Another battle with the crowd, and I stood in the rear of the gibbet. After a weary interval, the scharfrichter—executioner—mounted, by means of a ladder, to the cross beam of the gallows. By the action of a wheel the culprit slowly rose into the air, but still unhurt. Three broad leathern straps confined his arms; and perfectly motionless, held in a perpendicular position by cordage fixed to the ground, and to the beam above, he awaited his death. No cap covered his face. A looped cord passing through another pulley, was placed under his chin, the cord running along the cross-beam, and the end fixed to a wheel at the side of the gibbet.
The culprit kissed the crucifix; a single turn of the wheel; a hoarse cry of “Down with the umbrellas!” and his life had passed away; though no cry, no struggle, announced its departure. The scharfrichter laid his hand upon the heart of the criminal, then, assured of his death, descended. And still, amid the incessant rain, with eager eyes bent upon the dead, the crowd waited, gloating on the sight. According to the sentence of the law, the corpse, with nothing to hide its discoloured and distorted features, remained hanging till the setting of the sun.
Ashamed, wearied, and horrified, I hurried home; only halting on my way to purchase the “Todesurtheil,” or “Death-sentence,” which was being cried about the streets. This is an official document, and indeed the only one with which the people of Vienna are gratified on such a subject. Trials are not public, nor can
they be reported; and although the whole of the details invariably ooze out through the police, no authentic account appears before the public till the sentence is carried out.
The “Todesurtheil” appears, like our “Last Dying Speech,” at the time of the execution, but contains no verses; being a simple, and very brief narrative of the life and crime of the condemned. He is designated by his initials only, out of delicacy to his relatives, although his real name is, somehow or other, already well known.
Six months later there occurred another execution, but I had no curiosity to witness it. The condemned was a soldier, who, in a fit of jealousy, had fired upon his mistress; but killed a bystander instead. There was no mystery about the affair, and he was condemned to death.
On the day previous to his execution, he was allowed to receive the visits of his friends and the public. Only a single person was admitted at a time. He awaited his visitor (in this instance, an acquaintance of my own), with calmness and resolution; advanced with outstretched hand to meet him; greeting him with a hearty salutation. The visitor, totally unprepared for this, trembled with a cold shudder, as he received the pressure of the murderer’s hand; murmured a blessing; dropped a few coin into the box for the especial benefit of his soul, and hurriedly withdrew.
On the following morning the condemned quitted his prison for the gibbet. But the soldier, unlike the civilian—the soldier who has forfeited his right to a military execution—must walk to his death. The civilian rides in the felon’s cart; the soldier, in undress, must pace the weary way on foot. Imagine a death-condemned criminal walking from the Old Bailey to Copenhagen Fields to the gallows, and you have a parallel case.
CHAPTER XX.
a jail episode.