West Virginia Argus

Horrors of a Turkish Execution.

[Adrianople Correspondence London Times.]

As we walked about the town yesterday morning we could not avoid coming upon five street executions and witnessing the whole disgusting proceedings, not that they were to me any novelty, for during the two or three days I was in Adrianople it seemed as if I could never get out of the sight of men dangling in the air. As soon as a likely looking shop is reached, say one with sun blinds supported with brackets—the officer cries "Halt!" and a soldier, carrying a stool and a rope, steps on one side and arranges the latter over the bracket. The man steps on to the stool, the noose is placed around his neck, and he is drawn off his feet. There is no drop, but in every case I am told, the poor wretch dies just as those we saw did—that is to say instantaneously, and apparently with little pain, being, in fact choked, instead of having his neck broken. I have dwelt upon this, not to satisfy the morbid craving for details in such matters, but to call the attention of some scientific man to the subject: for, if your patent drops and new-fangled hanging apparatus are not so merciful as the older method of hanging, then our capital criminals are punished in excess of what the law demands. To be hanged by the neck till one is dead is a different thing from having the neck partially broken and the circulation of the blood, and perhaps the nervous system generally, stimulated into intense activity.