Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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Formerly the convict doomed to the “triple tree” used to be flung off a ladder. Then we grew more humane, and made him stand with a noose round his neck in a cart, which was drawn from under him at a given signal.

Ultimately, in the middle of the last century, being under the necessity of hanging a lord—​the noble convict was Laurence Earl Ferrers, who had murdered his steward—​the scaffold, with a trap-door secured by a bolt, and flapping down from under the criminal’s feet, was devised for the express accommodation of the murderous peer.

This was in the reign of George II.; and we have not advanced one step since then in the way of hanging.

The “new drop” is more than a hundred years old, but nothing has been done to render the grim agency more efficacious.

When the bolt is drawn and the drop falls, Marwood asserts, according to his arrangement, that the neck of the criminal is at once broken, and that death is instantaneous. This is his theory; but in practice, we believe that in nine cases out of ten the wretched culprit dies from suffocation.