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the machine that bears his name, the design of which he submitted to the National Assembly on December 1, 1789, as calculated to diminish the sufferings of criminals, exclaiming: "Moi avec ma machine, je ferai vous sauter la tête d'un clin d'œil, et vous ne souffrez pas." It was formally adopted, and one knows the part it played in the French Revolution. "The great guillotine, wondrous to behold; the Doctor's idea has become oak and iron; the huge cyclopean axe falls in its grooves like the ram of the pile-engine, swiftly snuffing out the light of men!" In 1794 it underwent some improvements so as to work with increased velocity. The Parisians. grew so familiar with it as to make it the subject of their street-songs and jests. It was nick-named "the national window." I can but allude in passing to recent speculations concerning its supposed swiftness of action-to the doubt whether it immediately extinguishes sensation; but to my thinking it seems impossible that life can linger in the decapitated head. The movements which some scientific observers profess to have detected must surely be mechanical.

Such punishments as loss of eyesight, amputation of the ears, nose, hands, limbs, and mutilation generally, have prevailed in every country and every age. The Oriental despots frequently inflicted Blindness-which is worse, I think, than death-on those relatives whose nearness to the throne might make them dangerous competitors, a red-hot needle being drawn across the eyeballs. In our own history occur several examples-as Robert, Duke of Normandy, and Prince Arthur. The removal of an offender's ears was a very common English penalty, and usually associated with his exposure in the pillory. The latter abominable machine was abolished in 1837. In Germany it was called the pranger; in France the pilori or carcan. Previous to the Conquest it was known in England as the stretch-neck, only the head of the malefactor being confined in it. Afterwards room was made for the insertion of the hands, and, finally, of the feet. Pickpockets, purse-cutters, fraudulent tradesmen, brothel-keepers, users of unstamped measures, forgers, pretended soothsayers, beggars, decoyers of children, vendors of adulterated articles-these and many other classes of wrong-doers were punished by exposure in the pillory; which, however, would never have acquired its historical interest, and even dignity, had it not also been inflicted upon sufferers for conscience sake-the victims of monarchical despotism or ecclesiastical tyranny. Take, as an example, the well-known case of Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton in 1637, whose

The names of three of the Eastern Emperors occur to me as having been blinded by their rivals, Michael V,, Isaac II., and Alexis III,

sole offence was plain-speaking and truth-telling against "the powers that" were.

ears.

An immense crowd gathered round the place of execution in Palace Yard, and strewed herbs and flowers before the three victims, who bore themselves bravely, and conversed freely with the people. Referring to the Court functions at which the Knights of the Garter wore their collars, Bastwick said that "this was his collar-day in the King's palace." He was "pleasant and witty" all the time. Prynne protested his innocence of the crimes laid to his charge. Burton declared that the pillory was the happiest pulpit he had ever preached in. A couple of hours having passed, the hangman began to cut off their "He began," says a contemporary witness, "with Mr. Burton's. There were very many people. They wept and grieved much for Mr. Burton, and, at the cutting off of each ear, there was such a roaring as if every one of them had at the same instant lost an ear." A young man, as he gazed on the brutal scene, turned pale. "My son," said Burton, "why are you so pale? My heart is not weak and if I needed more strength, God would not let me want it." A kindly hand gave Bastwick a posy, on which a bee alighted. "See," he cried, "this poor bee; on the very pillory it comes to suck the honey of the flowers; and I, shall I not taste the honey of Jesus. Christ ?" He lent his knife to the hangman, and, making use of his professional knowledge, showed him how to cut off his ears quickly, and to lop them close, so that "he might come there no more." The hangman next hacked away at Prynne's ears, which had been roughly cropped three years before, inflicting terrible pain; but the stern Puritan endured it without a groan. And when the three sufferers returned to their prisons, they were attended by the applause and sympathy of the populace.

But the spectators were not always so well-disposed towards the poor wretches pilloried to make a London holiday, and would load them with mud, rotten eggs, and filth. Sometimes they behaved with still greater brutality, and at least three cases are on record of deaths in the pillory from injuries received at the hands of the mob.

The Stocks, as a mode of punishment, naturally recur to one's memory in association with the pillory, of which they were a kind of reduced copy, except that the victim was confined only by the feet, and sat on a bench during the period of his exposure. Each parish was provided with one of these "practical lessons" in the good old times of which some enthusiasts write so glibly. You remember the Parish Stocks in Lord Lytton's "My Novel "? How Squire Dale discovered their dilapidated condition, and caused them to be repaired

VOL. CCLXX. NO. 1924.

C C

and painted "a beautiful dark blue, with white border." How Lenny Fairfield was unjustly imprisoned in them, and afterwards released by Dr. Riccabocca; and how the doctor thereupon gratified his curiosity by thrusting his own feet through the apertures-to discover that he could not extricate them again, and to be compelled to wait "in duresse vile" until the arrival of the Squire and the Parson opportunely set him at liberty. This latter incident was probably suggested to the novelist by a similar adventure on the part of Lord Camden, when Chief Justice. The last stocks in London were removed from St. Clement Danes, Strand, on August 4, 1826.

To the stocks was usually attached the Whipping Post, which first came into use about 1596, and prospered so famously that when John Taylor was rhyming at large, some thirty years later, there were to be found in London, and within a mile of it, no fewer than "sixty whipping-posts and stocks and cages." Formerly, vagrants and other malefactors were (according to the Statute 22 Henry VIII.) "tied to the end of a cart naked and beaten with whips"-(according to 39 Elizabeth) "naked from the middle upwards, and whipped till the body should be bloody." This debasing punishment was also inflicted on women without regard to age. In "Notes and Queries " are preserved many curious illustrations of the manner in which it was enforced, and the expenditure it involved. From the accounts of the constable of the parish of Great Staughton, in Huntingdonshire, are taken the following explanatory items, which must further increase every right-minded reader's admiration of the customs of

our ancestors :

26

1690-1. Pd. in charges, taking up a distracted woman, watching £ S. d. her, & whipping her next day.

1710-11. Spent on nurse London for searching the woman to see if
she was with child before she was whipped, 3 of them

Pd. Thomas Hawkins for whipping 2 people yt had the
small-pox

1714-5. Pd. for watching, victuals, & drink for Ma. Mitchell

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1716-7. Pd. for whipping Goody Bang

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Fourpence was the fee usually paid for whipping an offender; the hire of a cart was 1s. 6d. extra.

But into the history of the scourge, the rod, or the whip I dare not enter it would exhaust three times the space I have at my disposal; and the reader must be referred to the Rev. W. M. Cooper's "Flagellation and the Flagellants," though that, indeed, is far from exhaustive. The abuse of flogging in our public and private schools, and the brutal severity with which it was at one time inflicted in our

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and navy, would alone furnish material for two or three interchapters. I may note, however, that the too familiar "cat-o'ails" is simply a whip with three lashes, first used on shipwhere the term "cat" is frequently applied to a rope. The call it le martinet, in jocose commemoration of a rigid discian, M. le Martinet, who remodelled the infantry of Louis XIV. ed in 1672. Flogging in the army was abolished by the Army line Act of 1881. It was made a punishment for juvenile ers in 1847 and 1850, and for garrotters in 1863.

THE METEORITIC HYPOTHESIS.

MUCH

UCH has lately been heard about the "meteoritic theory" as an explanation of the origin and construction of the heavenly bodies. This hypothesis, now generally ascribed to Professor Lockyer, seems to have been first suggested by the German astronomer, Meyer. His theory has met with some support from Helmholtz, Proctor, Thomson, and Tait in Europe, and from Professors Newton and Wright in America. Professor Lockyer has recently published a full exposition of his theory in an elaborate and interesting work entitled "The Meteoritic Hypothesis: a Statement of the Results of a Spectroscopic Inquiry into the Origin of Cosmical Systems." In this volume the author has worked out his hypothesis in great detail, and as his theory has recently met with much adverse criticism, a brief review of the principal facts and arguments advanced by Lockyer, and also by his opponents, may prove of interest both to those who accept and those who reject his views.

Lockyer commences his work with an account of the falls of meteoric stones recorded in history. The earliest of these dates back so far as 1478 B.c., but, of course, with some uncertainty. Numerous well-attested falls are, however, referred to, and many of these meteorites are preserved in museums, one weighing over three tons being deposited in the British Museum, This fell at Cranbourne, in Australia.

The general form of these meteoric stones is fragmentary, indicating that they are the fractured portions of larger masses, burst asunder by the force of the explosion which usually accompanies these interesting phenomena. In the case of the meteorite which fell at Butsura in 1861, pieces picked up at places three or four miles apart could be actually fitted together to form the original

mass !

Meteorites are generally covered by a black crust, clearly caused by the intense heat developed by the mass in rushing through the earth's atmosphere with a planetary velocity.

Meteorites are generally composed of well-known terrestrial elements. Among these may be mentioned iron, nickel, magnesium,

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