CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20612, 10 January 1929, Page 11

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

PLEAS FOR ABOLITION. MR KENWORTHY'S BILL. AMENDMENTS TO THE LAW. The Bill introduced in the British House of Commons by Mr Kcmvorthy for the abolition of capital punishment, which passed its first reading by 119 votes to 18, is, not likely to reach tho Statute Book at present. It is impossible to get a private member’s Bill through tne British Parliament unless the Government takes up tho measure on the second reading stage and provides facilities for its passage. ' ' . .For more than 100 years 'spasmodic efforts have been made in England to secure, the abolition of capital punishment. Nearly 90 years ago, when Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister, a deputation waited on him with that object. But though success has not yet been achieved, the agitation against capital punishment has been responsible, for successive 'amendments of_ the criminal law, reducing the list or offences for- which capita] punishment can be imposed. A hundred years ago there were about 200 offences for which a man, woman or child could bo hanged. It is true \that some degree of mercy had crept into the administration or the law, and the extreme, penalty was not always imposed for petty offences, but the sentence depended on the judge’s clemency .or lack of it, and there were frequent instances in which children of tender years were (executed at Tyburn petty offences, and cried for their mothers as the hangman adjusted the pope.

In the year 1832 the theft of horses, cattle or sheep was removed frotn the list of offences to which capital punishment applied, and two years later "returning tbo. soon from transportation” ceased to be an offence for which the culprit could be hanged. In 1835 Housebreaking, forgery, and inflicting bodily harm, dangerous to life, with'intent - to murder ceased to be in the list of capital offences and subsequently arson of dwellings was also removed. In 1861 the offences punishable with death were limited to four—<'eaßo?.> murder, piracy with violence, and incendiarism in dockyards, ‘ Thai !aiir!°\ f he +a aw st , and , s to-day in Engjaiid, T)ut three of these crimes have * become obsolete, and murder is the only is in infli°t d hICI t ie P unis Hment of death

WHERE IT HAS BEEN ABOLISHED. In thefollowing countries capital punishment is not inflicted: Austria, Belgatm, Denmark, Finland, Holland, Lithu;l,£*la>. Nor way, Rumania, Portug ■».],' Swen?' , Switzerland, _ Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, ■ Honduras, Icru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Queensland. In Italy it .has beei aboi5 s ,? ~e x® ?pt for those who attempt to kill the King or Signor Mussolini. In Germany it is no longer inflicted in Heeae. Brunswick, Saxony, Thuringen, Bremen, and Hamburg. In the United States it has been .abolished by eight'States; S 3 ot . the other 40 States have laws which empower a court to pass a life sentence “ a ? alternative to one of death; in only a^olutely 163 W deatd penalty, retained In some of the countries mentioned capital punishment hae not been legally aoohshed, but it has ceased to be carried out. In Belgium, for instance, criminals are sometimes sentenced to death, but are not executed. A man who is- under aentence of death is kept in. prison, and on the date fixed for his execution a gibbet is erected outside the local town hall, and an official document is attached to it stating that the condemned man has been executed. It is a remarkable foot that Ivussia, which has never been regarded as a highly .civilised country, abolished capital punishment more- than 170 years ago; but it was subsequently restored, and since then many thousands have suffered the death penalty in that country. Capital ■punishment was abolished for a time in England in the reign of William the Conqueror. This, however, was not because William was an excessively humane monarch, but because be believed- that cutting off the hands of criminals and leaving them free to roam about the country in a maimed state was a more effective way of bringing home to evildoers the terrors of the law than executions. Methods of execution vary in different countries In Japan, as in England, criminals sentenced tt, death are banged in private behind prison walls. In France they are guillotined in public. In Prussia they aft decapitated by the Old-fashioned method of an axe and hhjek. In Spain murderers are executed in puulic by means of the garotte, which consists of a brass collar with a screw, the sharp point of which when turned by the executioner, pierces the spinal marrow and cans death. Formerly the garotte was a cord placed round the neck, which when twisted with a Stick caused strangulation.

Most people are under the impression that all criminals executed in the United States , are electrocuted—strapped to. a chair and killed instantaneously by turning on a powerful current of .electricity. But this method of.execution is in force in only throe out of the 48 States of America—New York, Ohio, and Massachusetts. In the other States in which capital punishment is carried out, the method of execution is hanging. ... . A HANGMAN’S MEMOIRS.

James. Berry, after retiring from the post of public hangman in England in 1901, toured the country as a lecturer, and also wrote a book, “ My Experiences as an Executioner.” According to those who knew Betry in private life, he was a kind-hearted man. And a devoted husband and father; but dt is obvious from his book that he took the utmost pride in his work as an executioner. “My method of execution," he wrote, “is the outcome of the experience of my predecessors and myself, aided by suggestions from the doctors, and is rather the result of gradual growth than the invention of any one man. The matter which requires greatest attention in connection with all execution is the allowance of a suitable drop for each person executed, and the adjustment of this matter is not nearly us simple as an outsider would imagine. It is, of course, necessary that the drop should be of sufficient length to cause instantaneous death; that is to soy, to cause death by dislocation rather than by strangulation; And on the other hand the drop must not be so great as outwardly to mutilate the victim. If all murderers who have to be hanged were of precisely the same weight and build it would be very easy to find out the most suitable length' of drop and always to give the same, but As a matter of fact, they differ enormously.” The last public execution in England took place 00 years ago, when Michael Barrett was_ hanged outside Newgate for complicity in the Fenian outrages in London. Executions had taken place outside Newgate prison for 85 years. Tyburn, which was the scene of public executions in England for about six centuries, during which time about 50,000 people were hanged there, lost its glory in 1783, because of public protests at the disorderly scenes which took place there and along the three-mile route from Newgate to Tyburn, to which condemned prisoners were conveyed in a cart. Thousands of people followed the cart to Tyburn, and the friends of the condemned men and women exchanged ribald jokes with them and plied them with liquor. Largo crowds of people assembled at Tyburn to witness the executions, and those who could afford to pay for a good view were provided with seats in wooden, grand stands. Disgraceful scenes took place when the bodies were cut down and claimed by the friends of the criminals.