A HATED HEADSMAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10037, 25 January 1896, Page 2 (Supplement)

A HATED HEADSMAN.

Ok tho little island of Ustica, forty miles from Palermo, Italy, there died the other day a man who was for years tho terror of the people of Naples and tho kingdom of tho two Sicilies. Ho was Gaotano Impellizzori, onco tho headsman under Ferdinand 11. of Naples. The useless oxocutions attributed to Impellizzeri are countless, and, with the cruelty which he showed, led to his denunciation by Mr. Gladstone forty yours ago in the philippics which tho statesman directed against Ferdinand. The executions were only in part public; it was tho oxocutions in secret—usually at night— which gave the man his power. It was he who executed in San Francisco Place, Naples, the Calabrian Agendas Milanoque, who on Docomber 9, 1856, had made a bayonot thrust at King Ferdinand 11., and patriots innumerable became his victims. When Garibaldi ontered Naples in September, 1860, tho excited populace went in search of the hated headsman, but he cared much for his own life, although ho thought little of that of others, and escaped with his wifo. Later he was imprisoned on the island of Ustica, where lie became an officer of the fort built in those days to protect the island against pirates. Ho was in receipt of a pension of sdols. a month—much moro j than ho deserved. He was 81 yoars of ago 1 at the time of bis death,