These old-fashioned folk may be also of the opinion that there is something very monstrous in this spectacle of a malefactor, speaking, with the rope round his neck, to “you reporters.”
And they may go on their way pondering on the strangeness of a society, in which the honest and heroic poor die by the hundred unsolaced by the priest, while a holy man stands at the elbow of the murderer on the gallows, and as the hangman draws the bolt, cries—“Lord Jesus receive his soul!”
When Thurtell stood upon the scaffold at Tyburn, the Championship of England was about to be decided; and while the hangman was adjusting the fatal noose, the culprit expressed his regret that his execution could not be delayed for an hour or two, that before paying the penalty of his crimes he might have the satisfaction of knowing to which of the combatants the belt had been awarded.
Whether this great criminal’s attitude in the presence of death contrasts favourably or unfavourably with that assumed upon the gallows by Charles Peace, is a question upon which we will not venture to express an opinion.
Both Thurtell and Peace, however, afford perhaps the most remarkable illustrations we could instance of the curious fact that great scoundrels apparently shuffle off the mortal coil more comfortably than honest people.
Possibly it is that long inurement to crime has so blunted their sensibilities that even conscience no longer makes cowards of them, and Hamlet’s great query, “To die, to sleep, perchance to dream!” troubles them not.
But, in whatever way the phenomenon is to be accounted for, the fact remains that condemned culprits, as a rule, mount the scaffold with a firm step, and, while consenting to death, apparently conquer agony.
Charles Peace proved no exception to the rule. He slept well up to within an hour and a half of his execution, and on awaking partoook of a hearty breakfast.
On emerging from the condemned cell to the courtyard in which the scaffold was erected, he heard the bell tolling for his own funeral without giving signs of terror.
Upon the scaffold he appeared to be in the same contented frame of mind as the celebrated essayist and father of English journalism, who on his death-bed requested his son to “come and see how a Christian could die.” But, observed Thackeray, “unfortunately, he died of brandy!”