A BRIGHT PAGE IN PRISON HISTORY

The reader who has followed this detailed description of Spanish penal methods has realised the hideous shortcomings of Spanish prisons, the horrible practices so constantly prevailing within the walls, the apparently incurable nature of the criminals who regularly fill them, and he might reasonably doubt that definite and substantial amendment was possible. Yet the contrary is true and to the most marked and astonishing degree if we are to believe the facts on record. In one instance the personal character of one man, backed by his unshaken determination and the exercise of a resolute and inflexible will, brought a large mass of convicts into an admirable condition of self-control and good behaviour. The story reads like a fairy tale, as set forth in contemporary chronicles. One of the most interesting accounts is to be found in a book of travels entitled "Spain as It Is," by a Mr. Hoskins, in which he gives his personal observations of the results achieved in the prison at Valencia by the enlightened administration of its Governor, Colonel Montesinos. A brief account of the man himself should precede our appreciation of his work.

Montesinos was a soldier, trained to arms, whose education and experience were entirely military. He had no previous acquaintance with or insight into prison systems, although he had travelled far and wide in many countries. He had never visited or inspected their penal establishments nor had he penetrated into any single prison in his native Spain. He served in the Spanish army, beginning as a cadet at fourteen, was actively engaged in the war of Independence, and was carried off as a prisoner into France. When set free at the conclusion of peace, he accepted a post in the secretariat of the War Office at Madrid, where he remained for five years. Then came the political troubles which ended in the fall of the constitutional government in 1823 and the surrender of Cadiz. With many other soldiers and citizens, he left Spain and wandered through Europe and America, with no very definite idea of examining into the laws and customs of other countries, but gaining knowledge and breadth of views. On his return to Spain when close on forty years of age he was appointed governor of the convict prison in Valencia.

Montesinos entered upon his duties with a firm conviction of the paramount importance of military discipline, of that passive and unquestioning obedience to authority, the absolute surrender of individual volition, the complete subjection of the many to the single will of one superior master, which he believed to be the essence of all personal government and more particularly in a prison. To enforce such discipline was the only effectual method of securing good order and the due subordination of the rough and possibly recalcitrant elements under his command. In this he entirely succeeded and established an extraordinary influence over his charges. He became an autocrat but in the best sense; his prisoners resigned themselves submissively and unhesitatingly to his control, anxious to gain his good will by their exemplary demeanour and their unvarying desire to behave well. What he actually made of his charges, how he succeeded in changing their very natures, in transforming lawbreakers and evil doers into honest, trustworthy persons, successfully restraining their evil instincts, will be best realised by a few strange facts which, if not positively vouched for, would be considered beyond belief. But before relating these marvellous results it will be well to describe in some detail the processes adopted by him and the principles on which he acted.

When Colonel Montesinos was appointed governor of the Valencian convent prison, it was located in an ancient mediÆval edifice known as the "Torres de Cuarte," two towers flanking the great gate which gave upon the suburb known as "El Cuarte." This semi-ruinous building, dating from the fifteenth century, lodged about a thousand prisoners, herded together in a number of dark, dirty, ill-kept and insecure chambers, wholly unfit for human habitation. They were on several floors communicating by narrow passages and tortuous staircases, below which were deep underground cellars divided up into obscure foul dungeons, which were always humid from the infiltration from the city ditch and into which neither sunlight nor fresh air came to dry up the damp pavement and the streaming walls. Montesinos saw at once that it would be impossible to introduce reforms in such a building and he laboured hard to move into better quarters, securing at length, after a long correspondence, new quarters in the monastery of St. Augustine, which indeed was but little better. Here also the buildings had fallen into disrepair. A large part was without roof, there was little flooring, and many broken windows and decayed walls offered numerous facilities for escape. Extensive repairs were indispensable, yet funds were wanting, for the Spanish government was sorely taxed to meet the expenses of the civil war (Carlist) now in full swing. Nevertheless Montesinos, strenuous and indefatigable, a host in himself, transferred his people, a thousand convicts of dangerous character, into their new abode and set them to work to repair and reconstruct the old building. He meant to succeed, by drawing upon his own limitless energies, creating means from his own native resources, and was backed by the ready response of those he brought under the dominion of an indomitable will.

All difficulties yielded before his intense spirit. He was the very incarnation of activity and it was enough to look at him to be spurred on to assiduous effort. His personal traits and their effect upon his surroundings are thus described by his biographer, Vincente Boix,—"There can be no doubt that his martial air, his tall figure and the look in his face, a mixture of imperious command with great kindliness and shrewd appreciation of willing effort, had a marked effect upon his people, and convicts who had been once coerced and driven by the fear of punishment yielded much more readily to his moral force. His obvious determination and strength of character got more out of them than threats or penalties, although, if needs were, he was ready enough to appeal to the strong arm. They acknowledged his superiority, and rough undisciplined men, quite capable of rising against authority when unchecked or weakly held, succumbed to his lightest word like children to their father. They yielded even against the grain absolute compliance to his lightest wish without needing a sharp look or a cross word."

It will be interesting to follow Montesinos' procedure. Under his system the treatment was progressive and divided into three periods; first, that of chains; second, that of labour; and third, that of conditional liberation. This arrangement is in some respects akin to that generally known as the "Irish" system as practised many years ago with conspicuous success.

(1) The wearing of irons at that time was general in Spain, although now the practice has fallen into disuse. With Montesinos the rule was to impose irons of varying weight graduated to the length of sentence. A two years' man carried them of four pounds' weight; a four years' man of six pounds, while between six and eight years they were of eight pounds. They consisted of a single chain fastened to a fetter on the right ankle, while the other end was attached to a waist belt, a method supposed to cause no great inconvenience. With Montesinos the period of wearing them was of short duration. It terminated on the day that the convict petitioned for regular employment, for on first reception, after having entered the first courtyard, which was kept bright with garden flowers and the songs of many birds in cages hanging around, the new arrival was given no work. He remained at the depot idle and silent, for no conversation was permitted, although he was associated with others, and if he put a question to a neighbour he got no reply. Weariness and boredom soon supervened in this period of first probation and the convict was keen to pass on. He appealed to his officer, who told him to seek employment at some trade. "I know none." "Then learn one, you cannot get quit of your irons in any other way." If the convict hesitated he was left studiously to himself, unhappy and ashamed, for his condition was deemed disgraceful. He could not hold his head up, for a wide gulf separated him from others who had escaped the chain. He was a marked man, shunned and sneered at, and was required to work from the second day at ignominious and humiliating labour, such as sweeping, cleaning, and so forth. They were the helots and scavengers of the prison. Their lot was the more unbearable because they were debarred from many privileges conferred on those who were at regular labour, and who were earning wages to spend in part upon themselves. These regular labourers might buy toothsome food and cigars, the delight of every Spaniard's heart. Meanwhile the governor had been watching him closely, noting his disposition and whether or not he was desirous of taking up work which was so much to his advantage and of which he would be speedily deprived unless he applied himself to it with zeal and unflagging industry.

(2) A wide choice of labour obtained in Valencia. Trades and handicrafts were varied and numerous. Carpenters, turners, saddlers, shoemakers, fanmakers, workers with esparto grass, weavers of palm straw hats, silk spinners, tailors, basket makers, were all represented, and the total was some forty trades, with seven hundred artisans. To-day there would be nothing remarkable in this industrial activity, which may be seen in well governed prisons, but in Valencia at that date (1835-40) it was a novelty due very largely to Montesinos' initiative, and he could boast that out of three thousand convicts, barely a fourth left prison without having acquired some smattering of a trade. Stress must not be laid upon the exact amount of skill possessed by these prison taught artisans, and it is to be feared that it was no more thorough than in these latter days of ours, when the same principles as those of Montesinos have actuated prison administration. This is the crux of the system of prison instruction. It cannot be expected to turn out workmen sufficiently well trained and expert to go out into the open labour market, so generally overcrowded, and compete for wages against the free labourer who has had the benefit of full apprenticeship. Adults cannot easily acquire knowledge and dexterity in the use of tools, and inevitable waste of materials accompanies the experiments made by unskilled hands. We have no record of how far these drawbacks affected Montesinos' well-meant practice.

(3) We have no facts to show how far the third period, that of conditional liberation, was successful at Valencia. There is no possibility of knowing definitely whether it was really tried or went beyond the enunciation of the theory so long in advance of our modern practice. It is little likely, however, that the effective and elaborate method of police supervision on which it is absolutely dependent was in existence or even understood in Spain in the days of Montesinos.

No permanent results seemed to have been achieved by the Montesinos system. There is no record that it survived the man who created it or that the government sought to extend the admirable principles on which it rested. It was essentially a one man system, depending entirely for success on the personal qualities of the individual called upon to carry it out. Montesinos was not, however, singular in his remarkable achievement. The German Obermaier did much the same in the prison of Kaiserslautern, and Captain Maconochie in Norfolk Island exercised a notable mastery over the Australian convicts. The effects produced by Montesinos were little less than phenomenal. He so developed the probity of his convicts that he could rely implicitly upon their honesty and good faith. During the civil war he sent them with confidential despatches to commanders in the field and never had cause to regret the trust placed in them. They were sent out as scouts seeking information of the enemy's movements and brought in news with punctuality and despatch. A message was brought one day to the governor directing him to send a clerk to fetch a thousand dollars from the provincial Treasury. Montesinos forthwith summoned one of his convicts and despatched him, carrying with him the receipt for the money. Within half an hour the man returned with the dollars. Whenever a convict escaped from the presidio, a rare occurrence indeed, other convicts were despatched in pursuit and seldom failed to bring in the fugitive.

At one time the Spanish government decided to build a new prison in the capital and to employ convict labour in the construction. The Governor of the presidio of Valencia was ordered to send up a number of prisoners, and next day at daylight they marched, taking with them a quantity of material, the whole escorted by a small body of cabos, "prisoner warders," and commanded by a veteran overseer. The journey was safely made to Madrid without the smallest mishap, not a sign or symptom of misbehaviour shown on the road, and the alcaldes of the towns on the route, after anticipating the worst evils, were agreeably surprised and were satisfied to lodge the travellers at night in private houses if there was no prison accommodation. A second experiment of the kind was made in the same year.

On a previous occasion Valencia was threatened by a strong force of Carlists under that distinguished Carlist general, Cabrera, and it was feared that he would capture a large body of convicts at that time employed on a new road, Las Cabrillas, a little distance from the city. There were hardly any troops in the capital except the city militia only recently organised and barely equal to the duties and dangers imposed upon them. Great fears were entertained that Cabrera would seize the convicts and incorporate with his own force. Montesinos was desired to prevent this, and he turned up in person one evening at Las Cabrillas, where he assumed command and drew off the greater number, happily escaping without attack or interference by the enemy. So loyal was the demeanour of the Valencian prisoners that under the direction of Montesinos at another time they were armed and resisted an attack made upon the gates of their convent prison by the insurgents in a rising in Valencia. The following extraordinary story is related in an official publication by the well known poet Don Ramon de Campoamor, at that time governor of the province of Valencia. A formidable band of brigands was devastating the neighbourhood of Valencia and a reign of terror prevailed. The governor sent for Colonel Montesinos and inquired whether there were any old brigands among the convicts in custody and who were willing to atone for past misdeeds by coming to the assistance of the authorities. Montesinos, who made it a rule to know all his prisoners by heart, their present dispositions, and indeed their inmost thoughts, spoke confidently of one as quite a reformed character, and at the governor's request entrusted him with the special mission of clearing out the country. The convict, after receiving his instructions, went out with a sufficient escort, hunted down the brigands, broke up their bands, killing or capturing the whole. Here the commanding influence of Montesinos was paramount even beyond the walls of the presidio. By the power of his strong will he called out fine qualities and exacted loyal service from the worst materials whom he had won to a high sense of discipline.

A minor and more sentimental instance is recorded of the confidence he could repose in his reformed criminals. The mother of one of the convicts was at the point of death. The man was summoned to the governor's office and informed of her desperate condition. "Do you wish to see her in her last moments?" asked the governor. "Can I trust you to return if I give you permission to leave the prison for a time?" The man much moved solemnly promised not to misuse his liberty. He was allowed to exchange his prison uniform for a peasant's dress; he went without escort to his mother's cottage, received her blessing, and went back to durance as had been agreed.

The experience of Valencia was unique and short-lived. A commendable effort was made to extend the principles on which Montesinos had acted, and decrees embodying them and recommending them for general adoption were issued but soon became a dead letter. Excellent in theory, their success depended entirely on the man to give them effect. A second Montesinos did not appear and Spanish prisons continued to exhibit the worst features down to the present day.

A movement towards prison reform had been commenced as early as 1844, when three new "model" prisons were planned for Madrid, but their construction was long delayed. About the same date a model convict prison was planned at Valladolid, but slow progress was made with this and with other new prisons, including that of Saragossa, and at the Casa de Galera of AlcalÁ de Henares. A penitentiary was also projected on the island of Cabrera, opposite Cadiz. The chief effort was concentrated on the model prison of Madrid, which was undertaken in 1876 after much debate and discussion. It was to be an entirely new building, to which were devoted all the funds that might have been expended upon the impossible reform and repair of the hideous old Saladero. Several years passed before the building began, and not until 1884 did the tenants of the dismantled Saladero move into the new prison. It is for the most part on the cellular or separate system, by which each individual is held strictly apart from his fellows, according to the most modern ideas, which have claimed to have exerted a potent effect in the reformation of offenders and the diminution of crime. Nevertheless the system is still in its trial and its beneficial results are by no means universally conceded. The new prison is a very distinct improvement on the old, and the former horrors and atrocities are fast disappearing, but the secluded solitary life has its own peculiar terrors which press hardly on transgressors, with results that are very distinctly deterrent if not very largely reformatory.

What those actually subjected to the treatment feel we may read in their own effusions. The literary quality of prison writers does not rank high but they sometimes put their views forcibly. One says of the "model":—"If I leave this trying place alive I can at least declare that I have been buried underground and had made the acquaintance of the grave diggers." Another writer:—"If you wish to know what life is like here, come and take your lodging inside. They are handsome, but curious, well provided with means to drive you out of your mind. There is a water tap which overflows in drought and runs dry in wet weather; a pocket handkerchief and a towel; a plate, a basin and a wooden spoon, a broom, a dust box, one blanket and a mattress with four straws that gives you pain in every limb: many things more, but one alone much needed is absent, a rope by which you commit suicide."

It has been said that the worst use to which a man may be put is to shut him up in a prison. A still more wasteful extravagance is to put him out of the world. The penalties known to Spanish law have been very various; there have been many forms of imprisonment, perpetual imprisonment, greater or less detention, exile, the application of fetters of several sorts, handcuffs, shackles, the guarda amigo or "holdfriend," the "persuader" or "come along with me"; the leg irons and waist chains of varying weights. Penal labour was enforced in maniobras infimas by convicts chained together on public works, fortifications, harbours and mines. All forms of secondary punishment have been inflicted, winding up with capital, the death sentence inflicting the extreme penalty of the law. This last irrevocable act does not find favour with all Spanish legists, whose chief objection is the familiar one that when a judicial error has been committed, rectification is altogether impossible. Spain can add one to the many well known cases such as those of Callas and Lesurques, and it may be quoted here as it is probably little known.

The case occurred in Seville and grew out of a sudden quarrel in a tavern followed by a fight to the death with knives. The combatants went on the ground and attacked each other in the regular fashion when one dropped to the ground mortally wounded and the other with his second ran away. The wounded man's second went up to see whether his principal was dying or already dead, when he got up and declared that he was entirely unhurt. He had slipped upon a stone and fallen with the obviously cowardly desire to escape from his antagonist's attack. The second was furiously angry and rated his man soundly. He retorted fiercely and another quarrel and another encounter ensued, also with knives, in which the first man again fell and this time was killed outright, by his own second, who at once made off. The body lay where it had fallen until next morning, when the police found it. The story of the original quarrel but nothing of the second had become known, and it was naturally concluded that death had been inflicted by the first combatant. On the face of it the evidence was conclusive against him, and he did not attempt to deny the facts as they appeared when arrested and put upon his trial. At that time the law treated homicide in a duel as murder and the victim suffered the extreme penalty without protest, believing himself to be guilty. The truth was never known, until the real offender, years after, confessed the part he had played, but too late of course to prevent the judicial murder of the innocent man. This case has naturally been added to give weight to the many powerful arguments against capital punishment.

The extreme penalty of the law is nowadays inflicted in Spain by the garrote, a method of strangulation by the tightening of an iron collar, the substitute for hanging introduced by King Ferdinand VII (1820). Till then the hanging was carried out in the clumsiest and most brutal manner. The culprits were dragged by the executioner up the steps of a ladder leaning against the scaffold. At a certain height he mounted on the victim's shoulders and thus seated flung himself off with his victim underneath. As they swung to and fro the hangman's fingers were busily engaged in choking the convict so as to complete the strangulation. The garrote is a very simple contrivance. The condemned man sits on a stool or low seat, leaning his back against a strong, firm upright post to which an iron collar is fixed. This, when opened, encircles his neck, and is closed and tightened by a powerful screw, worked by a lever from behind. Death is instantaneous.

Public executions must prove very popular performances with a people who still revel in a bull fight and flock to look at the hairbreadth escapes of human beings from hardly undeserved death by the horns of a fierce beast tortured into madness. De Foresta, an Italian traveller,[25] tells us that never was a greater concourse seen in Madrid than that which collected in 1877 to witness the execution of two murderers, Mollo and Agullar, when it was estimated that 80,000 people were present. Ford describes an execution in Seville in 1845 when the crowd was enormous and composed largely of the lower orders, of the humbler ranks, "who hold the conventions of society very cheap and give loose rein to their morbid curiosity to behold scenes of terror, which operates powerfully on the women,

who seem irresistibly impelled to witness sights the most repugnant to their nature and to behold sufferings which they would most dread to undergo," and many of whom "brought in their arms young children at the beginning of life to witness its conclusion." "They desire to see how the criminal will conduct himself, they sympathise with him if he displays coolness and courage, and despise him on the least symptom of unmanliness."

Ford in his "Gatherings from Spain" gives a graphic account of the execution of a highway robber, one of the band of the famous JosÉ Maria already mentioned. The culprit, JosÉ de Rojas, was nicknamed "Veneno," poison, from his venomous qualities and had made a desperate resistance before he was finally overcome by the troops who captured him. He fell wounded with a bullet in his leg, but killed the soldier who ran forward to secure him. When in custody he turned traitor and volunteered to betray his old associates and give such information as would lead to their arrest if his own life was spared. The offer was accepted and he was sent out with a sufficient force to seize them. Such was the terror of his name that all surrendered, but not to him. On this quibble the indemnity promised him was withdrawn, he was brought to trial, condemned, and in due course executed on the Plaza San Francisco, which adjoins the prison in Seville and is commonly used for public executions.

Ford was admitted within the walls and describes Veneno "en capilla," a small room set apart as a condemned cell, the approach to which was thronged with officers, portly Franciscan friars and "members of a charitable brotherhood collecting alms from the visitors to be expended in masses for the eternal repose of the soul of the criminal. The levity of those assembled without, formed a heartless contrast with the gloom and horror of the melancholy interior of the capilla. At the head of the cell was placed a table with a crucifix, an image of the Virgin and two wax tapers, near which stood a silent sentinel with a drawn sword. Another soldier was stationed at the door with a fixed bayonet. In a corner of this darkened compartment lay Veneno curled up like a snake, with a striped coverlet drawn closely over his mouth, leaving visible only a head of matted locks, and a glistening dark eye rolling restlessly out of its deep socket. On being approached he sprang up and seated himself on a stool. He was almost naked, but a chaplet of beads hung across his exposed breast and contrasted with the iron chains around his limbs.... The expression of his face though low and vulgar was one which, once seen, was not easily forgotten. His sallow complexion appeared more cadaverous in the uncertain light and was heightened by a black unshorn beard, growing vigorously on a half-dead countenance. He appeared to be reconciled to his fate and repeated a few sentences, the teaching of the monks, as by rote. His situation was probably more painful to the spectator than himself, an indifference to death arising rather from an ignorance of its dreadful import than from high moral courage."

When Veneno came out to die he was clad in a coarse yellow baize gown, the colour which in Spain denotes the crime of murder and appropriated always to Judas Iscariot in Spanish paintings, the colour, too, of the sanbenito or penitential cloak worn by the victims of the Inquisition at an auto da fÉ. He walked slowly, stopping often to kiss the crucifix held to his lips by the attendant confessor, a monk of the Franciscan order, whom it was the convict's privilege to choose for himself to accompany him to the scaffold. He was met there by the executioner, a young man dressed in black who proceeded to bind his naked legs and arms so tightly that they swelled and turned black: a necessary precaution, as this very executioner's father had been killed when struggling with a convict unwilling to die. Veneno made no resistance, but he spoke with supreme contempt of this degraded functionary, saying, "Mi delito me mata no ese hombre" (My crime kills me and not this creature). He uttered many pious ejaculations, and his dying cry was, "Viva la Virgen Santisima." The last scene was ghastly in the extreme. While the priest stood by, "a bloated corpulent man more occupied in shading the sun from his face than in his ghostly office," the robber sat with a writhing look of agony, grinding his clenched teeth. The executioner took the lever of the screw in both hands, gathered himself up for a strong muscular effort, drew the iron collar tight while an attendant threw a black handkerchief over the face. A convulsive pressure of the hands and a heaving of the chest were the only visible signs of the passing of the convict's spirit.

"After a pause of a few moments the executioner cautiously peeped under the handkerchief and, after having given another turn of the screw, lifted it off, carefully put it in his pocket and proceeded to light a cigar. The face of the dead man was slightly convulsed, the mouth open, the eye balls turned into their sockets from the wrench. A black bier with two lanterns fixed on staves was now set down before the scaffold. A small table and a dish into which alms were again collected to be paid to the priests who sang masses for his soul was also brought forward.... The body remained on the scaffold till after noon. It was then thrown into a scavenger's cart and led by the pregonero or common crier beyond the jurisdiction of the city to a square platform called the "mesa del Rey," the king's table, where it was to be quartered and cut up. Here the carcass was hewed and hacked into pieces by the bungling executioner and his assistants."

The condemned cell at the Saladero was a part of the prison chapel in which the Spanish convict spent the last twenty-four hours of life and was a horrible and painfully gruesome hole. The capilla is described by de Foresta, who saw it when it was on the eve of abolition. It was of narrow dimensions, damp, dark, windowless and lighted only with one or two small candles burning upon the altar which occupied a large space filling all one wall. In a corner cut off by a black iron railing from the rest of the chapel was a small space fitted with a bed or stone shelf with rings to which the convict's chains were fastened and where he knelt close to the bars to converse with or confess to the ministering priests. The chapel was dimly lighted by a hanging lamp and one or two wax candles. Its walls and floor were damp and it received light and air only through the door. This gruesome den rejoiced in the name el confortador, or the "place of comfort."

Another traveller gives the following graphic account of a Spanish execution:—

"At seven we find ourselves in the crowd immediately beneath the prison walls. Large bodies of troops are drawn up on either side of the plaza and there is a tolerably large concourse of male spectators present. In a few minutes the mournful cortÉge appears upon the wall. First comes the executioner, the Spanish Calcraft, a wiry looking fellow, carrying a coil of rope; next comes a very stout padre armed with a baton, and bawling out prayers at the top of his voice; he is followed by the convict, who walks on in prison uniform, with his neck bare and arms pinioned, clasping the cross in his hands and looking literally in a blue fright; a couple more priests and two armed sentries complete the group, who range themselves along the wall, the criminal in the centre. The terrible scene is long protracted. The fat padre roars out Ave Marias, exhortations and prayers, waving his baton frantically in the air and making the miserable wretch repeat after him. He then clasps him in his arms, and sitting down on chairs opposite each other, they are covered with a large black pall held by the supernumerary priests; under this they remain for some time perfectly motionless, while the poor creature is unburdening his soul and pouring forth his load of crimes into the ear of his confessor.

"The nerves of the spectators are strained to an intense pitch during the awful pause, as is evident from the oppressive silence which prevails and the anxious looks directed at the scaffold. At length the pall is removed and the executioner proceeds to business. The culprit is made to sit against an upright post to which he is firmly lashed; the garrote, a machine consisting of an iron collar worked back by a powerful screw and a long lever, is carefully adjusted round his neck, a small handkerchief thrown over his face and all is ready. The priest recommences shouting while the executioner, preparing himself for a mighty effort, suddenly turns the handle two or three times as quick as lightning; the head of the victim drops, the knees and arms quiver for a few seconds and all is over. Priests and sentries retire, Calcraft peeps under the handkerchief and, whipping it off with a jerk, immediately disappears, leaving the ghastly corpse exposed to open view. It is a sickening and disgusting sight: the face is of a livid hue, the tongue protruding, and shedding saliva on the breast; the bystanders shudder, the troops march off with drums gaily beating and the crowd slowly disperses. I make a rapid sketch of the body and return to the hotel fully satisfied that, were it not for the cruel state of suspense in which the criminal is kept before the execution, the punishment of the garrote is far more merciful and expeditious than the less speedy death by hanging in this country."

The profession of hangman does not entitle those who practise it to the very highest honour, although in France in the case of the Sansons it was an hereditary office in which son succeeded father for many generations and the family took considerable pride in their functions. In Spain the verdugo is by no means a popular person. De Foresta, the Italian traveller already quoted, tells us that in several towns he saw a person of forbidding aspect who was walking about with a camp stool under his arm and generally shunned. On enquiry he was informed that this was the gentleman who administered the garrote. He was strictly forbidden to take a seat at a cafÉ or in any place of public resort, hence the camp stool on which he rested himself when tired. No one recognised or addressed to him a single word. De Foresta's comment on this is a story of the French executioner who, when called to Nice to guillotine a criminal, was unable to find anywhere to lay his head. He was turned away from every door, was refused a mouthful of food and was obliged to dine on what he could find at the railway station restaurant, and he spent the night in walking up and down the platform. It may not be generally known that in England the executioner is provided with board and lodging in the gaol where his victim is waiting to be "finished."