James Berry

“ They asked me where I was going, said that they were going to Galway, and in what seemed to me a peculiarly significant tone, asked me if I knew whether Mr. Barry, the hangsman, was really in the train or not. They followed me on to the platform like two shadows, and got into the same compartment of the train. All this made me feel rather uncomfortable, for though I was well armed, there is nothing in life that I dread so much as the possibility of having to kill a man in self-defence and of being tried, and possibly convicted, for murder. ”

“ They are mostly men who have been long acquainted with crime, who have made it the business of their lives. They look upon the law and its officers much as a business man looks upon a clever and unscrupulous competitor; and upon a sentence of death as one of the business risks. Life ends for them, not at the scaffold, but in the dock, when sentence is pronounced. ”

“ To such men as these I am sure that the shortening of the waiting time would be the greatest possible mercy, for the longer time only gives them opportunity to work themselves into an almost demented state. At the end of three weeks they are often so broken down and hysterical as to be incapable of correctly understanding anything, and their only remaining feeling is a wild, frantic dread of the scaffold. ”

“ Penal servitude, even for life, has no very acute terrifying influence, partly because no criminal ever believes that it will be a reality in his case, as he feels sure that he will get a commutation of sentence; and partly because, even if he were sure that the imprisonment were actually for life, he knows that prison life is not such a dreadful fate, after all—when one gets used to it. ”

“ But I have sometimes thought that amongst those whom I have executed, for crimes which they have undoubtedly committed, there were men to whom their crime was a trouble more terrible than death; men who had not premeditated murder, who had taken no pleasure in it and expected no profit from it, and who, if they could by any means have been set at liberty, had within them the making of model citizens. ”

“ The old and practised criminal, though he has a great dread of the scaffold and the rope so long as he is at large, and though he usually takes more interest in his trial and uses greater efforts for his acquittal than the novice in crime, is usually resigned and indifferent as soon as the sentence is passed. As a rule, he pays but little heed to the ministrations of the chaplain, or the condolences of his friends. He is neither piously inclined, nor hysterically fearful, nor abusively rebellious—he simply waits his fate. ”

“ It is, of course, necessary that the drop should be of sufficient length to cause instantaneous death, that is to say, to cause death by dislocation rather than by strangulation; and on the other hand, the drop must not be so great as to outwardly mutilate the victim. If all murderers who have to be hanged were of precisely the same weight and build it would be very easy to find out the most suitable length of drop, and always to give the same, but as a matter of fact they vary enormously. ”

“ But when it comes to a question of a death sentence it is quite another matter. Death is a horrible mystery, and a death on the scaffold, a cold-blooded, pre-determined, and ignominious death is especially horrible to the criminal mind. ”

“ On the other hand, if they are satisfied that the Home Secretary is the proper tribunal, they ought surely to rest content with his ruling, remembering that he has far better opportunities of judging the merits of the case and the whole of the evidence than any outsider can possibly have, and that his responsibility in the matter makes him more careful in his enquiry than any outsider possibly can be.
The melancholy interest of the subject allures me to continue, yet the details of murderers’ deaths at the best are ghastly and grim, and I fear that my readers will shudderingly wish me to stop. ”

“ I advocate that the sentence of death, once passed, should be a sentence which the doomed man, as well as his friends and sympathisers who are still at liberty, should regard as quite irrevocable. At the same time I do not advocate an increase in the number of executions—just the reverse. As the best means to this end I think we ought to have a considerable alteration in our criminal law as it relates to murder cases. I think that the jury should have more power over the sentence, and for this purpose I think that they ought to have the choice of five classes of verdict, namely:—
Not guilty. ”

“ In spite of her hope, she could not shut out the terrible fear that the reprieve might not come, and the dread of death was so heavy upon her as to reduce her in three weeks to a haggard wreck of her former self. She prayed long and apparently earnestly for God’s help, but did not acknowledge her guilt until almost the last moment, when she saw that there was no hope of reprieve. When the morning of the execution came, she was so weakened as to be utterly unable to support herself, and she had to be practically carried to the scaffold by two female warders. ”

“ It may be a half-starved mother who has killed the baby she could not feed, or a man who in a whirlwind of temper has killed the unfaithful and miserable wife whose conduct has made his life a hell upon earth for years. ”

“ Thomas Parry,
hanged in Galway on January 20th, 1885, for the murder of Miss Burns, wrote a long statement, which he handed to the governor to be read after his death. The gist of it was given in the following paragraph:—“I wish to assure the public and my family and friends that I was of unsound mind for a week previous to the murder and for some time afterwards. I am happy to suffer for the crime which I committed, and confident that I shall enter upon an eternity of bliss. I die at peace with all men, and hope that anyone that I have ever injured will forgive me.” ”

“ Undoubtedly the fear of death is a great deterring power amongst abandoned men, and the fear is most powerful when the death seems most certain and the hope of reprieve most remote. This consideration leads me to think that the deterrent value of the death sentence would be greatly increased if it could be made absolutely irrevocable. Considering capital punishment as a moral power for frightening criminals still at large, I think it would be much better, if in all cases where there is the slightest possible chance of reprieve, the sentence were suspended for a time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the condemned person is an interesting character, or if there is any sort of excuse upon which an appeal can be based, there are always a great number of people who have no special knowledge of the case, and who, perhaps, have not even read the newspaper reports, who are ready to get up petitions, collect signatures, and stir up a lot of sympathy for one who too often deserves nothing but execration and contempt. Such agitations lead to much misrepresentation of facts, and often to sweeping condemnations of the judge and jury. ”

“ Everything that can be done on earth by or for such poor souls, can be done in a week, and they would not ask for more. Their repentance is sincere, their horror of their crime is greater than their dread of death, which they welcome as a means of expiation. ”

“ It is decidedly injurious [Pg 89] for the public to have the idea that the life or death of a man depends upon the urgency of the petitions in his favour and the amount of sympathy expressed for him, rather than upon the justice of the case. Moreover, it seems to me that by singling out special cases, and attacking the decision of the Home Office, the press and the public place themselves in a thoroughly illogical position. If they object to the system of leaving the matter in the hands of the Home Secretary, surely it is the system, and not the man, that should be attacked. ”

“ From time to time a very great number of incorrect and exaggerated statements have been made in the press with regard to almost every detail of my work, and I suppose that so long as the public have a love for the marvellous, and so long as press-men have treacherous memories or vivid imaginations, it will continue to be so. My enormous income is one of the subjects on which the papers most frequently get astray, and it has often been asserted that my earnings amounted to a thousand a year. ”

“ Whenever there is a series of executions, without reprieves, the number of murders decreases, and on the other hand, after a period in which several persons have been tried for murder and acquitted, or reprieved after sentence, the number of crimes appears to increase. I do not think that this rule can be demonstrated forcibly and convincingly by a reference to the mere numbers of murders, convictions, reprieves, and executions during the past few years, because there are many considerations which bear upon the significance of an execution or reprieve ”

“ It is a terrible trial to have to execute men who firmly believe, and apparently on reasonable, even if not correct grounds, that they are suffering an injustice. The worst instance that I remember of this kind was in the case of Samuel and Joseph Boswell, executed in Worcester Gaol for the murder of a game-keeper on the estate of the Duc d’Aumale, at Evesham. ”

“ If the only purpose of the time allowed between sentence and execution is to admit of conversion and a preparation for heaven, it is fair to ask of anyone who wishes to continue the present system, whether it serves the purpose. ”

“ Many people pity all murderers, whether they deserve it or not; many others condemn them body, soul and spirit, without considering to what extent they are the result of circumstances. If I can induce my readers to consider that a murderer has as much right to judge the State as the State has to judge him, I think this book will have achieved one good purpose. ”

“ My main object is to induce people to look more into the pre-disposing causes of crime. I want them to consider whether in many cases prevention is not better than cure, and whether more can not be done to remove the causes. Undoubtedly drink has to answer for the largest number of such crimes. After drink comes lust and jealousy, though these almost invariably reach the murder climax through drink. The other main motive is the love of money, which has led to many of the most heartless, inhuman deeds that it has been my lot to avenge. ”

“ Berry was paying a premium of 1d. per week. The murderess had also made a proposal for a mutual insurance on her own life and the child’s by which £100 should be paid, on the death of either, to the survivor. She was under the impression that the policy was completed, but as a matter of fact, it was not. It seems almost impossible that a woman should murder a child for the sake of gaining even the full sum of £110; and we might be justified in believing that there must be some other motive if it were not for the fact that infanticide has been committed again and again for much smaller sums. ”

“ When men commit a horrible crime it is our duty to exact the penalty; but it will do us no harm to consider whether we are in any way responsible for the conditions which may have driven them to crime; and whether we cannot do even more than we are doing for the prevention of crime by the improvement of the conditions. ”

“ I am not ashamed of my calling, because I consider that if it is right for men to be executed (which I believe it is, in murder cases) it is right that the office of executioner should be held respectable. Therefore, I look at hanging from a business point of view.
When I first took up the work I was in the habit of applying to the Sheriff of the County whenever a murderer was condemned to death. I no longer consider it necessary to apply for work in England, because I am now well known, but I still send a simple address card, as above, when an execution in Ireland is announced. ”

“ A youth called Jones, who was hanged with Scandrett, was his companion in his final crime—a burglary, ending in murder. Although attached to his mother, who said he had always been “a good lad” to her, Scandrett could not bear the idea of living at home when he was engaged in crime, so that almost the whole of the last eight years of his life was spent, when out of gaol, in common lodging-houses. After his conviction for murder and sentence to death, his great anxiety was for his mother. And well might he be anxious, for the poor woman suffered sadly for his sin. ”

“ At any rate, if we are to legislate wisely and well for any class of people it is absolutely necessary that we should be able to see things from their own point of view. It is with much hesitation that I start this chapter, for I know that my power to analyze thought and character is not great enough to enable me to deal with the subject on broad lines. But if I can induce a few people to consider the question of murder and its punishment from the murderer’s point of view, the chapter will do good. ”

“ The class of cruel and callous murderers is quite distinct from that of the violent murderers, like Rudge, Martin and Baker. These men, fighting against the law, fight fairly according to their lights. They take risks and meet the consequences in a straightforward manner. But the cruel and callous class show a cowardice and selfishness of which Rudge, Martin, and Baker were incapable. An instance of this occurs to me in the case of Mary Ann Britland, whom I executed at Strangeways Gaol, Manchester. ”

“ I believe, honestly, and from long study of the subject, with unique opportunities of judging, that with a certain low class of the human brute, the fear of death is the only check that can in any way curb their lusts and passions. ”