of the press had been purposely placed over his heart, so that he might the sooner be deprived of life, “though he was denied what is usual in these cases, to have a sharp piece of timber under his back to hasten execution.”
In 1721, Nathaniel Hawes, who had come to be what we should call now-a-days an habitual criminal, and who had been frequently in Newgate, took to the road. After various successful adventures, he stopped a gentleman on Finchley Common, who was more than his match and made him prisoner. He was conveyed to London and committed to Newgate. When brought to the bar of the Old Bailey he refused to plead, giving as his reason that he meant to die as he had lived, like a gentleman. When he was seized, he said he had on a fine suit of clothes, which he intended to have gone to the gallows in, but they had been taken from him. “Unless they are returned, I will not plead,” he went on, “for no one shall say that I was hanged in a dirty shirt and a ragged coat.” He was warned what would be the consequences of his contempt of the law, but he obstinately persevered, and was accordingly sentenced to the press. He bore a weight of 250 lbs. for about seven minutes, and then gave in, being unable any longer to bear the pain. On return to Court he pleaded “Not Guilty,” but was convicted and sentenced to death. Hawes declared to the last that he was one of Jonathan Wild’s victims.
Two years later, William Spiggot and Thomas Phillips, arraigned for highway robbery, refused to plead, and were also sentenced to the press. Phillips, on coming into the press-yard, was affrighted by the apparatus, and begged that he might be taken back to Court to plead, “a favour that was granted him; it might have been denied to him.” Spiggot, however, remained obdurate, and was put under the press, where he continued half an hour with a weight to the amount of 350 lbs. on his body; “but, on addition of the 50 lbs. more, he likewise begged to plead.” Both were then convicted and hanged in the ordinary course of law. Again, Edward Burnworth, the captain of a gang of murderers and robbers which rose into notoriety on the downfall of Wild, was sentenced to the press at Kingston in 1726, by Lord Chief Justice Raymond and Judge Denton. He bore the weight of 1 cwt. 3 qrs. 2 lbs. on his breast for the space of an hour and three minutes, during which time the High-Sheriff who attended him used every argument to induce him to plead, but in vain. Burnworth, all the time, was trying to kill himself by striking his head against the floor. At last he was prevailed on to promise to plead, was brought back to Court, and duly sentenced to death.
The last instance in which the press was inflicted was at Kilkenny in Ireland. A man named Matthew Ryan stood mute at his trial for highway robbery, and was adjudged by the jury to be guilty of “wilful and affected dumbness and lunacy.” He was given some days’ grace, but still remaining dumb, he was pressed to death in the public market of Kilkenny. As the weights were put upon him the wretched man broke silence and implored that he might be hanged, but the Sheriff could not grant his request.
In 1741 a new press was made and fixed in the press-yard, for the punishment of a highwayman named Cook, but it was not used. The 12th Geo. III. (1772) at length altered the law on this head, and judgment was awarded against mutes as though convicted or they had confessed. In 1778 one so suffered at the Old Bailey. Finally, it was provided by the 7 and 8 Geo. IV., cap. 28, that the Court should enter a plea of “Not Guilty” when the prisoner will not plead.
The principal forms of capital punishment, however, as the derivation of the expression implies, have dealt with the head as the most vulnerable part of the body. Death has been and still is most generally inflicted by decapitation and strangulation. The former, except in France, where it came to be universal, was the most aristocratic method; the latter was long applied only to criminals of the baser sort. Until the invention of the guillotine, culprits were beheaded by sword or axe, and were often cruelly mangled by a bungling executioner. It is asserted by the historian that the executioner pursued the Countess of Salisbury about the scaffold, aiming repeated blows at her, before he succeeded in striking off her head. This uncertainty in result was only ended by the ingenious invention of Dr. Guillotin, the rude germ of which existed long previously in the Scotch “maiden.” The regent Morton, who introduced this instrument into Scotland, and who himself suffered by it, is said to have taken it from the Halifax Gibbet.[118] Guillotin’s machine was not altogether original, but it owed more to the Italian “Mannaïa” than to the “maiden.” Nor, according to Sanson the French headsman, was he the actual inventor of the notorious instrument guillotine, which bears his name. The guillotine was designed by one Schmidt, a German engineer and artificer of musical instruments. Guillotin enthusiastically adopted Schmidt’s design, which he strongly recommended in the assembly, declaring that by it a culprit could not suffer, but would only feel a slight freshness on the neck. Louis XVI. was decapitated by the guillotine, as was the doctor, its sponsor and introducer.
Strangulation, whether applied by the bowstring, cord, handkerchief, or drop, is as old as the hills. It was inflicted by the Greeks as an especially ignominious punishment. The “sus per coll.” was not unknown in the penal law of the Romans, who were in the habit also of exposing the dead convict upon the gibbet, “as a comfortable sight to his friends and relations.”