Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/81

 40

The execution was over, and when I looked at my watch I found that since the executioner had raised his sword over the first man's neck only twelve minutes had elapsed, but in that brief time seven human beings had been hurried into eternity. Then the crowd dispersed. I watched their faces, but not on the features of one single man,

woman or child did I see a sign of the smallest emotion. Upon this occasion, either because the execution was the last of its kind or because it had been on a bigger scale than usual, the bodies of the victims were carried away by their relatives instead of being thrown into the thicket to be devoured by dogs, and this operation was being carried out when I left.

QUAINT AND CURIOUS PUNISHMENTS. THE Egyptians prescribed a peculiar pun ishment for dishonest bakers, and one which certainly had a deterrent effect, namely, baking them in their own ovens. Perhaps this punishment could be resorted to with good effect in these dishonest times, and thereby teach traders to observe more closely the spirit and letters of the Ten Com mandments. In my researches after ancient legal curi osities, I have unearthed the following quaint and curious punishments for the entertain ment of the reader. They are as follows: "MCCCX (1310). The bakers of Dublin were punished after a new way for false weights; for on St. Sampson, the bishops day, they were drawn upon hurdles, at the horse's tails, along the streets of the city." This happened in the year of great scarcity, when a cronage of wheat sold for twenty shillings and upwards. Then again in Scotland, the home of witch craft, sorcery, and magic, we find a quaint and curious punishment in the following sentence of a Scotch court at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It appears from the Records of Justiciary, that a custom at one time prevailed in crim inal jurisprudence of commuting sentence of

death into gifting away as slaves into per petual servitude under specified masters. The following extracts will make the mode of gifting understood: "At Perth, the 5th day of December, 1701. the Commissioners of Justiciary of the South district, for securing the peace in the High lands, considering that Donald Robertson, Alexander Stewart, John Robertson and Donald McDonald, prisoners within the tollbooth, and indicted and tried at this court, and by virtue of the inquest, returned guilty of death; and the commissioners have changed the punishment of death to per petual servitude, and that the said prisoners are at the court's disposal; Therefore, the said commissioners have given and gifted, and hereby give and gift the said Donald Mc Donald, one of the said prisoners, as a per petual servant to the Right Honorable John Earl of Tullarbardane; recommending to his lordship to provide a collar of brass, iron or copper, which by his sentence or doom, whereby an extract is delivered to the mag istrates of the said burgh of Perth, is to be upon his neck, with this description: "Donald McDonald, found guilty of death for theft, at Perth, December 5th, 1701, and gifted as a perpetual servant to John Earl of Tullarbardane."