The History and Romance of Crime 26

The History and Romance of Crime 26

France was then anxious to make a change in the method of carrying out

execution, if indeed capital punishment were to continue in force. But

there is now a strong tendency to abolish it altogether, as is the

rule already in Italy and Belgium, the substitute in both countries

being prolonged solitary confinement, which is really synonymous with

a death sentence of a lingering and painful kind. The life spared on

the scaffold must be passed in solitary confinement with the inevitable

fatal consequences of such treatment. I shall never forget the painful

impression made upon me when I came across some seventy or eighty

murderers collected in one apartment in the prison of Ghent, all of

whom had spent ten years or more in the cells of another prison, that

of Louvain. They were all either senile idiots or imbeciles prematurely

aged. They had been kept alive in deference to ultra-humanitarian

sentiment, but at the price of something worse than death. It does not

seem probable that the death penalty will disappear from the French

criminal code, but a strong feeling prevails that better arrangements

should be made for carrying out the sentence. Many are strongly in

favor of adopting the British practice of performing the execution in

private, within the limits of the gaol, that is to say, and in the

presence of only a few officials. The selection of these last presents

some difficulty, although it has been overcome in England, and is

after all no more than the justifiable demand on public servants to

perform their duty, however trying. One suggestion has been, to make it

incumbent upon the jury that convicted to be present; but the fear of

grave consequences has put this aside. It has been thought, not without

reason, that juries would hesitate to find a verdict of guilty if

they were to be compelled to witness the dread consequences of their

judgment. The desire for private execution has been emphasised in

France by a scandalous incident that occurred at Dunkirk towards the

end of 1905. A double murder of the most cruel and dastardly character

had been committed, resulting in a double execution. A great mob had

assembled, and, under the influence of strong excitement, stormed

the scaffold when the second head fell, determined to carry off the

decapitated corpses. The police were powerless to prevent the outrage.

An extraordinary and probably unparalleled incident occurred at this

execution. The victim had been a woman, and the widowed husband,

thirsting to avenge her, had offered the authorities the sum of 10,000

francs, to be paid to the funds of any public charity, if they would

allow him to act as executioner,--to the extent at least of touching

the spring by which the knife of the guillotine was released. The

strange request was refused; but as a particular favor a special place

in the first row of spectators was secured for the aggrieved husband.

 

The prison of La Grande Roquette, when I visited it, struck me

painfully from its gloomy and imposing architecture; and the effect

was heightened as I passed into the inner yards, where behind a tall

iron railing the bulk of the prison population were at exercise. As

they patrolled it in couples, backwards and forwards, their wooden

sabots made a hideous clatter on the stone pavement, which did not,

however, drown the hum of their voices as they gossiped idly with one

another, smoking their pipes in pleasant company. They were a rough,

evil-visaged lot, for this was at a date anterior to the disturbance

of 1886, before mentioned, and they were mostly habitual criminals

(_récidivistes_), who had been convicted again and again. They could

only be ruled by a strong hand, and the director, M. Beauquesnes, a

resolute and determined man, had been specially selected for this

responsible post. Before his time murderous assaults by prisoners upon

their officers were common enough. Many trades are carried on in the

prison, and desperate ruffians bent on mischief always found tools and

dangerous weapons of offence ready to their hand. Outrages of this

kind are now unknown. “How did you get the better of them?” I asked M.

Beauquesnes, almost anticipating his answer as I met his clear gray

eyes. “By constant surveillance, by being always on the lookout for

mischief, and crushing it before it could make head.” “Your warders

are all armed, of course?” “Not in the least. It is better to depend

upon moral than physical force.” It did not seem to me fair or safe to

leave officers entirely defenceless among so many desperate and easily

excited prisoners without even the protection of a baton or club, and

the evil result was presently seen in the outbreak already mentioned.

 

From the yard I passed into the workshops,--long, low, dark rooms in

which gas is never lighted, for labor begins and ends with daylight.

The trades followed were of the prison class, such as shoemaking,

tailoring and so forth. Industry and orderliness were generally

observable, but I seemed to detect a certain unsettled air. The

prisoners gazed furtively from under their peaked caps at a strange

visitor and seemed continually on the lookout for something to happen.

They were in fact constantly expecting the order to “move on,” and any

day the van might arrive to take them elsewhere. It might be to the

other end of the world.

 

This kind of removal, still known at La Grande Roquette, is horrible,

because it is final and irretrievable, and the journey is to that

unknown bourne from which no traveller returns. The French system of

dealing with condemned prisoners cannot be commended. It is cruel in

the extreme, from the long uncertainty in which the individual is left

as to his ultimate fate. He has made his last petition, the final

appeal from the legal tribunal to the possibly more merciful Chief

of the State, and he awaits the decision for weeks and weeks in the

condemned cell. The delay is sometimes horribly prolonged. One man

waited forty days, and was a prey the whole time to painful visions at

night. He dreamed of the guillotine and saw his head rolling in the

sawdust. He awoke with screams of terror and cried out perpetually,

“The knife! The scaffold! I see nothing else!” The agony of the delay

is intensified from the well-known fact that the dénouement, when it

comes, will be abrupt and with the briefest possible notice. Only on

the very morning of execution is the prisoner roused, generally from

profound slumber, and warned suddenly to prepare for immediate death.

All this time, since his sentence and reception at La Roquette, he has

occupied the condemned cell, one of three rather large chambers near

the hospital at the back of the prison. He has never been left for one

instant unattended. Two warders have been with him, and have watched

him closely day and night. Time was when, to render assurance doubly

sure, the convict was kept continually in a strait-jacket or _camisole

de force_. The priest of the prison has also been his constant

companion. From the condemned cell the prisoner is taken by a rather

long and circuitous route to the outer office, near the inner gate of

the prison. Here the executioner and his assistants receive him and

commence the “toilette of death.” The man is pinioned and bound by a

variety of intricate straps. Thence, when he is ready, the procession

passes across the courtyard to the outer prison gates. It is but a

step. Once through them, the scaffold is immediately reached, the last

act commences, is soon played, and the curtain promptly falls. Barely

fourteen seconds elapse, it is said, from the time the convict steps on

the scaffold to the moment when decapitation is effected. There is but

a short fruition, therefore, for the sightseers whom morbid curiosity

has attracted to the spot, even if they see anything at all, which

is doubtful, as the guillotine is placed on the ground level, and is

surrounded by a double line of mounted gensdarmes.

 

On the very night that the guillotine was being erected in the Place

de la Roquette for the execution of the poisoner La Pommerais, a

marvellous escape was effected by a child prisoner from the reformatory

prison opposite, the little Roquette.

 

At nine o’clock in the evening a lad of barely thirteen years, by

using his knife, cut away the metal covering of his window in which

the ventilator worked, then climbing up on a chair placed on top of

his bed he got his head through, and looked down into the courtyard;

it was quite empty, the night was dark; the only sound within was

the monotonous footstep of the night watchman. But beyond the wall,

there was a movement as of a crowd collecting, and from time to time

the sound of a hammer and other tools. The boy knew what was on foot,

for the story of La Pommerais and his approaching execution was known

within the reformatory, and it was also known that the dread event

was fixed for next morning. “Everybody is busy,” said the fugitive,

“no one will think of me.” So he worked his little body through the

ventilator, and reached the cornice between the first and second floor.

Resting his feet on this narrow ledge and holding to his window by one

hand, he stretched the other towards the next window and caught it,

creeping thus from window to window till he had passed six of them. He

was every moment in the utmost danger, for he hung on merely by his

fingers and the soles of his heavy shoes. He said long afterwards that

he suffered agonies in the hour occupied in thus creeping along. A

single slip would certainly have precipitated him into the yard below.

He was almost at the end of his strength, his arms ached horribly, and

his hands were torn and bleeding. He took courage, however, saying to

himself: “If I fall I shall be killed, if I stop I shall be recaptured;

I must certainly go on.”

 

Now the moon came through the clouds, and he knew that his shadow would

be seen from below. At that moment he heard his name called, “Molutor,

Molutor,” and he shivered, feeling sure he had been detected. But the

voice was that of a fellow-prisoner, the occupant of the cell, the

window of which he was passing, who had recognised him. But with true

loyalty to his class he did not betray him. On the contrary he tried

to help him, and after reconnoitring around encouraged him by saying

there were no warders in sight. Stimulated by these encouraging words,

the lad, who had already reached the fifth window, made a renewed

effort, and passed on to the sixth, next the angle of the building,

and there seized the water pipe. At this moment the clock struck

midnight. Then followed strange noises. Looking down, he saw beneath

him the open space of the Place de la Roquette, in which a crowd

was slowly gathering, and some workmen were moving forward an oddly

shaped machine, which he easily recognised. They were about to erect

the scaffold. The machinery for the guillotine and its purpose were

perfectly well known to the fugitive. At this moment it is said he

shuddered, not so much at the pressing danger of his situation, and the

near certainty of death if he slipped, but with inward despair at the

life that lay before him. Surely it was useless to compass his escape,

to risk so much to get away now, if some little time ahead he would

inevitably arrive at the guillotine, led step by step, passing from

court to court and judgment to judgment, until he mounted this same

scaffold, and expiated his offences as this same La Pommerais was about

to do. Not the less did he complete his escape. He slipped down to the

ground on the other side, gained the outer wall, and climbed it. Then

he waited until the square was thronged to get away. When the crowd was

seized with horror at the sound of the falling knife and the thud of

the severed head in the basket he would escape. At the supreme moment,

when a shiver of horror affected the spectators, he alone kept his

head, and, with sure, cautious step, slipped in amongst the people and

passed unchecked to the boulevard Voltaire.