Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1895 — AUTOMATIC GALLOWS USED. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AUTOMATIC GALLOWS USED.

“Jack” Cronin Executed at Hartford, Conn., for Killing Albert Skinner. John Cronin, murderer of Albert Skinner, was hanged at Wethersfield, Conn., on the new automatic gallows, now legal in that State. This was the first test of the contrivance and it worked to the satisfaction of Warden Woodbridge, who is chiefly responsible for its adoption and after whom it is pained. Cronin’s neck

was broken on tho upward bound by the drop instantly and apparently painless. The gallows upon which Cronin was executed is, perhaps, the most remarkable machine ever made for taking human life. It would send a thrill of horror through such an orthodox headchopper as Deibler, the French executioner. It has been called the suicide gallows. By a most ingenious contrivance the malefactor is indirectly compelled to execute himself. This extraordinary Connecticut gibbet is connected with a concealed clockwork apparatus that operates it. It is a hydraulic, automatic affair, with wheels and cogs, and springs and catches, and the whole sinister and stealthily working machinery is invisible not only to the Condemned man on the scaffold, but also to the officials and spectators. Its operating machinery is so contrived that the murderer in stepping on the drop springs a catch that puts in motion an apparatus that in a carefully regulated

periol of time, which may be lengthened or shortened as the hangman desires, springs the trap and launches him into eternity just as the old gibbet was wont to do. The condemned man was marched to the gallows stairs and Jed up on the drop, bis arms and legs strapped, the noose adjusted, and the black cap drawn over his face. In an instant, then, without warning, without a signal on the part of anybody, without an aggressive movement from the hangman or others, without preliminary noise whatever on the part of the concealed machinery, the body of the criminal was shot into the air. Cronin had been a hired man for Albert Skinner, a thrifty South Windsor farmer, for several months, and did good service for him. He went on a prolonged spree, had a quarrel, and then a fight with Skinner, and the latter threw him out of the house. Cronin went away muttering vengeance against his employer, and two hours later returned with a double-bar-reled shotgun and killed Skinner with a charge of heavy shot.

THE AUTOMATIC GALLOWS.