A ROTTENNESS IN THE STATE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 8, 13 June 1884, Page 13

A ROTTENNESS IN THE STATE.

(From the Pilot.') Evbbt day the character of the news that is provided for our public grows more and more morbid. Perhaps the lowest degree yet registered was indicated by the fuss made by the New York papers over the execution of the murderer Hoffman (April 18). There eeems to have been nothing beyond the common about Hoffman or his crime except the revolting, swaggering egotism of the youngruffian. Set, for days before his execution the newspapers devoted much of their space to him, and the people of Westchester County, N. V., made the occasion a sort of public picnic. On the eve of the execution " Gaoler Duffy was kept busy all day showing visitors through the Gaol. Fifty or. more well-dressed ladies crowded up the narrow stairs and around the little corridor to Reporters vieited the doomed man, and surveying him critically, proceeded to pos.e him : " Are you prepared to die ? " " Will you make any kind of a confession ? " "Do you expect to be reprieved ? " " Do you think you will sleep well to-night ? " Then :—: — 4-n " T hi 8 evening Hoffman sang a song, by request of Murray, entitled •Be Home Early To-night, My Dear Boy.' Then he bade Murray good-night, and, on parting, handed him the following verse of poetry :— 8 "Dearest, sweetest of my heart, I am thir* ' i»g now of thee 1 You t neve- shall forget. As sure as apples grow on trees. There is a word I say to you— What shall the answer be ? " Again :—: — •' The last news is that Hoffman is breaking down rapidly The coffin has ]ust been placed in position under the gallows and evervthmg is ready for the last act. 3 ''Hoffman spent his last night on earth weaving a silk-thread watch chain. He finished it at two o'clock, a. m. He had a dozen of his photographs taken yesterday morning, which he distributed among his friends." And again : — " An ° ld withered crone, known in the western side of the county as Aunt Maggie, hung around the gallows all day, and slept in a vacant shed back of the prison-grounds to be on hand to-morrow " But, after all, are the people or the Press to blame ? Can a stronger argument than this habit of chronicling be adduced against the practice of public executions ? It is the experience of all countries that the public exhibition of the process of k'lling a man is demoralising in, the last degree. But in the "United States we have a worse evil than even the public strangling It is the indecent, cruel readiness of access which well-dressed ladies" and all manner of people are allowed to the condemned prisoner in his cell. From the day he is sentenced the murderer in this country is placed on exhibition. The privacy in which a man might prepare himself for his entrance to eternity is denied him; he is exposed to temptations that should not belong to hw state; his vanity is inflated, his feelings are dulled, and the morbidity of his curious visitors contaminates himself