The Mount Rennie Outrage.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2022, 26 January 1887, Page 3

The Mount Rennie Outrage.

A TERRIBLE SCENE AT THE EXECUTION.

The execution of the four prisoners who were condemned to pay the utmost penalty of the law for complicity in the Mount Rennie Outrage took place in Darlinghurst gaol in the morning of Jan 7. A crowd of about 1000 persons assembled outside the gaol long before the hour fixed for hanging them and about 140 were ad mitted to the gaol yard. A new gallows had been specially erected for the purpose of this execution close to the condemned cells, the old gallows not being large enough to admit of the simultaneous execution of more than two persons. Shortly after nine o’clock the condemned men were conducted to the gallows. All four prisoners were pinioned, their arms being bound tightly down to their sides, but their hands were loose. The executioner covered their heads with canvas bags, and adjusted the ropes for a drop of Sft Gin. All being ready, there were a few seconds of an awful pause. The assistant hangman then seized the lever with a desperate grip and pulled it. A dull choking thud followed, and all was over. The four bodies were seen hanging in the gulf below. Then a horrible scene occurred. Evidently the ropes were too thick, or the length of the drop was not long enough to dislocate their necks at once, for after a few seconds the wretched youths commenced to struggle and kick violently, thus showing that strangulation and not dislocation was killing them. Bead struggled least of all. Duffy violently shivered and commenced to twitch his hands and legs and kick convulsively. Martin's straggles were specially painful to witness. He was the lightest and kicked violently—and made frantic efforts to free his arms, twisting bis right forearm almost behind his back endeavoring to undo the roj>e which bound him. In the violence of his struggles he several times contracted his body until it was at an angle of thirty degree? with the rope that suspended him. For several minutes ho struggled, and then his agonies drew to an end by death, Boyle also struggled terribly. He kicked and tried to jerk his head awav from the rope. For three minutes this lad struggled violently before death relieved him. Each of tho lads kicked off one shoe, and when cut down the white cap over Duffy’s head was stained with blood from his mouth. Boyle’s was also stained with h’-od from his right ear.

The execution was a brutal butchery and was a most terrible affair. It ,s asserted that Martin breathed for ten minutes after he fell. Duffy, in fail ing, bit through his tongue 8o horrifying was the scene that some spectators fainted, while others turned pale and trembled. At the inquest, the dorter* testified that death resulted in the ca»e of Duffv from dislocation of the neck, and in the cases of the other three men strangulation.