads, and heads thickly covered with masses of lank black hair like those of the North American Indians. Duranno was the first who showed signs of fear. Watto was resigned; Lopez was defiant; but Duranno seemed blanched by his fear to a dull clayey hue that was worse to look upon than the pallor of death itself. Still, though his lips kept shivering, and his eyes reeled, he seemed to bear up till the hangman removed the sailor's necktie and undid the collar of his shirt. Then the death that was so near seemed to come upon him in all its bitterness, and he crept together with his limbs, and spoke a few words, in almost piteous tones, to the Roman Catholic clergyman who was with him. Blanco was even worse than this. Large beyond all the rest in stature, an overmatch for almost all the others in mere brute strength, the man who had taken the most conspicuous and relentless part in all the murders, who had struck down the mate, and boasted of having thrown him while praying for mercy into the sea, who had stabbed the captain in his sleep, and beaten the captain's brother till his very corpse was shapeless, came out from his cell as if the very agony of death was on him, so strongly did he show his fear. He seemed helpless as he was being pinioned, and sighed heavily. He, like Duranno, shuddered as his neckerchief was removed, but seemed gratified that two little copper crucifixes, which he wore round his neck, were allowed to remain. Leone, or Lyons, as he was called, was the last to come. Without any show of fear, but with much of sorrow, he stepped into the corridor and was pinioned, looking, as he showed himself throughout, a resigned and apparently deeply repentant man. He spoke English tolerably well, and when his hands and elbows were closely fastened to his side, he leant forward, and in a few broken words said to Mr. Sheriff Cave that he quite admitted the justice of his punishment, but until then he had never seen how wicked his crime had been, or how deserving it was of death. This was the only approach to public confession made by any of the men. When Leone retired to his cell the hangman left, and in a minute afterwards a signal was given, and one after another the five men were brought out, each between two warders, and then a somewhat hurried move was made through the passages again, but this time across another courtyard towards the front of the gaol, over the walls of which could be heard reverberating the dismal tolling of St. Sepulchre's bell, and, worse than all, the impatient, clamorous, roaring hum of the crowd outside.

Within a heavy iron grate they were thus led to a form, and there, for the first time since their trial, they sat down side by side, and almost as they did so the bell of Newgate, with aloud discordant boom, began to toll above their heads. Beyond where the culprits were sitting was a passage, the end of which was thinly hung with black, and which led out into the open air, as was shown by the glare of the day coming down between llie narrow dark stone walls. Outside this was the scaffold. But it needed nothing to tell the men that within a few feet of where they sat they were to die a shameful and a violent death, for with the first boom of the bell came in the hoarse murmur that a multitude makes when talking, mingled with an indescribable trampling sound, and cries of •'Hats off, hats off." " They are coining," amid all which, and the noise and sway of a great crowd, the bell above the heads of the now fast dying men went tolling rapidly on. It sounded more like an alarm than a knell. Its clamour would have silenced talking if any wished to talk. But nothing now was said as Duranno and Blanco leant back faint, and the others seemed to listen with dreadful faces, now looking up to where the clang of the bell came down upon them, then glancing with quivering lips through the passage which just let in the daylight and the noise of the crowd, but allowed nothing to be seen beyond. The old hangman left to take a glimpse at the scaffold, and see that all was ready, and after him went one or two officials, furtively glancing at the mass of human beings which swarmed through Newgate street into Smithfield, which thronged the housetops and windows far and near, all looking with white up-turned faces to where the dingy gibbet with its five short links of chain stood in front of the debtors' door. Scarcely a minute was thus passed when the hangman returned and hurried out with young Watto, at the sight of whom there was a renewed cry from the multitude outside. Perhaps at the sight of his comrade in guilt thus borne away, perhaps at the sound of the mob without, Duranno turned pale and faint, and asked for water. Water and brandy both were brought, and Duranno and Blanco both drank a little of the spirit raw, and were then. hurried off. Copez was called next, but as he rose there was a half shout, half scream from the crowd outside, for Blanco, the most powerful of all the murderers, and supposed to have been the most hardened, had fainted with the rope round his neck, and was, in fact, hanging till the warders ran back to fetch a chair, in which the wretched man was propped up until the drop fell. Lopez and Leone now remained alone on the bench, Lopez careless as usual, though quiet; Leone resigned, and apparently absorbed in thought and prayer. Again Lopez was told to rise, but again there was a delay, of which he took advantage to ask for something to drink. Water was put to his mouth, but he spat it out and turned away his head, though the feverish eagerness with which he I swallowed some brandy was awful to behold. Then he rose, and as he stood hearing the bell toll, his j desperate spirit at last gave way, and his eyes filled with tears, which he tried in vain to raise his pinioned hands to wipe away. Then he, too, went j out with a light jaunty step, and was almost immediately followed by Leone. There was deep silence now within and without the gaol, and none of the officials compelled to be present looked out, for the old hangman had left the men standing in a row and was busy beneath the scaffold. In another instant there was a heavy sound, and all turned away, while the gibbet creaked audibly, for the five murderers hung dying side by side. There was a dreadful pause inside for a min uteor two during which all spoke in whispers, as if in a sick chamber. Then the creaking ceased, and the hangman, after a few business-like looks behind, came slouching in, and his return was taken as a sign that all was quiet now, and that the last and most solemn effort which man can make for self-preservation had been exercised against five as determined murderers as have ever hung in front of Newgate. The cutting down of the corpses was almost more repulsive than the hanging. The noises from the crowd which accompanied the severance of each rope, the heavy thump with which the corpse fell into its shell, the speed with which it was borne in, unpinioned, cast loose from its halter, and pronounced dead, made this a painful though, fortunately, a very quick business. The countenance only of Watto was slightly changed; the rest lay tumbled in their shells as the hangman had left thein, precisely as though they slept. At two in the day their clothes were cut off them to the last fragment, and burnt. The shells were then filled up with quick lime, and at three o'clock they were placed beneath the stone at the end of the gloomy buryingplace we have mentioned, without form or ceremony of any kind.—Home News,