THE TRAUPMANN TRAGEDY.

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 644, 12 April 1870, Page 2

THE TRAUPMANN TRAGEDY.

Traupmann, the murderer of a whole' family in France, was guillotined in Paris on the morning of January 19th. When condemned Traupmann left the dock smiling and bowing to the crowd which hooted him, but remained silent on his way back to the Conciergerie. On the two previous days he had assumed an air of gaiety, and had at once asked for his dinner. His attitude on December 30 th was quite different, and on seeing M. Claude, with several other officers of police, he could not subdue a certain emotion. The warders immediately seized on him, stripped him completely, and dressed him in the prison shirt, trousers, and straightwaistcoat. During the first part of that operation Traupmann did not pronounce a word; but his features became contracted at moments, while he'grew paler than before. But when this last garment was being buckled, he bogged that it might not be fastened too tight, and thou romarked, " What a piece of nonsense you are doing now." At his execution, the morning was dark, and although the gas lamps had not then boeu extinguished, the guillotine was only just distinguishable by tho spectators. Ho walked up the stops of tho scaffold quickly and in an agitated manner. No expressions of feeling escaped from tho crowd, which

was considerably undor 10,000. Perfeet order prevailed. The recent execution has revived the old question whether death instantaneously follows upon the severance of the head from the body. In a letter to the Gaulois Dr Pinel asserts that decapitation does not immediately affect the brain. The blood which flows after decapitation comes from the large vessels of the neck, and there is hardly any call upon the circulation of the cranium. The brain remains intact, nourishing itself with the blood retained by the pressure of the air. "When the blood remaining in the head at the moment of separation is exhausted, there commences a state, not of death, but of inertia, which lasts up to the moment when the organ, no longer fed, ceases to exist. Dr Pinel estimates that the brain finds nourishment in the residuary blood for about an hour after decapitation. The period of inertia would last for about two hours, and absolute death would not ensue till after the space of three hours altogether. If, he adds, a bodyless head indicates by no movement the horror of its situation, it is because it is physically impossible that it should do so, all the nerves which serve for the transmission of orders from the brain to the trunk being severed. But there remain the nerves of hearing, smell, and sight. This theory has been ably controverted by some medical journals.