THE EXECUTION OF LEDUC.

Otago Witness, Issue 715, 12 August 1865, Page 15

THE EXECUTION OF LEDUC.

Full forty years have elapsed since the pleasant city of Boulogne-sur-Mor beheld that dread instrument of death, the guillotine, in her precincts; and then it was brought here to carry out the sentence of the law on a murderer of deep d\ c. Yes-ter-evening the necessity of the 111 1 w again required its presence. On the 6th November la3t, on the arrival of the Souf.n-jikstern Company's packet from Foikestme, about four p m., a man, accompanied by two little boys, came ashore ; one boy was aged about six years, and the other aliout two years. The man, whose name >vas Jean Baptiste Leduc, led the elder boy with one hand, and bore his luggage in the other, the younger child being carried b" one of the porters. They all went to the wait-ing-room under the Chamber of Commerce, where there was a g<nd fire. Here Leduc stayed with the boys, >vho had suffered greatly on the voyage, and to whom he gave no kind of nourishment, although the weather was extremely cold, and they were much exhausted. II j represented them as two children whoai he was going to take to school sonis distant i-i the interior, and did not leave until nearly seven o'clock, when it was quite dark, and the London boat had arrived taking tiie occupants of the room on to the Quai.'L'jduc had resided much in Boulogne, where tie had a wife and two daughters, who conducted themselves with praisewortti} 7 industry and respectability; he was well known to many of the inhabitants, and it seems obvious that his object in staying in the wait-ing-room at the Custom-house uitil it was dark was to avoid recognition. Lxluc nad formed an illicit connection with a woman named Anne Campbell, at Dover, and the two children alluded to were the offspring thereof. On leaving the Chamber ot Commerce Leduc proceeded up the port close to the Quais, and crossed the bridge to the railway station. lie then continued his walk for upward- of half a mile, when he arrived at th Cement Works, and passed the site of tue new viaduct for the Cologne and Cal ih Railway. The cold, dark, and b;i i weather prevented any persons loiter; >; in this neighborhood, and there were no houses or gaslights in the vicinity. .Depositing his luggage on the bank, he took a child in each hand and descended on to the marshy ground below, crossing which ho reached the then narrow and shallow stream oi the Liane. Here the cold-bloodetl monster seized the children by their waists and entered the water, which only reached up to his knees; in this shallow s'r^a » he plunged the poor children, debuintud by sea-sickness, hunger, and cold, and thore held them until they were dead, when he left them, hoping, no doubt, that the morning's tide, while the port migiit be undergoing the operation of slu : cing, would take them out to sea, and they would not be again heard of. In this he was disappointed ; no sluicing took place; and ere the noon of the next day was past, the bodies of both children were found, and identified by a man who had passed the previous evening with Leduc in the waiting room. The murderer was sought for, and was ultimately traced to his native place, Montreuil, where he was arrested ; and on his being taken into the Marque, at the hospital, he recognised the children as having been compagnons de voyage, but stated that he had delivered them to a person near the Pont dv Barrage, who claimed them, and on leaving the place he exclaimed '• Le brigand les a assassines ; il faudra bien que j'ai sa vie, ou qu'il ait la mienne." Evidence of a satisfying nature having been adduced, the man at length confessed that the poor children were his own, and that he had drowned them, intending to commit suicide at the same time. The state of the murderer's clothes showed the fallacy of such an assertion ; they had only been wet up to the knees, and his arms up to the elbows. He endeavored to establish a plea of insanity, but unsuccessfully. The trial took place on the 16th of March last, when he was very ably defended, and the jury were urged strongly to receive the plea he set up, and so return a verdict with extenuating circumstances ; they, however, gave the unanimous verdict of guilty without extenuating circumstances, and Leduc was adjudged to die by the guillotine at Boulogue-sur-Mer. An appeal to the Court of Cassation was heard and dismissed, and the sentence of the Court of Assize confirmed. It was to carry out this sentence that the guillotine was brought last night from St. Onaer, and was erected. Various were the rumors as to the day on which the execution would take place, and Saturday morning last was generally believed to be the day fixed. This opinion was strengthened by an alarm

being given shortly before midnight on Friday, caused by a fire at the .Hotel d'Angleterre, when the tocsin in the Haute Ville rang with its accustomed loud clangour, seeming louder in. the stillness of the night. The fire was speedily extinguished, and crowds, who I knew nothing of it, resorted to the Haute Ville, momentarily expecting the appearance of the guillotine, and would not be. persuaded of their error until nearly eight o'clock in the morning. Again yesterday the Haute Ville was crowded by thousands from four o'clock in the morning untiL nearly eight o'clock ; it was not until after midday that it became known with any degree of certainty the execution would take place in the Place Imperial, in Capecure, at an early hour this morning. This report gained full credence by the appearance of the public executioner from Douai, and the agents of the police marking out the site of the guillotine in the Place Imperial. Further corroboration was given by the notification of the assembly of the gendarmerie of the arrondissement being summoned to attend. During last night the wretched prisoner Ledue arrived at the prison in the Rue de l'Oratoire, in custody of a strong body of police, where he remained until this morning. The worthy chaplain of the prison at St. Oner, who has been most assiduous in his endeavors to prepare the wretched criminal for his ignominious death, accompanied him, and did not leave him until the last. Early this morning the guillotine was erected about the centre of the Place Imperial, and before the hour of four upwards of 7000 persons of both sexes awiited the arrival of the condemned criminal. As that hour drew nigh, the crowd increased vastly, and it may be fairly estimated that when the execution took place at least twenty thousand persons, of which the moiety were females, were on the ground. At fiveo'clock, the guillotine being arranged, and the ponderous knife suspended, the executioner left the scaffold, and shortly the battalion of chasseurs entered the large «quare, formed around tbe scaffold to maintain it. and prevent the crowd pressing too closely. There wa3 not a symptom. of disturbance ; everybody seemed to be engiged in merr/ and quiet conversation; the awful scene about to take place did not appear to dwell upon their thoughts. At half-past five a body of gendarmerie entered the square on horseback, and shortly after the coffin, and the executioner and his assistants returned to the scaffold. Ar five minutes to six o'clock some gendarmerie, with acompmy of cha3>eurs and a body of police, having a low lour wheeled wagon drawn by one horse, and containing thrte persons, in charge, appeared in the place and entered tho square. No groans, no exclamations announced the arrival ; the same hum of conversation which had been previously heard was continued. In the cart was to be seen a man wearing a Jim Crow hat and v coat thrown loosely over his shoulders, leaning forward, his head being between those of two priests, arid the crucifix before him ; a few moments after the cart stopped saw the priests and this man alight — it was Leduc, the murderer. He mounted the low scaffold, throwing off the coat and appearing with his shirt open ; he warmly embraced the priest from St. Omer, surrendered himself to the executioner, who in an instant bound him to the plan's. ! face downwards, and immediately thrust him under the fatal knife, where he adjusted a slide to prevent the criminal moving his head ; having done which he pulled a cord, aud the knife came down, severing the head from the body. So this dreadful scene ended. The crowd dispersed quietly, but still in merry conversation.

M. Louis Jourdan, ia the Siecle, says lie met the late Mr Cobden ia Algeria. " Why," I said to him, " do you not exhort your country to give a generous example to the woild by disarming, instead of expending millions upoa useless armaments? " Upon this point Mr Cobdea would have no trifling. " No, no," he replied. '' When you build one ironclad, England must build three, and as a member of Parliament I will always vote the millions necessary to maintain this proportion." In the Hands of the Philistines. — In the London Buikruptcy Court, a clerk, named Jackson, whose salary was said to be L 213 16s per year, applied to be discharged from debts of L6OO, of which. L 450 was covered by security. The discharge was opposed by the money -leaders, and in his examination the bankrupt gave some particulars of his sufferings at their hands. In one instance he had paid above Ll3O ou a promissory note for L 22 10s. On another occasion he gave a moneylender a bill "because he wa* a very insinuating sort of a man." In one case he gave a bill for LlB, and only received L 9 as consideration. The Commissioner said he was only surprised, considering the hands into which the bankrupt had fallen, i that .his debts were so small, and he considered he was entitled to an unconditional discharge.