CAN A HANGING MAN MAKE SIGNALS ?

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12991, 7 October 1905, Page 2 (Supplement)

CAN A HANGING MAN MAKE SIGNALS ?

VIEWS OF A DOCTOR. Speculation ha,* been aroused among i medical scientists in New York by the declaration of the .Rev. Emil A. Meury, pastor of the Second Reformed Church in Jersey City, that he has proved conclusively that a man mar retain consciousness, memory and the power of voluntary motion after his neck had been broken by a drop from the gallows. They are not inclined to agree with the clergyman, however, even though he says he successfully made the test at the hanging of Paul Genz iu the Hudson County gaol in 1897. •He had also made arrangements to do so when Edward F. Tape ley, a negro, was to have been-hanged for wife murder, but for this he will have to Wait, as Tapeley's counsel announced their intention of applying to Chancellor Magic in Elizabeth for a. writ of error, which probably will be granted and which will act as a stay of execution. The Rev. Mr. Meury will nevertheless continue ■' his agitation against capital punishment, as a text for which he means to use the Genz and Tapeley cases. Describing the Genz case, the Rev. Mr, Meury said: — Genz was certain ho would be conscious after his neck was broken and said to me: 'Watch me closely. After my body is drawn upward and I fall to the rope's end and my neck is broken, I will wait about a minute; then I will close my hands' twice, then - once, then twice pgain. I arrange this signal now so that none of the doubters who may be looking at me can say that my movements are only involuntary twitchings.'" According to the minister, this progamine was carried out. - ! 'He says he distinctly saw the pinioned hands of the condemned man make the signal agreed upon, and that six other persons' had witnessed it. He means to make a similar arrangement with Tape ley and, if the result is the same, use it in his argument for the abolition of capital punishment which he intends to present to the next Legislature. Discussing the matter Dr. Allen McLane Hamilton, a noted alienist, of New York, said:"l had already read the Rev. Mr. Metiry's statements, and I believe he has been" deceived. It is manifestly, impossible for a man whose neck has been broken to make any voluntary motion, for the obvious reason that the motor cords of the spine are broken and there is no communication between the brain and the body. There may be what we call reflex action after the brain has been cut off, but that is of a purely convulsive nature. "When the neck is broken the shock alone is sufficient to prevent co-ordina-tion : that is. there can be no reasoning power. The brain would be blank as to any agreement previously made, or anything else that happened before. Every voluntary act of the body is communicated to'the brain, and When the means of communication is severed there can be no such action. The brain may work even then—We do not know—but it would have no means of expressing itself. - SPASMODIC MOTION-. " The case might be different when a man of cool and calm brain is dying of slow strangulation, but 1 do not think even that is possible. I have seen six men hanged and three die by t electricity, and in every case there was convulsive or involuntary action. It is possible tint this man's hands did make some motion like the signal agreed upon and that Dr. Meury, who was possibly in an excited frame of mind, interpreted it as the signal that had been agreed upon. -V ,• " It has been said that when the guillotine was used in France heads that had been severed from their bodies would show signs of consciousness, even to the extent of opening the eyes when spoken to, but I believe that this was nothing more or less than spasmodic motion. When a person is pitched from a car his mind is blank until he strikes the ground, except for the involuntary impulse to save himself, and this is op the same principle. "There • are no case 3 of the kind on record 1 so far as I have ever heard. Years ago, when three negro . pedlars were hanged in the Tombs, one of-them, after the drop fell, lifted up his legs and threw them round the neck of one of the others, but there was every evidence that the brain had ceased and that the action was reflex, or convulsive — involuntary movement to save himself at the moment of shock."