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The Hanging

Mark Pearce

    They had been found guilty of burglary and sentenced to die. Burglary. Sentenced to die. One of the convicted was nineteen years old. The other was generally considered to be innocent of the theft and wrongly convicted. But Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Pennsylvania Gazette that there was almost no hope they might escape punishment due to crimes of that enormous nature since an increase of immigration from Europe had led to a rise of vagrants and idle persons and it was universally considered that an example needed to be made of these two for the common good.
    The convicted boys were loaded into a cart to be taken to the spot where they would be hanged. They were forced to ride with their own coffins. The nineteen year old began to cry horribly. The other youth tried to console him, telling him it would all be over soon.
    When they reached the place of execution, they were told it was customary to require them to give a full confession before being killed. The nineteen year old sobbed and refused. His companion said that he, being innocent, had nothing to say.
    The presiding magistrate then pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and began to read. It was a full pardon from the governor. At first the two youths didn’t understand what was being said. When they realized they were not about to be killed, the older youth, who had stood bravely in the face of death, now broke down into sobbing, groveling hysterics. They were carted away, both screaming and sobbing from the trauma they had been put through.
    There is much to consider here. The fact that burglary was considered just cause for a death sentence. The fact that Ben Franklin considered it a crime of enormous nature. The fact that it was viewed as necessary that these two be put to death as an example to European immigrants who were vagrants and idle persons. And the enormous cruelty of leading these two youths to a place of execution where you tell them you are going to hang them, even making them ride with their own coffins, and telling them to confess their crimes in front of a gaping crowd before being killed, all the while knowing you held in your pocket a full pardon from the governor.
    The last we know of them is their uncontrollable hysterics as they were carted away. Perhaps they recovered. Perhaps they spent the rest of their lives mentally unbalanced.
    Ben Franklin’s postscript was simply to comment that the crowd which watched them be pardoned and led away had rejoiced in their good fortune; proof of the “laudable humanity even of our common people.”
    Even the common people might show compassion for two youths who were mentally tortured but not wrongly hanged.

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