Death row

“ A guillotine from Hell will be erected, where a demon will execute a headsman. The hour will be four, and we shall form the crowd round the scaffold.
Probably things will be like this. But if the dead do return, in what shapes will they appear? What part of their incomplete and mutilated body will they keep? Which will they choose? Shall the head or the trunk appear as a spectre?
Alas! what has Death done with the soul? ”

“ Though we sink in the darkness, His arms break our fall,
And in death as in life He is Father of all!
The Quaker Alumni.
Vain pride of star-lent genius!—vain
Quick fancy and creative brain,
Unblest by prayerful sacrifice,
Absurdly great or weakly wise! ”

“ At the appointed moment a screw is suddenly turned by the executioner, stationed behind the condemned, and instantaneous death follows. This would seem to be more merciful than hanging, whereby death is produced by the lingering process of suffocation, to say nothing of the many mishaps which so often occur upon the gallows. ”

“ Simultaneously with the drop falling, a black flag was hoisted at one corner of the prison, announcing that the last dread sentence of the law had been carried into effect.
You Suffolk lads of each degree,
And all young men of each degree,
And when my mournful tale you hear,
For my sad end shed a silent tear.
Upon the dreadful scaffold high,
A murderer’s death I am doom’d to die. ”

“ Oh! 'tis too much for this offending wretch,
This parricide, that murders with her crimes,
Shortens her father's age, and cuts him off,
Ere little more than half his years be number'd.
SCI. Would it were otherwise—but thou must die.—
CAL. That I must die, it is my only comfort;
Death is the privilege of human nature,
And life without it were not worth our taking:
"Thither the poor, the prisoner, and the mourner, ⁠140
"Fly for relief, and lay their burthens down." ”

“ For some of them have been cut and chopped all to pieces, some have had their eyes bored through, some have been sodden, some roasted, some flayed alive, some buried quick, stoned, crucified, grinded betwixt millstones, drawn and hailed hither and thither unto execution, drowned in waters, strangled and hanged, torn in pieces, vexed with rebukes before their death, pined in prisons, and afflicted in bands. ”

“ No one touched the grey-headed murderer, who knelt down—not to pray, but to look into his son's eyes—and to examine his lips—and to feel his left breast—and to search out all the symptoms of a fainting-fit, or to assure himself—and many a corpse had the plunderer handled on the field after hush of the noise of battle—that this was death. ”

“ You have been like some poor people I have read of in the late storm, buried under the ruins of your own edifice, but whether you were stifled or crushed, killed by a rafter or a brick, nobody can tell. You have died a death so ignoble that it has no name, and the Coroner's verdict is "Found Dead." ”

“ This voice is heard when the tempestuous activity of conscious existence terminates in the death of Sushupti, and out of the ashes of the individual man the regenerated man springs into existence electrified by this "song of life." ”

“ This is the reason why, in the case of suicides and those who die premature deaths, having at the time of death a strong passion or a strong desire that they were unable to satisfy during life, but on the fulfilment of which their whole energy was concentrated, the astral body subsists for a certain length of time, and may even make desperate efforts for the purpose of descending into the physical plane to bring about the accomplishment of its object. ”

“ But during the struggle the person in whose interest the battle is fought is in a quiescent, unconscious condition, almost helpless to assist his friends or strike hard at his enemies, though the result of the fight is a matter of life and death to him. ”

“ The ghosts and their followers always took delight in torture, in cruel and unusual punishments. For the infraction of most of their laws, death was the penalty—death produced by stoning and by fire. Sometimes, when man committed only murder, he was allowed to flee to some city of refuge. Murder was a crime against man. ”

“ According to the general theory I have laid down, in the case of every man who becomes a Mukta there is a union with the Logos. It may be conceived, either as the soul being raised to the Logos or as the Logos descending from its high plane to associate itself with the soul. In the generality of cases, this association of the soul with the Logos is only completed after death--the last death which that individual has to go through. ”

“ For accidental or justifiable slaying, however, we find that a mode of escape from the avengers of blood was provided: ‘If God delivers a man into his hands, [81] I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee [82] ... and ye shall not take compensation for him that is fled to the City of Refuge that he should come home before the death of the high-priest. So ye [141] shall not pollute the land wherein ye are.’ [83] We may assume, with some degree of probability, that in this class of homicide, some form of purgation ceremony was customary. ”

“ It is past midnight, and the crowd collected around the cottage is greater than ever. As one after another arrives upon the ground they step across the threshold, enter the chamber of death, and look upon the corpse, whose pale face seems to make mute appeal to them for justice. After gazing on it for an instant, their anger with difficulty subdued in the solemn presence of death, each comes out muttering a resolve there shall be both justice and vengeance, many loudly vociferating it with the added emphasis of an oath. ”

“ It is easy for the adverse critic to assert that in this play we find reference to civil war, to suicide, to judicial execution, and to quarrels about burial, but we find no reference to homicide. We venture to suggest that fratricide in civil war, judicial executions of which the justice is called in question, and suicide, are very closely related to homicide by the similarity, if not the community, of their nature. ”

“ How can they do that dreadful, deliberate murder—for I can call it nothing else—when the defenceless man stands by his coffin on the brink of his open grave, and the hands of his comrades send to his bosom the deadly messengers! It is not right to take life away ”

“ By every possible device death was clothed with new and vivid terrors, and in every possible way the truth was brought home to the mind that the coming of death could be as unexpected as it was inevitable and unwelcome. The tolling of the church-bell spread the gloom of the death-chamber over the whole town; and the death-crier, with bell and lantern, wearing a garment made terrible by a skull and cross-bones, went his rounds, by day or night, crying to all good people to pray for the soul just departed. ”

“ The images presented to the mind by the visible arrangements for sepulture, are inseparably associated with the ideas of death itself to the greater proportion of the population. Neglected or mismanaged burial grounds superadd to the indefinite terrors of dissolution, the revolting image of festering heaps, disturbed and scattered bones, the prospect of a charnel house and its associations of desecration and insult. ”

“ The pale green or livid horse, the color of a corpse, reflects the ghastliness of a dead body bordering on dissolution, and points to the ruin wrought by death. Death is here considered as in itself a trial, and some of the more terrible [pg 129] and widespread agencies by which it is brought about are mentioned in order to make its ravages more impressive. Among other forms death by sword and famine are included, evils already introduced under the two former seals as the occasion of suffering, but here regarded as leading to death and constituting a separate trial. ”

“ Murder, no matter whether judicial, legalized or church sanctioned, will still remain murder, and will continue to cry to heaven for vengeance. "To-day thou art," great and mighty men; "to-morrow thou art not"—yes, a cold lump of clay with the skeletons of murdered men, the tears of widows and the crying orphans you caused, standing before you. You may be sure a just God will not be fooled by the arguments of cunning counselors, judges, ministers, priests, bishops or pious frauds, who may be hired or engaged to bring their country's youth to the slaughter house. ”

“ On the burial of any notorious character,—of a suicide, of a man who has perished by manslaughter, of a woman who has died in child-birth, or even of a child who has been killed by being run over in the street, this vulgar excitement rises to an insufferable height. If, in such a case, the corpse is brought into my church, this sacred and beautiful structure is desecrated and disfigured by the hurried intrusion of a squalid and irreverent mob, and clergyman, corpse, and mourners are jostled and mixed up with the confused mass, by the uncontrollable pressure from without. ”

“ The solemn procession moved towards the place of Execution, the chaplain repeating the confession words, “In the midst of life we are in death.” Upon ascending the platform he appeared to tremble very much. The cap being drawn over his eyes and the signal given, the wretched man was launched into eternity. He died almost without a struggle. After the body had hanged the usual time it was cut down and buried according to the sentence in the gaol.
[Pg 278]
The Home of the Bad Man. ”

“ How rarely does even the bravest among us speak of the grim terror by name, with reference to a particular case! What does it matter? Ways of saying the same thing are provided by conventions that seem quite alive to the whereabouts of the sting of Death, of the victory of the Grave. If the language of the daily press is any evidence on the subject, the Immortalism of the Creeds is only skin-deep. ”

“ LETTER 524 CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO [P.M. November 8, 1830.]
Tears are for lighter griefs. Man weeps the doom
That seals a single victim to the tomb.
But when Death riots, when with whelming sway
Destruction sweeps a family away ”

“ They were not satisfied with burning the living, they also delivered to the flames the bodies of those who had died a natural death before their execution could be carried out, as if an anticipated death should not be allowed to save them from the punishment which they had deserved. ”

“ It has been proposed, by a medical gentleman, whose philanthropy has assumed the appearance of a violent eruption, breaking out in every direction, that, if this abominable punishment, this destruction of life, which God Almighty has prescribed, in the case of murder, must continue to be inflicted, the “misguided young ladies” and “unfortunate men,” who commit that crime, shall be executed under the influence of ether. This may be considered the happiest suggestion of the age. ”

“ From the strange mixture of the material and spiritual common to men in that barbarian condition, the bodies or the blood of the slain appear to be the essentials of these requirements. Thus, also, the utmost horror is felt at decapitation, or at the severing of limbs from the body after death. ”

“ In cases where the crime is doubtful, or unjustly imputed, those who are thus visited come out, and laying their right hand upon the coffin, protest their innocence of the blood of the deceased, calling God to witness the truth of their asseverations; but, in cases where the crime is clearly proved against the murderer, the door is either closed, the ceremony repelled by violence, or the house abandoned by the inmates until the funeral passes.*
* Many of these striking and startling old customs have nearly disappeared, and indeed it is better that they should. ”

“ Whoever, amongst these savages, dies in a quarrel provoked by drunkenness, or as 59 the victim of the revenge of a fellow countryman, receives not the ordinary honours of burial; he is interred without ceremony and without provisions. The most glorious death for them is to expire in fighting the enemies of their nation. ”

“ We are told that when the king visits the burial-place of his ancestors he offers a human sacrifice on approaching the skeleton of each one, and in this manner some thirty persons are slaughtered. When about to repair a roof at the burial-place after a storm, as many more victims are offered to appease the wrath of the departed. On funeral occasions many villagers are killed, till it pleases the king to forbid the further shedding of blood. ”

“ Death is a commitment to the prison of the Grave till the Judgement of the Great Day; and then the grand Habeas Corpus will issue to the Earth and to the Sea, to give up their dead: to remove the Bodies, with the cause of their commitment. ”

“ Indeed, his crime is manifest and he hath incurred death penalty; and I have deferred it only by reason of the greatness of the offence; for, an I do this with him and my proof against him be strengthened, my heart is healed and the heart of my whole folk; and if I slay him not to-day, his slaying shall not escape me to-morrow.” Then he bade fetch the youth who, when present between his hands, prostrated to him and blessed him; whereupon quoth the king, “Woe to thee! How long shall the folk upbraid me on thine account and blame me for delaying thy death? ”

“ Like the criminal under sentence of death, he notches upon his wooden stick, as Sterne's captive did, the days, after the lapse of which he must be introduced to his dreaded fate; in the case of the criminal, merely death — a cessation from the pains and toils of life; but in our cases, the commencement of a living death; a death never ending, second in horror only to the eternal torment of the wicked in a future state. ”