COUNTY OF OXFORD.
EXECUTION of CHARLES SMITH for MURDER.
(The Capital Punishment Amendment Act, 1868.)
Copies are subjoined of the official declaration that judgement of death has been executed; and of the Surgeon’s certificate of the death of Charles Smith.
Thomas M. Davenport,
Under-Sheriff of the County of Oxford.9th May, 1887.
OFFICIAL DECLARATION.
We, the undersigned, do hereby declare that Judgement of Death was this day, in our presence, executed on Charles Smith, within the walls of Her Majesty’s Prison at Oxford.
Dated this Ninth day of May, One thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven.
Thomas M. Davenport, Under-Sheriff of Oxfordshire.
H. B. Isaacson, Governor of the Prison.
J. K. Newton, Chaplain of the Prison.
J. Riordon, Chief Warder of the Prison.
Henry Ives, Sheriff’s Officer.
Thos. Wm. Austin, Reporter, Oxford Journal.
Robert Brazies, Reporter, Oxford Chronicle.
Joseph Henry Warner, Reporter, Oxford Times.
J. Lansbury, Warder.SURGICAL CERTIFICATE.
I, Henry Banks Spencer, the Surgeon of Her Majesty’s Prison at Oxford, hereby certify that I this day examined the body of Charles Smith, on whom judgement of death was this day executed in the said prison; and that, on such examination, I found that the said Charles Smith was dead.
Dated this Ninth day of May, One thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven.
Henry B. Spencer,
Surgeon of the Prison.
[CHAPTER VI.]
Other Methods of Execution.
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 very worst and most unscientific form of capital punishment. The prejudices of these people seem to be based on an utterly wrong idea of how an English execution is conducted, and I hope that the chapter dealing with my method will form the basis for a truer judgment.
English Axe and Block, now in the Tower of London.
Of methods of execution that have been suggested as substitutes for hanging, there are some which hardly deserve consideration, because there is no considerable number of people who would approve of them. The various methods of beheading are hardly likely to be ever in favour with Englishmen generally, for they want executions to be as free as possible from revolting details. The old headsman’s axe and block which are still to be seen in the Tower, are in themselves sufficient argument against a revival of their use. Apart from the fact that beheading under the best conditions is revolting, we must further consider that from the very nature of the office, the executioner who has to hack off his victim’s head must be a brutal and degraded man, and the chances are that he will not be so skilful or so careful as he ought to be for the performance of such a task. Even amongst races which are not so highly civilised as the English, and where it is easier to obtain headsmen of proportionately better standing, we occasionally hear of more than one blow being required to cause death, and such a state of things is very horrible. In China decapitation has been reduced to almost a science, and the Chinese executioners are probably the most skilful headsmen in the world. I have in my possession a Chinese executioner’s knife, with which the heads of nine pirates were severed in nine successive blows, and a terrible knife it is, and well fitted for the purpose. Yet even with such a weapon, and with the skill and experience which Chinese executioners attain from frequent practice, the blow sometimes fails, as was the case in one of the last batch of Chinese executions reported in the English newspapers.
