THE MURDERER’S STRAIGHT ROUTE TO HEAVEN.—BRINGING RELIGION INTO DISREPUTE.
PUCK, June 28th, 1882.
Many who look at this cartoon to-day may well wonder what called it forth, and many others may have to be reminded that even so recently as ten years ago a morbid sympathy with criminals was so common among American clergymen that it was popularly held a reproach to the whole clerical body. It was, however, little more than a passing phase, a sort of hysterical epidemic that prevailed among people peculiarly exposed to emotional impulses. It seems to have died a natural death, and it has passed away so utterly that it is practically forgotten to-day.
We do not speak, of course, of the sympathy which every minister of God should feel for the erring and unfortunate, but of a certain maudlin enthusiasm which at one time moved many otherwise excellent and admirable members of the clerical profession, and brought about some startling exhibitions of misplaced sentiment. At the period of which we speak, namely: the decade prior to the publication of this cartoon, it was no uncommon thing to read of a clergyman, assisted by a band of female devotees, invading a prison to spend hours, day after day, in consoling, comforting, and generally coddling some red-handed murderer in whom they could have had no possible interest, and of whom they never would have heard save for the notoriety of his trial. Clergymen were found, too, to go on the gallows at the last moment, and publicly to avow their belief that the soul of the criminal about to die was purged of all earthly sin, and that his repentance with the noose around his neck had fully sufficed to fit him for heaven. Such shows as these were common enough and evil enough in their influence to justify even severer condemnation than that expressed in this vigorous cartoon.
The mania, for such we must call it, probably had its origin in the extravagant and widely advertised efforts of the Rev. Dr. Tyng, of New York, to save Foster, the “Carhook Murderer,” from the gallows. Foster, who was partially drunk at the time, wantonly killed an inoffensive stranger on the 26th of April, 1871; and, after every legal resource had been exhausted in his behalf, was hanged March 21st, 1873.
This cartoon appeared in Puck of June 28th, 1882, and its immediate occasion was the execution of Charles Guiteau for the assassination of President Garfield, which created a most unwholesome excitement in many quarters.
