Whenever I have been in actual contact with crowds in England, their attitude has been friendly. In Ireland such knots of people as may gather are usually the reverse. In England, if there is any sort of demonstration, it is a cheer; in Ireland it is hooting and groaning. But it is seldom, in England, that I meet with any personal demonstration. The crowds that assemble outside the gaols when executions are in progress, are interesting studies. They hail the hoisting of the black flag with a cheer or a groan, that indicates their opinion of the merits of the case. It is curious to notice how the sympathies of this section of the public lean one way or the other, often without any apparent reason. This thought occurred to me very forcibly at the executions of Israel Lipski and William Hunter, who were hanged within a few months of each other.
Israel Lipski.
At Lipski’s execution the crowd was the largest I have ever seen, many of the people remained hanging about for hours. The excitement was intense, but there was no sympathy for the prisoner. There were many Jews in the crowd, and wherever they were noticed they were hustled and kicked about, and insulted in every imaginable manner; for the hatred displayed by the mob was extended from Lipski to his race. When the black flag was hoisted it was received with three ringing cheers. Altogether, the crowd showed the utmost detestation of the murderer. And yet his crime was no worse than the majority of murders, and there were many things connected with it, and with the circumstances of the miserable man’s life, both before and after, which I should have expected to excite some little sympathy; at any rate, amongst people in a similar station of life.
Hunter’s execution was the next but one to Lipski’s, and his crime was one which has always seemed to me about the most heartless I ever heard of. Hunter was a striker in a foundry by trade, but a tramp by choice. He left his wife and two children and went on tramp, eventually striking up a sort of partnership with a Scotch woman who had six illegitimate children. One of these, a little girl between three and four years of age, went tramping with them, and of course, the poor wee mite was utterly unfit for the exposure and the many miles of walking which they made her accomplish daily. Hunter and the woman were both cruel to the child, and carried their cruelty to such an extent that on one occasion at any rate, they were remonstrated with, and eventually turned out of a common lodging-house on account of their conduct. At last, one day after a long tramp, the little mite began to cry from weariness, and Hunter, to stop her crying, beat her with a switch. Later, for the same purpose, he thrashed her with a stick that he picked up in the road. Still later in the day he continued his ill-treatment until he had beaten the life out of the poor little creature. In justice to the man—or brute—it should be said that when he found that the child was insensible (it was really dead), he fetched water to bathe its poor battered head; and when he realised that it was dead he cut his own throat and very nearly killed himself—but these considerations seem very little extenuation for the harsh brutality of his conduct. One would have thought that the man who had thus heartlessly tortured to death a helpless child would have been execrated by all men; yet the crowd that assembled at Hunter’s execution wore quite a holiday air. There were some 1500 people, most of whom laughed and jested. When the flag was run up there was no demonstration, perhaps the Carlisle people are not demonstrative. However that may be, the contrasted conduct of the crowds at the two executions struck me forcibly; and though it is sad that men should rejoice at the death of a fellow-man, if the cheers had been given at Hunter’s death which greeted the death of Lipski, I think they would have been more natural and more English than light jests and laughter.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
Incidents and Anecdotes.
As is always the case when a man attains any prominence or notoriety, a number of utterly groundless stories have got afloat about my doings and adventures. Others, which were originally founded on fact, have been so modified and altered that I do not recognise them when they come back to me again. Altogether I have been credited with being the hero of so many surprising adventures that I am afraid the few little incidents which have really occurred to me will seem tame by the side of the fictions.