Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1896 — ENGLISH EXECUTIONS. [ARTICLE]

ENGLISH EXECUTIONS.

The Method* Are Different from Those In Thi* Country. When Mllsom, the murderer, was hanged the other day, writes Julian Ralph from London, the paper of largest English circulation, called Lloyd’s News, asserted that Billington, the hangman, hud loosened the drop at a signal given by a line in the clergyman’s prayer, and that the clergyman, kneeling too fur forward, had fallen through the trap a distance of twenty feet, but saved his own neck by clinging to Mllsom's legs. It was all true except that the distance was much less and the clergyman did not hang to the murderer’s legs. However, it brought about a revolution. The reporters had not been admitted to witness the executions up to that time, but at the hanging which followed, members of the press were invited to attend in order to overcome the revulsion of feeling caused by the story in Lloyd's News. The execution thus reported was a triple one at Winchester, and 1 have been rending all the reports of It because they show that these things are not done In the way here with us. The scaffold was in the coach-house of the governor of the prison. On its collapsible floor had been marked in chalk the Initials of each of the three murderers, In order that there might be no delay in getting them to their proper places. The bell of the prison began to toll at a quarter to eight o’clock. The clergyman was then with the condemned. At 8 o’clock the under sheriff and his deputy, the governor, the prison doctor, Billington the hangman,and his assistant, all followed by a large staff of wardens, walked In procession to the cells. Billingtonwascarrylng thestraps to be used In pinioning the men. The procession passed on to the jail yard, picking up the clergymen, but leaving Billington and his assistant, who speedily strapped the men’s arms. Even while this was being done the clergyman began the words of the burial service, and when the head of the line reached the scaffold the three murderers were walking at the end of it. They strode firmly to the scaffold, and while Billington adjusted the nooses around their necks and pulled the white caps over their heads his assistant strapped their legs together. The noose ropes were tied to the dangling ropes of the. scaffold, the clergyman still continuing with his readingof the service—and, we may be sure, seeing to it that he was not on the trap in tap floor. When he reached the words. “Lord have mercy on us,” and was beginning the Lord’s Prayer, Billington drew the lever and the three men dropped into eternity. Immediately afterward the prison doctor leaped down into the pit among the rigid, motionless bodies, and called up to those who looked down upon him that the execution had been successful. It is unwise to have a house too much shaded. An Italian proverb says that “where the sun never comes Id the doctor must.”