Category: Biographies
The intention of both the author and the editor of this little book has been to set forth, as plainly and as simply as possible, certain facts and opinions with regard to what is undoubtedly a most important subject--the carrying out of the ultimate sentence of the law. While...
As one of my objects in writing this book is to give the public a solid basis for the formation of a sound public opinion upon the subject of capital punishment, it is necessary...
14. CHAPTER XIII.As is always the case when a man attains any prominence or notoriety, a number of utterly groundless stories have got afloat about my doings and adventures. Others, which were o...
5. CHAPTER IV.My method of execution is the outcome of the experience of my predecessors and myself, aided by suggestions from the doctors, and is rather the result of gradual growth than the...
10. CHAPTER IX.but I never heard anybody utter the opposite aspiration, for the gift to see others as they see themselves. And yet I am not quite sure that this gift is not as desirable as the...
11. CHAPTER X.One of the questions which is most frequently put to me is, whether I consider capital punishment is a right and proper thing. To this I can truly answer that I do. For my own p...
13. CHAPTER XII.I might almost head this chapter, "My Critics," for both press and public are constantly criticising my doings. The criticism is generally friendly, though often based on incomp...
8. CHAPTER VII.The whole of the duties of an executioner are unpleasant, but there are exceptional incidents occurring at times, which stand out upon the tablet of one's memory, and which can...
4. CHAPTER III.On the 21st March, 1884, I received a letter from the Magistrates' Clerk, City Chambers, Edinburgh, appointing me to act as Executioner on 31st March, 1884, at Calton Gaol; and...
12. CHAPTER XI.I have stated in Chapter II. the reasons which led me to take the office of executioner. The reader will remember that I then claimed no higher motive than a desire to obtain a...
3. CHAPTER II.It has been said by some of those goody-goody moralists who are always anxious to point out sad examples of the depravity of man, and who are not very particular about the genui...
2. CHAPTER I.James Berry, though regarded by some people as a monster, and by others as a curiosity, is very much like any other working-man when one comes to know him. He is neither a parag...
7. CHAPTER VI.From time to time people raise an outcry against the English mode of putting criminals to death, and there are many Englishmen who have a firm conviction that hanging is the ver...
6. CHAPTER V.The hour fixed for executions is 8-0 a.m. in all the prisons, except Wandsworth and Lincoln, where it is 9-0 a.m. Of course, the scaffold and rope are arranged, and the drop dec...
1. CHAPTER XIII.The intention of both the author and the editor of this little book has been to set forth, as plainly and as simply as possible, certain facts and opinions with regard to what i...