EXECUTION OF AN ELEPHANT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9094, 30 June 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

EXECUTION OF AN ELEPHANT.

A novel excitement was provided to the residents of Mliovv by the Transport Department. A huge male elephant, aged, according to official records, U"2 years, the property of the Government, was condemned to death for a long and hardened course of iniquity. He had been long in a chronic must state, and in this condition had taken a humam life at l'oona about a couple of years ago. He would not work, and was a .source of apprehension to all about him, and a perpetual cause of anxious concern to (iovernmeiit. The fiat went forth that he must die. The Maharajah Holkarand the Rajah of Dhar each separately telegraphed to headquarters and tried for a reprieve One offered to buy the good-looking sinner for 1001), and the other offered to exchange a female elephant of gentle manners for the savage brute : but the Government of India were determined on making the criminal expiate his sins. These oilers were refused, and a private notice was sent round the station that the execution would take place on Thursday morning. Several people,including volunteer executioncers, hurried to a spot indicated outside of cantonments where the malefactor was already chained, ami secured between two death plan-trees. The volunteer marksmen armed with 12 bore express rilies were selected to carry out the execution. The elephant was sitting down when the crowd began to assemble, but shortly raised himself on his fore legs when the first of the shots was fired.which hit him low down at the base of the trunk. The animal vouchsafed no other notice of this and two other equally unetreetive shots, than to stand up on all four legs, shake his head, and blow with his trunk. At length Mr. Dowell, of the 7th Native infantry, placed a bullet in the centre of his head just below the level of his eyes, and the huge brute dropped down dead without a spasm.—Bombay Gazette.