Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 102, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1911 — LEGALLY HANGED [ARTICLE]

LEGALLY HANGED

By CHARLES LEWIS PHIPPS

“Which one of all your'Cases,” I asked Wilcox, the celebrated criminal lawyer, "has most excited your interest?" "That of Mathews, who was accused of murder.” “Was ho Innocent or guilty?’ -1~ “Innocent” ?Pid yon secure his acquittal?” “No.” "Hanged?” “Yes; legally hanged.”' ”Wbat do you mean by that?” "I’ll tell you. Mathews was in the employ of Henderson, the man who was murdered. I don’t care to go into the details of the case; I will only say that there was so much circumstantial evidence against him that from the first I despaired of saving his neck. I knew he was innocent, though he could no more explain the circumstances that pointed to his guilt than 1 could.” “How did you know he was innocent?”

“By both experience and intuition. I defy any of my clients to deceive me in this regard. I simply look them in the eye, and that tells me the story. “There was everything about Mathews’ case to interest me. He was a younger son of a British country gentleman and in love with the daughter of another British gentleman. His mother had no knowledge of his having been accused of crime, much less having been convicted, for I could do nothing to prove him innocent. He showed me his mother’s letters, and it was distressing to read them. , His betrothed was also writing him without any knowledge that he was under sentence of death. A week before he was to be hanged a letter from solicitors in England was banded him, informing him that a bachelor uncle had died and left him a large fortune.” _ • “Upon my word! It was an interesting cqse, wasn’t it?” “I.should say so. If ever there was a man who had everything to live for Mathews had. And to be judicially executed without ever having wronged any one in his life was simply awful. You have no idea how having a life on your hands wears on a man, and this case nearly drove me insane. “But I braced myself for a gigantic effort. After conferring with Mathews I decided to cable the solicitors in England, giving them the situation and asking how much funds they could cable me within a few days. They placed £20,000 to my credit, and with this sum I went to work. There was no use in trying to secure delay or a new trial. What 1 must do was to interest the sheriff. I had a long secret conference with him, but could not move him to act for money, though 1 so far secured his judgment that he must do an official wrong in hanging Mathews that he consented to wink at any game 1 might practice, provided it could be kept secret. “I got a friend of mine who was a professor in a medical college to apply for the body of Mathews as soon as he was dead. This enabled me to gain possession of the condemned man the moment the hanging was over. Then I “fixed” every official who was to be present at the hanging. Mathews put in a request that there should be no spectators present I could not even be present myself. But there was not one of the officials to whom I paid less than SIO,OOO, and the hangman got $25,000. My friend the doctor was the only one present who got nothing. He had a coffin ready for the corpse as soon as it was taken from the gallows and a hearse to carry it to the hospital. “Well, that night I went to the hospital and found Mathews locked in the doctor’s room.” "But how was the hanging managed?’ “I don’t know; I never asked. There were half a dozen men paid by the state to see that Mathews was hanged, and I paid every one of them—in all sloo,ooo—to go through the process without hanging him. All I know is that I paid the money and found Mathews alive in the doctor’s room. Some burnt cork, a woolly wig and a suit of clothes procured from a Jew tailor fixed him so that no one would know him. I had a steerage ticket for him in an outgoing steamer, and early the next morning he was on his way to England.”

“He must have been very grateful to you.” “Grateful! I should say so. Before parting with me he made me promise that I would come over as soon as possible and see him. I couldn’t go for a year, and then I found him In possession of £50,000 a year Income and married to the woman he loved. He met me on the steamer, and the first thing he did was to Impress it upon me that neither his mother nor his wife nor any one living except his solicitors knew that be was judicially dead Id America. He had often tried to bring himself to unburden bis secret to his wife, but bad always failed. "Mathews entertained me royally and begged me to suggest some way for him to pay the debt be owed me, even If It required every cent of his fortune. I assured him that I took more comfort In bis case than in all the cases I had ever won. though I had lost It "After Spending a month with him I left him to return. He could hardly bear to part with me and regretted that It wouldn't be safe for him to come to America or he would ertoss the ocean with mb. He shed tears when I cam* away."