AMERICAN ITEMS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3374, 26 January 1884, Page 3

AMERICAN ITEMS.

HANGING A NEGRESS.

Chicago, October 20th —A (< Tribune,” Calhoun, Ga., special of the 19th says:. —Margaret Harrison, the murderess of little Lela Lewis, aged but eighteen years, as black as ebony, short, plump, and disfigured by the loss of an eye, was hanged in an open field, a half-mile from gaol, in this city, at noon to-day, in the presence of 5000 spectators. She marched from her cell to the scaffold, guarded by sixty armed men, and accompanied by a quartette of preachers, two of whom were white and two colored. The trap was dropped at 12.7 p.m,, and the fall, a distance of eight feet, broke her neck. Life was pronounced extinct in 14 minutes. After she mounted the scaffold, prayers were said at her request. A clergyman sang'* In the Sweet By •nd-By,” the prisoners and spectators joining in the chorus. She appeared intensely nervous, but manifested no trepidation at her fate. In a long harangue she protested her own innocence , and expressed the hope that she would meet all the spectators in heaven: She proved her loyalty to her accomplice by asserting his innocence. TANNING HUMAN HIDES. Chicago, October 20th—The Morning News’ special from Boston, 19th, says— Before the Seni’te Committee, on Education and Label' this morning, Charles T. Chance, a Somerville tanner, testified —“ The men complain some about this tanning human bides, I saw hides myself as much as five or six years ago. Heard of them eleven years ago, and knew men who heard of them eighteen years ago. The business has been increasing ever since, until lately. Three or four months ago it was stopped. I have seen several bides of women that had been tanned, They were perfect and looked as natural as life, I have seen them at Muller’s Tannery at Cambridge, and the last one about a jrear ago. Dan McDermott, of Somerville, «aw one ; also a man named Warster of Somerville. McDermott cut a piece off and carried it in his pocket for two years. Xho proprietors must have known it.

Men told me the proprietors did most of the work on these hide with their owh bands. There are plenty of men who could tell all about this, but they don’t dare.”