Sketcher.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2098, 29 July 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

Sketcher.

Escapes from Hanging.

There are many instances on record in which the punishment of suspension by the collar has failed, either through some peculiarity in the neck of tho individual, or a want of tact in the hangman. More than six centuries ago—if old records are truthful—Juetta de Balsham, convicted of harboring thieves, was sentenced to be executed. She hung for three days, revived, and was pardoned, as a phenomenon who had somehow or other overmastered the gallows. There is the authority of Obadiah Walker, master of New College, Oxford, for a story that a Swiss was hanged thirteen times over, every attempt being frustrated by a peculiarity in the windpipe which prevented strangulation. We are not told whether the thirteenth time was successful, or whether justice was merciful at last.

Ann Greene was hanged at Oxford for infanticide in ICSO ; her legs were pulled, and her body- struck with soldiers’ muskets in accordance with a barbarous custom sometimes adopted of making assurance doubly sure. Nevertheless, she survived, after hanging some considerable time. Her body was given up for dissection. The surgeon observed faint signs of life, and attended her instead of anatomizing her, and in thirteen hours she was able to speak. She remembered nothing distinctly of what had occurred, but seemed to herself to have been in a deep sleep. The crown pardoned her; she married, and became the mother of a family, and her husband forgave her the errors of her past life, possibly for a kind of celebrity which the singular episode had brought to her. Other examples of a more or less analogous kind, are told as followsA woman—name unknown—was hanged in 1808. She came to herself after a suspension for the prescribed period, not by slow degrees, but suddenly. John Green experienced an ordeal something like that of Ann Green. After being hanged at Tyburn, his body was taken to Sir William Blizzard, the celebrated surgeon, and while lying on a table in tho dissecting room he displayed signs of life, and effectually recovered. A female servant of Mrs. - Cope, of Oxford, convicted of some penal offence, was executed in ICSO, After hanging an unusually long time she was cut down, and fell heavily to the ground. The shock revived her, but the unfortunate wretch was effectually hanged the next day. Margaret Dickson, a century and a half ago, was convicted of concealment of birth, and was subjected to the last penalty of the law. Her body, after hanging on the gibbet at. Edinburgh, was cut down and given to her friends. They put it in a coffin, and drove off with it in a cart six miles to Musselburg. Some apprentices rudely stopped the cart, and loosened the lid of the coffin. This let in the air, and the air and the jolting together revived her. She was carried indoors alive, but faint and barely conscious ; a minister came to pray with her, and she effectually recovered. No mention of collusion occurs in this narrative, although some of the incidents would seem to point that way. Margaret lived many years, had other children bom to her, and was familiarly known in Edinburgh, where she lived by selling salt, as “Half hanged Maggie.”

Paganini. I know that one of the greatest violinists I have heard told me that Paganini’s studies were at the same time so unusual and so difficult that they were considered an enigma which very few undertook to solve, and it would be interesting to know how many would now be able to solve it in a satisfactory manner. He played on two, even on three strings at the same time without doing what Old Bull did, cut the bridge straight; he played arpeggi in double stops, or made a series of staccati marking the melody in pizzicato. He passed, as I have before said, for having achieved such supernatural tours tie force by a supernatural pact, and the superstition of some people who credited this nonsense went so far that a lady who heard him in Italy and would not believe that any human being could so far surpass all his fellow creatures without extraordinary means, followed him to the stage door, where stood his cab with a black horse. .She swore he never touched the ground ; that there was a fiery cart with two black horses and he went away through the air. So in Italy they told little Mozart that it was his bewitched ring which accomplished all his feats on the piano, until he took off the ring and quietly put it on the desk. In an unpublished letter of Vieuxterapts, this great violinist, when at the age of 14, he heard Paganini in London, he seems unable to give an idea of his admiration and delight at Paganini's performance of “Le Strjghe " (The Witches). In one paragragh he says ; “His bow was fabulous in rapidity; his certainty stupefying, never even a doubtful note ; he was infallible.” Yieuxtemps, one of the most remarkable composers for the violin during the second quarter of our century, and himself one of the great celebrities, says in that letter: “ How can I give my opinion of him, wot pit;/mee ?” Paganini, in the boldness of his new ideas and in their execution, in his harmonies in thirds and sixths, was amazing. When he played the prayer from “ Mose ” on the G string alone, he took the baritone voice as written, the soprano voice an octave higher, and let into the major part with such triumphant power that Rossini, who had composed it, said it was doubtful whether Paganini did not ell'eot as much on the one violin string as all the singers in the theatre put together.