REJECTED BY THE SCAFFOLD. Record of Some Terrible Moments.

Otago Witness, Issue 2168, 12 September 1895, Page 46

REJECTED BY THE SCAFFOLD. Record of Some Terrible Moments.

In the year 1707, aa Major Arthur Griffiths tells v?, a man who had been hanged outside 1 Kewgate for the space of 28 minutes was operated upon by a surgeon, who made an inFieion in bis windpipe. Tbe result was, says 1 ihe author of those magnificent " Chronicles ( )f Ncv/gate," that in less than six hours the hanged man revived. Thie fellow, unfortunately, left to us no account of his sensations when actually turned off from the scaffold, but of the fact of his recovery there seems to bave been no doubt. Tbe records of the eighteenth century are full of similar casee, proving that even the rough methods of public execution were often unavailing to rob men of life. In 1705 a man with the distinguishing named of Smith was condemned to death and duly broigbl to the ropo. He protested his innocence to the last, bat no one listened to liim, and Jack Ketch duly pushed him off the ladder in the praiseworthy endeavour to launch him into' eternity. What should happen, though, but directly the man was thus banging a messenger came flying up to Newgate with a reprieve. The man'a innocence had at length been established, but only when the rope was round his neck, and be was within a hand's breadth of death.

was employed as a footman in the house of a Miss Ksyße, of the Glen Bstobioombe. As the jury found it, he murdered this lady in a peculiarly inhuman and dastardly manner, and the judge held out to him no hope whatever of a reprieve. So the morning came for his execution, but when the sc*frvld was reached and the hangman pulled the lever, the drop refused to act, and Lee continued to Btand groaning upon the trap. It Ib not good to dilate upon the horror of a Koene like this. Suffice it to e»y that the bar-gman. immediately went below the scaffold to remedy if possible tho defect of H-. Twice again he pulled the lev«r, adding his own weight to that of the condemned man, but without avail. The woodwork refused to budge. A hundred men could not have forced the tiap, swollen bb it was with damp and rain. And the sheriff interfered at last, ordering the miserable man back to ptisonand appealing to Sir Willi.un Hurcourt, who at once commuted the sentence to penal servitude for life. Lee's own account of the tragedy has come out to ub in epite of prison regulations. "I am an innocent man," said he ; " the Lord would not permit them to execute me." There were hundred* in the country* who read iv this mishap the judgment of the Almighty overriding the judgment of man. Ridiculous statements, wild rumours have been made and heard throughout the country ever since the ec&fEold would not hang John Lee. Two years ago, as the talk went, another man confessed to the orime, and Lee was released secretly and sent abroad. But the statement had never been warranted. Indeed, it is a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end, since the monster who murdered Miss Keyee is still breaking stones in a convict prison. In Englnnd we rardy bungle an execution. There are but two authentic cases of michaps since public penalties were abolished. One was the case of a rope breaking in Warwickshire ; another, a case oE a Manchester murderer sent to penal servitude after the executioner had made two efforts to bai/g Men, the rope breaking twice in the endeavour. We must look abroad, however, for the most remarkable instances of rejection by the scaffold. Not three- months ago, in Cuba, a Spaniard was sentenced to the garrote for the murder of a girl of 1 5. He protested bis innccenca loudly ; but although be bore a high character the evidence was too etrong for him, It was proved that he had always betrayed

jovial, spinning an o'er true mining tale to a small, appreciative audienca in the Palace Court or on a Montgomery street corner, •would wind up the thread of his story by saying that such-and-such a thing, "for all around, eternal strangeness, oouldn't hold a candle to the disappearance of Deubey." 11 Who was Denbey ? " queried a listener one evening, on the outskirts of a little group in the roluuda of the big hostelry. The band had not yet begun it programme; people were sauntering idly up aud down the corridors, ard several ongetiial spirits had congregated in the various attitudes assumed by man when at his eaße around a pioneer while awaiting the advent of melody. Tho grey-bearded oracle removed his cigar Alter a long affectionate pull at the weed. " Denbey," said he, " landed in San Francisco in the fiftie3. He was a Veimont boy, gritty and bright, bound to make his whj anywhere if work would do it. He had good luck at every turn, and was well liked." One day be got a letter from home saying that his mother hadn't very long to live, and wanted to see him. That was in '59. Well, be thought a heap of his mother, and made up his mind to go on fie next ateamer. He stowed away his money, about £40,000 altogether, putting most of it into his belt aud the lining of his clothes in greenbacks, which he was lucky enough to get in exchange for g-'lcl from new-comers out from the Eafit. The day that the steamer was to sail he didn't show up, and some of us went to hi 3 room. What things he had were laid out all ready, but Denbey himself was miesiug— if the earth had opened and swallowed him there couldn't have been less trace of him. Barton, his chum, who was with him np to 12 o'clock the night before pfaying carcp, was the last person to lay s-yeß on him. You never saw a fellow so cat up as Barton was when time went on and Danbey's disappearauce was an big a mystery as ever." The old uiitiei \juurca as a tall man of slender build approached. llu was strikingly pale, with iron-grey hair and a strongly outlined face, the unhealthy colour of which was accentuated by the bUck restlessness of his eyes. He greeted the group with a wave of the hand and passed on to tho hotel office. The nairator looked after him thoughtfully. " I wonder what ails Barton ? " he remarked. " Lately we've all noticed that he looks and acts queer—ho says it's liver trouble, and

door swung open ero he reached it, and John Barton stepped over his threahold for the last time. Unconscious that he was protected by neither hat nor ooat, be walked on through the dark, deserted streets, impelled by a will stronger than his own, following a guide whose influence be was powerless to resist. On and on, toward the incoming waves of fog that crept to meet him ; through the fragrant confines of the pwrk, until, like a weary soldier to whom the word "Halt!" lim been giren, he roached a strnggling scrub-oak taller than its kindred faintly outlined in the darkness. Flinging hirauelf to the earth ben«ath it, he commenced a frenzied digging in the Band. A thousand thoughta fl*Bhed like meteoric sparks through his brain. He could ccc the scare-heads in the erenirjg papers announcing the discovery of his body— his somnambulist ie walk — death from exposnre — mental abeirution induced by too close attention to the amasfiirg of wealth— Bad termination of an " honourable " career — oh God ! They would never know, those newspaper fellows, hungry for a good story, never know that down, down, should they dig deep enough, they would find the mystery of Djnbey's disappearance solved — Denboy who loved him, trusted him, and whom, for money, he had foully murdered more than a quarter of a ceniury before.— Lilian Plunkett Ferguson, in the San Francisco News Latter,