ustxtxb_obs_1961_02_25_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

Part 2 AUSTIN As late as 1831 a boy of nine years was publicly hanged at Chelmsford for setting fire to a house at Witham. During the days of George II, children under ten were often hanged, and, says Laurence, “on one occasion ten of them were strung up together, as a warning to men and a spectacle for the angels.” In Great Britain in 1558, to set an example for the people, after a decapitation, ” ‘they placed the head on a pole of wood’.” HANGING was an unscientific business for hundreds of years. The vi”tims were shoved off ladders and fell only a few feet; then their legs were pulled on to hasten death. As the principles of hanging became known, better gallows were built: the governor of o n e English county gaol boasted that his gallows, in 1818, could be used for the simultaneous hanging of twelve persons “comfortably.” Even so, there were accidentsheads torn off; ropes snapping, requiring repeat performances. Once, to satisfy a King, dead bodies were hanged. Hearings on the bill to abolish capital punishment will be held Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. before the House criminal jurisprudence committee. To instruct the folk, bodies were commonly left hanging on the gallows for some time, and, says Laurence: “The numerous gibbets throughout the country often had the effect of terrorising the local inhabitants to such an extent that, at night at any rate, people would go several miles out of their way to avoid passing the creaking corpse.” Lord Justice Clerk, in pronouncing a sentence in 1810 told the victim, ” . . . after your execution, you shall be hung in chains, until the fowls of the air pick the flesh off your body, and your bones bleach and whiten in the winds of heaven.” One fellow was so horrified when he was measured for his irons, he died of fright. The American pioneers were horrified by the Indians burnings at the stake but practiced the same punishment against those who differed from them in religion. 700 application’s for the post of executioner. The executioners, themselves, have often been louts and sots. Some of them were hanged themselves. The hangman at Exeter hanged his own brother. A drunken hangman at Hereford tried to hang the attending parson, and almost did. As executioners were loathed by the people, they were recruited sometimes from condemned crirn= inals whose own executions were deferred in return for their killing their fellow unfortunates. Derrisk, who served under the Earl of Essex, was condemned to death but pardoned, and hanged 23 others. In the time of Charles II, a father and his two sons were con demned to death for horse-stealing; the judges told them they would pardon any one of the three who would hang the other two. “What! a father hang his two sons?” exclaimed the father. “Can I consent to take away the life I gave?” He would not. “How could I have the world?” asked the elder son; “How could I endure myself, the only one left of a family I had destroyed?” The offer was then extended to the younger son, John Crosland, who accepted it. He was the hangman at Derby until he died of old age. OFTEN. THE CROWDS would cheer the deaths of hated fe lons. One executioner, nervous about hanging seven men simultaneously, finished his job and, “in an a:cic ess of nervousness, stepped forward and bowed deeply to the crowd.” The spectators became critical of the hangman, as they might today of bullfighters; the hangmen became performers. One hangman, hooted for hanging a popular hero, died shortly thereafter of mortification. William Calcraft apprenticed for work by accepting an offer of ten shillings a week to flog youngsters who had been sentenced by the magistrates. He was hangman of London for 45 years, during which time he continued the floggings, each one netting him half a crown. In private life he was said to be a good man, fond of pets. James Berry was the public hangman in London for eight years, late in the 19th Century. He did away with 200 persons. One day he became convinced he had hanged an innocent; he had a serious nervous breakdown, resigned, became a preacher, and strongly opposed capital punishment. In 1664, Pepys recorded, he saw 12,000 to 14,000 people in the street for a London hanging. Laurence records that “The high and titled frequently booked windows overlooking the scaffold, as they are now booked for Royal processions, and gave elaborate breakfasts to their friends afterwards.” During the,. beheadings of the Cato Street conspirators, the executioner held forth the severed heads by the hair, and the crowd responded with hissings and hootins. In 1848, Dickens saw the execution of the Mannings for a murder, and in a famous letter to the London Times, he wrote: “I came upon the scene at midnight . . . As the night went on, screeching and laughing, and yelling in strong chorus of parodies on negro melodies, with substitutions of ‘Mrs. Manning’ for ‘Susannah’ and the like were added to these . . . When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians and vagabonds of every kind, flocked on the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behavior . . . When the sun rose brightly it gilded thousands upon thousands of upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal mirth or callousness that a man had cause to feel ashamed of the shape he wore.” A T THE LAST public execution ilk in England, in 1868, of one Michael Barrett, the London Times reported, “a great cry arose from the crowd as the culprit fella cry which was neither an exclamation nor a scream, but it partook of the sound of both.” Laurence himself does not argue for or against capital punishment. He does include, in his book, a list of the 37 nations and nine American states which have abolished it. And he prints the views of the great lawyer of the under dog, Clarence Darrow, who said: “Everyone who advocates capital punishment is really ashamed or the practice for which he is responsible. . . . That capital punishment is horrible and cruel is the reason for its existence. That men should be taught not to take life is the purpose of judicial killings. But the spectacle of the state taking life must tend to cheapen it. . . . “It is a question of how you feel, that is all. It is all inside of you. If you love the thought of someone being killed, why, you are for it. If you hatg, the thought of somebody being killed, you are against it. . . . “They have maimed and scarred and starved and killed human beings since man began penning his fellowman. Why? Because we hate him. And what has added to it is that they have done it under the false idea of self-righteousness…. “In the end, the question is simply one of the humane feelings against the brutal feelings. One who likes to see suffering, out of what he thinks is’ a righteous indignation, or any other, will hold fast to capital punishment. One who has sympathy, imagination, kindness and understanding, will hate it and detest it as he hates and detests death.” R.D. Concluded Do You Think Some Friend Who Thinks Might Want The Observer? Name Address City State Send $5 to The Texas Observer, 504 W. 24, Austin, Texas. Butler Wants Right-to-Work In Constitution AUSTIN Rep. Jerry Butler of Kenedy is pushing a proposed constitutional amendment that would transfer the “right-to-work” laws to the constitution. His amendment provides “that no person shall be denied employment on account of membership or non-membership in a labor union.” It further states: “Any contract which requires or prescribes that employees or applicants for employment in order to work for an employer shall or shall not be or remain members of a labor union, shall be null and void and against public policy.” Butler told the Observer that hearings on the proposed amendment have not been set, but will probably be held “sometime in the next two weeks.” Although he has not polled members of the constitutional amendments committee, he believes the measure will be reported favorably to the floor. Can he predict what kind of reception the amendment will receive on the floor? “I have no idea at this time,” he said. “I haven’t pushed it at all. It’s something that’s been very cotroversial. “I think this would be a good time for the people of Texas to decide whether they’d prefer keeping this law on the books by putting it in the constitution. “If I can pass this and it’s presented to the people and rejected by them, it would help the AFLCIO to abolish the right-to-work laws in the next legislature,” Butler said. Butler said he is “very much in favor” of the present laws. “I’m as opposed to forced unionism as I am to yellow-dog contracts,” he said. MARTIN ELFANT Sun Life of Canada Houston, Texas CA 4-0686 For ‘Capital’ Crimes Sordid Choices in Punishing Blackstone records 160 capital offenses in England; the total rose to 222 before the reforms began. For robbing a rabbit warren, cutting down a tree, stealing goods worth five shillings or more, or harboring an offender against the revenue acts, the penalty was death. In 1820, 46 persons were hanged for forging bank notes, some of which later were found to be good. Then the reforms began, and by 1840 someone proposed abolishing capital punishment and got 90 votes in the House of Commons. As the race advanced in the arts and sciences of humane revenge, electrocution was discovered. The first time it was tried, there was a burning of the flesh; in 1893, an electric chair broke from the icurent, and the condemned man, having fallen forward semi-conscience, was kept unconscious with chloroform and morphia until the apparatus was repaired. So, however, the happy mean was found, and electrocution is now widely accepted in the U. S. as the best way to kill a man. The business became so trouble-free, the warden of Sing Sing one time received more than THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page ‘7 Feb. 25, 1961 LEGALS NOTICE OF INTENTION TO INCORPORATE FIRM WITHOUT CHANGING NAME TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: Notice is hereby given that Arthur M. Michael, Jr., doing business as Milam Mill and Manufacturing Co., whose principal office and place of business was in San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, has incorporated under the corporate name of Milam Mill & Manufacturing Co., whose principal office and place of business is in $an Antonio, Bexar County, Texas. This notice is given under the provitions of Article 1307, Vernon’s Revised Civil Statutes of Texas, and is dated this 26th day of January A.D. 1961. MILAM MILL & MANUFAC-TURING CO. By ARTHUR M. MICHAEL, JR. President CITATION BY PUBLICATION THE STATE OF TEXAS defendant, in the hereinafter styled and numbered cause: You are hereby commanded to appear before the 126th District Court of Travis County, Texas, to be held at the courthouse of said county in the City of Austin, Travis County, Texas, at or before 10 o’clock A. M. of the first Monday after the expiration of 42 days from the date of issuance hereof; that is to say, at or before, 10 o’clock A. M. of Monday the 13th day of March, 1961, and answer the petition of plaintiff in Cause Number 120,561, in which 0. D. Denson is Plaintiff and J. Louise Whitley, et al are defendants, filed in said Court on the 9tli day of January, 1961, and the nature of which said suit is as follows: Being an action and prayer for judgment in favor of plaintiff and against defendants for damages and for foreclosure of vendor’s lien on the following described real property situated in Travis County, Texas, to-wit: Lot 11 in Block “A” in Burnet Heights Addition in the City of Austin, Travis County, Texas. Plaintiff alleges that bn April 12. 1954, defendant, J. Louise Whitley, executed and delivered her promissory note to the plaintiff in the amount of $1,117,06, said note being secured by vendor’s lien on the above described real property; plaintiff alleges that balance due on said note is $878.90, and that defendant refuses to pay this balance after repeated demands on her to do so; plaintiff alleges that he expended the sum of $212.30 for repairs on the property sought to be foreclosed; Plaintiff prays for foreclosure of vendor’s lien on the above described real property, for iudgment for the balance due on said note in the sum of $878.90, interest, costs of suit, and attorney fees and for such other and further relief to which he may be entitled at law or in equity; All of which more fully appears from Plaintiff’s Original Petition on file in this office, and which reference is here made for all intents and purposes; If this citation is not served within 90 days after date of it issuance, it shall be returned un;served. WITNESS, 0. T. MARTIN, JR., Clerk of the District Courts of Travis County, Texas. Issued and given under my hand and the seal of said Court at office in the City of Austin, this the 24th day of January, 1961. 0. T. MARTIN, JR. Clerk of the District Courts, Travis County, Texas By A. E. JONES, Deputy CITATION BY PUBLICATION THE STATE OF TEXAS TO Dorothy McMillen Defendant, in the hereinafter styled and numbered cause: You are hereby commanded to appear before the 126th District Court of Travis County, Texas, to be held at the courthouse of said county in the City of Austin, Travis County, Texas, at or before 10 o’clock A. M. of the first Monday after the expiration of 42 days from the date of issuance hereof; that is to say, at or before, 10 o’clock A. M. of Monday the 27th day of March, 1961, and answer the petition of plaintiff in Cause Number 120,504, in which Gerald McMillen is Plaintiff and Dorothy McMillen is defendant, filed in said Court on the 4th day of January, 1961, and the nature of which said suit is as follows: Being an action and prayer for judgment in favor of plaintiff and against defendant for decree of divorce dissolving the bonds of matrimony heretofore and now existing between said parties; plaintiff alleges that defendant