The Bedford Gazette

TERRIBLE SCENE AT A SCAFFOLD.

A terrible scaffold scene recently took place at Tambow, in Russia. Young Gorki, a pupil at the high school of that place, and eighteen years of age, was to be executed for having murdered a family of seven persons. The young criminal was conveyed to the place of execution on a wagon, and was escorted by a company of dragoons. The gallows was surrounded by ten thousand persons. After the doomed lad had alighted from the wagon, the sentence of death was read to him. He was deadly pale, and fainted before the warrant was read through. The executioner then branded him, after he had been restored to consciousness: the boy struggled violently and uttered heart rending screams when the red hot iron was applied to his forehead.

He was then whipped, receiving about thirty lashes. The executioner thereupon undressed him and wrapped him in a long white blanket, tied his feet together, attached the rope to his neck and drew the blanket over his head. He then lifted him on top of a step ladder, and was about to push him from it, when the Secretary of the Criminal Court stepped forward, and told the executioner to stop. The excitement of the crowd had reached the highest pitch by this time, and it seemed as if all the ten thousand persons around the gallows were holding their breath. The executioner lifted the lad from the step ladder, removed the blanket from his face, which was livid and distorted with fear; and then the Secretary read to him a letter from the Emperor changing his sentence to hard labor for life. The executioner then untied his feet, gave him thirty more lashes-the sentence having ordered that he should receive sixty lashes-and then clad him in the convict dress and chained his legs. He was thereupon taken back to his cell, and two days afterward sent to Siberia.