THE MURDERER’S LAST NIGHT

BY THOMAS DOUBLEDAY, ESQ.

[MAGA. June 1829.]

“Let him, to whom experience hath been allotted, think it a duty to impart it. We know not of how long a growth goodness is; nor how slow an approach even a protracted culture makes towards perfection. A life of holiness may end in an apostle. As the tree, that hath felt all the winds of heaven, strikes root in that direction whence they oftenest blow, so goodness must have known vicissitude, to know when to resist and when to bend. To know ourselves is to have endured much and long. We must trace and limn out the map of our whole nature to be sure where it is desert, and where it is fruitful—to know the ‘stony ground,’—to discover which needeth the plough, and which doth not. That piety, which is built on ignorance, holds up the shield where the arrow comes not; and sleeps unmailed when the enemy is at the gate. It dismounts to pursue the Parthian; and would dig a deep trench around the tents of the Nomades. It is long ere we root out the weaknesses of our nature, or know the art to preserve the virtue we have attained. For goodness, by over earnestness, may unwittingly be changed from its own essence, as he who knoweth not the vintage shall make vinegar of wine. When we have stubbed up and consumed the first growth of our sinfulness, there ariseth a second crop from the ashes of that which was destroyed. Even as ‘the flax and the barley were smitten; for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled: but the wheat and the rye were not smitten, for they were not grown up;’ so will self-satisfaction arise, after worldly pride and vanity have been withered up. Let him who has found inward peace content himself that he is arrived at the Pillars of Hercules, beyond which there is no safe way. That self-integrity which deems itself immaculate is dangerous. Well hath it been said, ‘Make no suppletories to thyself when thou art disgraced or slighted, by pleasing thyself with the supposition that thou didst deserve praise—neither do thou get thyself a private theatre and flatterers, in whose vain noises and fantastic praises thou mayst keep up thy good opinion of thyself.’ Be the act never so good, yet if it be performed rather with reference to him who does than to that which is done, there is a taint in it for which Eve is hardly answerable. It is but as a fair tower which the builder has set on an unknown quicksand, and which the floods shall damage or carry away. Oh! whosoever thou art that readest this, forget not these words, but grave them as on marble, and in golden letters. ‘While the altar sends up a holy flame, have a care thou dost not suffer the birds to come and carry away the sacrifice—and let not that which began well end in thine own praise or temporal satisfaction, or a sin!’”

Until my twenty-seventh year I resided in the small cathedral town of C——r in which I was born. My parents—especially my mother—were of a serious cast. She had been educated as a Quaker, but following her own notions as to religion, she in the latter part of her life became attached to the tenets of that sect known by the name of Moravians, and last of all to those which, when held in connection with the ritual of the Church of England, are termed “Evangelical;” or, in dissent from it, “Methodistical.”

She was warm and fanciful in her devotional practice; for which the belief as to the palpable and plenary influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human mind, in which she was bred, may help to account. Of these aspirations I, an ardent and sensitive boy, soon learned to partake. My mind was never naturally prone to vice; and my imagination, though forward, was pure. I was brought up by my excellent parents in the practice of virtue; and I loved it. With an outward conduct thus guaranteeing inward persuasions—with professions borne out by an unquestioned and pure, if not altogether unostentatious piety of behaviour, what wonder that I soon became a distinguished votary of the peculiar principles to which I had attached myself. It is difficult for a young man to know himself looked up to—be the cause what it may—without his feelings and his conduct being affected by such homage. Nature had endowed me, if not with eloquence, at least with considerable fluency of speech; and as my natural diffidence—which at first was great—wore away, whether by extempore prayer or seasonable exhortation, the effects I produced exceeded those, the fruits of zeal, of those about me. I became admired as one more than usually gifted, and was gradually exalted into a leader. The occasional tendency to gloom and nervous irritability to which my temperament inclined me, was yet only marked enough to throw no unbecoming seriousness and gravity into the features of so young an apostle. It was strange to see persons of all ages and both sexes admiring at the innate seriousness of so early a preacher, and owning the sometimes really fervid earnestness of my appeals, my warnings, or my denunciations. I began more and more to feel myself in a station above that of my fellows, and that I had now a character to sustain before the eyes of men. Young as I was, could it well have been otherwise? Let me, however, speak the truth. Spiritual pride at last crept upon me. Devotion by insensible degrees became tainted with self, and the image of God was, I fear, sometimes forgotten for that of His frail and unworthy creature. True it was, I still, without slackening, spoke comfort to the ear of suffering or repentant sin—I still exhorted the weak and strengthened the strong. I still warned the besotted in corruption that the fruits of vice, blossom as she will, are but like those of the shores of the Dead Sea, seeming gay, but only emptiness and bitter ashes. But alas! the bearer of the blessed message spoke as if the worm that bore, could add grace to the tidings he conveyed to his fellow-worm. I was got upon a precipice, but knew it not—that of self-worship and conceit—the worst creature-idolatry. It was bitterly revealed to me at last.

About the year 1790, at the Assizes for the county of which the town of C——r is the county town, was tried and convicted a wretch guilty of one of the most horrible murders upon record. He was a young man, probably (for he knew not his own years) of about twenty-two years of age—one of those wandering and unsettled creatures, who seem to be driven from place to place, they know not why. Without home, without name, without companion, without sympathy, without sense,—heartless, friendless, idealess, almost soulless! and so ignorant, as not even to seem to know whether he had ever heard of a Redeemer, or seen His written Word. It was on a stormy Christmas eve when he begged shelter in the hut of an old man, whose office it was to regulate the transit of conveyances upon the road of a great mining establishment in the neighbourhood. The old man had received him, and shared with him his humble cheer and his humble bed; for on that night the wind blew, and the sleet drove, after a manner that would have made it a crime to have turned a stranger dog to the door. The next day the poor old creature was found dead in his hut—his brains beaten out with an old iron implement which he used, and his little furniture rifled and in confusion. The wretch had murdered him for the supposed hoard of a few shillings. The snow, from which he afforded his murderer shelter, had drifted in at the door, which the miscreant, when he fled, had left open, and was frozen red with the blood of his victim. But it betrayed a footstep hard frozen in the snow and blood; and the nails of the murderer’s shoe were counted, even as his days were soon to be. He was taken a few days after with a handkerchief of the old man’s upon his neck. So blind is blood-guiltiness.

Up to the hour of condemnation he remained reckless as the wind—unrepenting as the flint—venomous as the blind worm. With that deep and horrible cunning which is so often united to unprincipled ignorance, he had almost involved in his fate another vagrant with whom he had chanced to consort, and to whom he had disposed of some of the blood-bought spoils. The circumstantial evidence was so involved and interwoven, that the jury, after long and obvious hesitation as to the latter, found both guilty; and the terrible sentence of death, within forty-eight hours, was passed upon both. The culprit bore it without much outward emotion; but when taken from the dock, his companion, infuriated by despair and grief, found means to level a violent blow at the head of his miserable and selfish betrayer, which long deprived the wretch of sense and motion, and, for some time, was thought to have anticipated the executioner. Would it had done so! But let me do my duty as I ought—let me repress the horror which one scene of this dreadful drama never fails to throw over my spirit—that I may tell my story as a man—and my confession at least be clear. When the felon awoke out of the death-like trance into which this assault had thrown him, his hardihood was gone; and he was reconveyed to the cell, in which he was destined agonisingly to struggle out his last hideous and distorted hours, in a state of abject horror which cannot be described. He who felt nothing, knew nothing, had now his eyes opened with terrible clearness to one object—the livid phantasma of a strangling death. All the rest was convulsive despair and darkness. Thought shudders at it—but let me go on.

The worthy clergyman, whose particular duty it was to smooth and soften, and, if possible, illuminate the last dark hours of the dying wretch, was not unwilling to admit the voluntary aid of those whom religious predispositions and natural commiseration excited to share with him in the work of piety. The task was in truth a hard one. The poor wretch, for the sake of the excitement which such intercourse naturally afforded him, and which momentarily relieved his sick and fainting spirit, groaned out half-articulate expressions of acquiescence in the appeals that were made to him; but the relief was physical merely. The grasp of the friendly hand made waver for a moment the heavy shadow of death which hung upon him—and he grasped it. The voice breathing mercy and comfort in his ear, stilled for a second the horrid echo of doom—and he listened to it. It was as the drowning man gasps at the bubble of air which he draws down with him in sinking—or as a few drops of rain to him at the stake, around whom the fire is kindled and hot. This, alas! we saw not as we ought to have done; but when the sinking wretch, at the word “mercy,” laid his head upon our shoulder and groaned, we, sanguine in enthusiasm, deemed it deep repentance. When his brow seemed smooth for a space at the sound of eternal life, we thought him as “a brand snatched from the burning.” In the forward pride (for pride it was) of human perfectibility, we took him—him the murderer—as it were under our tutelage and protection. We prayed with him, we read to him, we watched with him, we blessed his miserable sleeps, and met his more wretched awakings. In the presumption of our pity, we would cleanse that white, in the world’s eye, which God had, for inscrutable purposes, ordained should seem to the last murky as hell. We would paint visibly upon him the outward and visible sign of sin washed away, and mercy found. That that intended triumph may not have helped to add or to retain one feather’s weight in the balance against him, let me humbly hope and trust. That I was a cause, and a great one, of this unhappy delusion, let me not deny. God forgive me, if I thought sometimes less of the soul to be saved than of him who deemed he might be one of the humble instruments of grace. It is but too true that I fain would have danced, like David, before the ark. Within and without was I assailed by those snares which, made of pride, are seen in the disguise of charity. The aspirations of my friends, the eyes of mine enemies, the wishes of the good, and the sneers of the mistrustful, were about me, and upon me; and I undertook to pass with the murderer—his last night—such a last!—but let me compose myself.

It was about the hour of ten, on a gusty and somewhat raw evening of September, that I was locked up alone with the murderer. It was the evening of the Sabbath. Some rain had fallen, and the sun had not been long set without doors; but for the last hour and a half the dungeon had been dark, and illuminated only by a single taper. The clergyman of the prison, and some of my religious friends, had sat with us until the hour of locking-up, when, at the suggestion of the gaoler, they departed. I must confess their “good-night,” and the sound of the heavy door, which the gaoler locked after him when he went to accompany them to the outer gate of the gaol, sounded heavily on my heart. I felt a sudden shrink within me, as their steps quickly ceased to be heard upon the stone stairs; and when the distant prison-door was finally closed, I watched the last echo. I had for a moment forgotten my companion. When I turned round he was sitting on the side of his low pallet, towards the head of it, supporting his head by his elbow against the wall, apparently in a state of half stupor. He was motionless, excepting a sort of convulsive movement, between sprawling and clutching of the fingers of the right hand, which was extended on his knee. His shrunk cheeks exhibited a deadly ashen paleness, with a slight tinge of yellow, the effect of confinement. His eyes were glassy and sunken, and seemed in part to have lost the power of gazing. They were turned with an unmeaning and vacant stare upon the window, where the last red streak of day was faintly visible, which they seemed vainly endeavouring to watch. The sense of my own situation now recoiled strongly upon me; and the sight of the wretch sitting stiffened in quiet agony (for it was no better), affected me with a faint sickness. I felt that an effort was necessary, and, with some difficulty, addressed a few cheering and consolatory phrases to the miserable creature I had undertaken to support. My words might not,—but I fear my tone was too much in unison with his feelings, such as they were. His answer was a few inarticulate mutterings, between which the spasmodic twitching of his fingers became more apparent than before. A noise at the door seemed decidedly to rouse him; and as he turned his head with a sudden effort, I felt relieved to see the gaoler enter. He was used to such scenes; and with an air of commiseration, but in a tone which lacked none of the firmness with which he habitually spoke, he asked the unhappy man some question of his welfare, and seemed satisfied with the head-shake and inarticulately muttered replies of the again drooping wretch, as if they were expected, and of course. Having directed the turnkey to place some wine and slight refreshments on the table, and to trim the light, he told me in a whisper that my friends would be at the prison, with the clergyman, at the hour of six; and bidding the miserable convict and myself, after a cheering word or two, “good-night,” he departed—the door was closed—and the murderer and I were finally left together.

It was now past the hour of ten o’clock; and it became my solemn duty to take heed that the last few hours of the dying sinner passed not without such comfort to his struggling soul as human help might hold out. After reading to him some passages of the gospel, the most apposite to his trying state, and some desultory and unconnected conversation—for the poor creature at times seemed to be unable, under his load of horror, to keep his ideas connected further than as they dwelt upon his own nearing and unavoidable execution—I prevailed upon him to join in prayer. He at this time appeared to be either so much exhausted, or labouring under so much lassitude from fear and want of rest, that I found it necessary to take his arm and turn him upon his knees by the pallet-side. The hour was an awful one. No sound was heard save an occasional ejaculation between a sigh and a smothered groan from the wretched felon. The candle burned dimly; and as I turned I saw, though I scarcely noticed it at the moment, a dim insect of the moth species fluttering hurriedly round it, the sound of whose wings mournfully filled up the pauses of myself and my companion. When the nerves are strained to their uttermost, by such trifling circumstances are we affected. Here (thought I) there has been no light, at such an hour, for many years; and yet here is one whose office it seems to be to watch it! My spirit felt the necessity of some exertion; and, with an energy for which a few minutes before I had hardly dared to hope, I poured out my soul in prayer. I besought mercy upon the blood-stained creature who was grovelling beside me; I asked that repentance and peace might be vouchsafed him; I begged, for our Redeemer’s sake, that his last moments might know that untasted rapture of sin forgiven, and a cleansed soul, which faith alone can bring to fallen man; I conjured him to help and aid me to call upon the name of Christ; and I bade him put off life and forget it, and to trust in that name alone; I interceded that his latter agony might be soothed, and that the leave-taking of body and soul might be in quietness and peace. But he shook and shivered, and nature clung to the miserable straw of existence which yet floated upon the wide and dismal current of oblivion, and he groaned heavily and muttered, “No! no! no!” as if the very idea of death was unbearable, even for a moment; and “to die,” even to him that must, were a thing impossible, and not to be thought of or named. And as I wrestled with the adversary that had dominion over him, he buried his shrunk and convulsed features in the covering of his miserable pallet; while his fingers twisted and writhed about, like so many scotched snakes, and his low sick moans made the very dungeon darker.

When I lifted him from his kneeling position, he obeyed my movement like a tired child, and again sat on the low pallet, in a state of motionless and unresisting torpor. The damp sweat stood on my own forehead, though not so cold as on his; and I poured myself out a small portion of wine, to ward off the exhaustion which I began to feel unusually strong upon me. I prevailed upon the poor wretch to swallow a little with me; and, as I broke a bit of bread, I thought, and spoke to him, of that last repast of Him who came to call sinners to repentance; and methought his eye grew lighter than it was. The sinking frame, exhausted and worn down by anxiety, confinement, and the poor allowance of a felon’s gaol, drew a short respite from the cordial; and he listened to my words with something of self-collectedness—albeit slight tremblings might still be seen to run along his nerves at intervals; and his features collapsed, ever and anon, into that momentary vacuity of wildness which the touch of despair never fails to give. I endeavoured to improve the occasion. I exhorted him, for his soul’s sake, and the relief of that which needed it too much, to make a full and unreserved confession, not only to God, who needed it not, but to man, who did. I besought him, for the good of all, and as he valued his soul’s health, to detail the particulars of his crime, but his eye fell. That dark enemy, who takes care to leave in the heart just hope enough to keep despair alive, tongue-tied him, and he would not—even now, at the eleventh hour—give up the vain imagination that the case of his companion might yet be confounded with his, to the escape of both—and vain it was. It had not been felt advisable so far to make him acquainted with the truth, that this had already been sifted and decided; and I judged this to be the time. Again and again I urged confession upon him. I put it to him that this act of justice might now be done for its own sake, and for that of the cleansing from spot of his stained spirit. I told him, finally, that it could no longer prejudice him in this world, where his fate was written and sealed, for that his companion was reprieved. I knew not what I did. Whether the tone of my voice, untutored in such business, had raised a momentary hope, I know not, but the revulsion was dreadful. He stared with a vacant look of sudden horror—a look which those who never saw cannot conceive, and which (the remembrance is enough) I hope never to see again—and twisting round, rolled upon his pallet with a stifled moan that seemed tearing him in pieces. As he lay, moaning and writhing backwards and forwards, the convulsions of his legs, the twisting of his fingers, and the shiverings that ran through his frame were terrible.

To attempt to rouse him seemed only to increase their violence, as if the very sound of the human voice was, under his dreadful circumstances, intolerable, as renewing the sense of reality to a reason already clouding, and upon the verge of temporary delirium. He was the picture of despair. As he turned his face to one side, I saw that a few, but very few hot tears had been forced from his glassy and blood-shot eyes; and in his writhings he had scratched one cheek against his iron bedstead, the red discoloration of which contrasted sadly with the deathly pallidness of hue which his visage now showed: during his struggles, one shoe had come off, and lay unheeded on the damp stone-floor. The demon was triumphant within him; and when he groaned, the sound seemed scarcely that of a human being, so much had horror changed it. I kneeled over him,—but in vain. He heard nothing—he felt nothing—he knew nothing, but that extremity of prostration to which a moment’s respite would be Dives’ drop of water, and yet, in such circumstances, anything but a mercy. He could not bear for a moment to think upon his own death—a moment’s respite would only have added new strength to the agony: he might be dead, but could not “—die;” and in the storm of my agitation and pity, I prayed to the Almighty to relieve him at once from sufferings which seemed too horrible even to be contemplated.

How long this tempest of despair continued, I do not know. All that I can recall is, that after almost losing my own recollection under the agitation of the scene, I suddenly perceived that his moans were less loud and continuous, and that I ventured to look at him, which I had not done for some space. Nature had become exhausted, and he was sinking gradually into a stupor, which seemed something between sleep and fainting. This relief did not continue long—and as soon as I saw him begin to revive again to a sense of his situation, I made a strong effort, and lifting him up, seated him again on the pallet, and, pouring out a small quantity of wine, gave it him to drink, not without a forlorn hope that even wine might be permitted to afford him some little strength to bear what remained of his misery, and collect his ideas for his last hour. After a long pause of returning recollection, the poor creature got down a little of the cordial, and as I sat by him and supported him, I began to hope that his spirits calmed. He held the glass and sipped occasionally, and appeared in some sort to listen, and to answer to the words of consolation I felt collected enough to offer. At this moment the low and distant sound of a clock was heard, distinctly striking one. The ear of despair is quick; and as he heard it, he shuddered, and in spite of a strong effort to suppress his emotion, the glass had nearly fallen from his hand. A severe nervous restlessness now rapidly grew upon him, and he eagerly drank up one or two small portions of wine, with which I supplied him. His fate was now evidently brought one degree nearer to him. He kept his gaze intently and unceasingly turned to the window of the dungeon. His muttered replies were incoherent or unintelligible, and his sunk and weakened eye strained painfully on the grated window, as if he momentarily expected to see the first streak of the dawn of that morning, which to him was to be night. His nervous agitation gradually became horrible, and his motions stronger. He seemed not to have resolution enough to rise from his seat and go to the window, and yet to have an overpowering wish or impulse to do so. The lowest sound startled him—but with this terrible irritation, his muscular power, before debilitated, seemed to revive, and his action, which was drooping and languid, became quick and angular. I began to be seized with an undefined sense of fear and alarm. In vain I combated it; it grew upon me; and I had almost risen from my seat to try to make myself heard, and obtain, if possible, assistance. The loneliness of the gaol, however, rendered this, even if attempted, almost desperate—the sense of duty, the dread of ridicule, came across me, and chained me to my seat by the miserable criminal, whose state was becoming every minute more dreadful and extraordinary.

Let us not scorn or distrust our obscurest misgivings, for we are strangely constituted; and though the evidence for such conclusions often be in a manner unknown to ourselves, they are not the less veritable and just. Exhausted by the wearing excitement and anxiety of my situation, I had for a moment sunk into that confused absence of mind with which those who have been in similar circumstances cannot be unacquainted, when my miserable companion, with a convulsive shudder, grasped my arm suddenly. I was for a few seconds unaware of the cause of this emotion and movement, when a low indistinct sound caught my ear. It was the rumbling of a cart, mingled with two or three suppressed voices; and the cart appeared to be leaving the gate of the dismal building in which we were. It rolled slowly and heavily as if cumbrously laden, under the paved gateway; and after a few minutes, all was silent. The agonised wretch understood its import better than I did. A gust of the wildest despair came suddenly over him. He clutched with his hands whatever met his grasp. His knees worked. His frame became agitated with one continued movement, swaying backwards and forwards, almost to falling, and his inarticulate complaints became terrific. I attempted to steady him by an exertion of strength; I spoke kindly to him, but he writhed in my grasp like an adder, and as an adder was deaf—grief and fear had horrible possession: myself almost in a state of desperation—for the sight was pitiful. I at last endeavoured to awe him into a momentary quiescence, and strongly bade him at last to die like a man; but the word “Death” had to him only the effect it may be supposed to have upon a mere animal nature and understanding: how could it have any other? He tried to bear it, and could not, and uttering a stifled noise, between a yell and a moan, he grasped his own neck: his face assumed a dark-red colour, and he fell into a state of stifled convulsion.

When despair had wrought with him, I lifted him with difficulty from the floor on which he had fallen. His relaxed features had the hue of death, and his parched lips, from a livid blue, became of an ashy whiteness. In appearance he was dying; and in the agitation of the moment I poured a considerable portion of the wine which had been left with us into a glass, and, after wetting his temples, held it to his lips. He made an effort to swallow, and again revived to consciousness; and holding the vessel firmly in his hands, got down with difficulty and at intervals the entire draught. When he found it totally exhausted, the glass fell from his hands; but he seized and held one of mine with a grasp so firm and iron-like that the contrast startled me. He seemed to be involved in a confused whirl of sensations. He stared round the cell with a wildness of purpose that was appalling; and after a time I began to see, with deep remorse, that the wine I had unguardedly given was, as is always the case, adding keenness to his agony and strength to his despair. He half rose once or twice and listened; all was silent—when, after the pause of a minute or two, a sudden fit of desperation seemed to seize upon him. He rushed to the window, and hurriedly surveying the grates, wrenched at them with a strength demoniac and superhuman, till the iron bars shook in their imbedments.

From this period my recollections are vague and indistinct. I remember strongly remonstrating with the poor creature, and being pushed away by hands which were now bleeding profusely with the intense efforts of his awful delirium. I remember attempting to stop him, and hanging upon him, until the insane wretch clutched me by the throat, and a struggle ensued, during which I suppose I must at length have fainted or become insensible; for the contest was long, and, while consciousness remained, terrible and appalling. My fainting, I presume, saved my life, for the felon was in that state of maniacal desperation which nothing but a perfect unresistingness could have evaded.

After this, the first sensation I can recall is that of awakening out of that state of stupor into which exhaustion and agitation had thrown me. Shall I ever forget it? The anxiety of some of my friends had brought them early to the gaol; and the unusual noises which had been heard by some of its miserable inmates occasioned, I believe, the door of the cell in which we were to be unlocked before the intended hour. Keenly do I recollect the struggling again into painful consciousness, the sudden sense of cheering daylight, the sound of friendly voices, the changed room, and the strange looks of all around me. The passage was terrible to me; but I had yet more to undergo. I was recovered just in time to witness the poor wretch, whose prop and consolation I had undertaken to be, carried, exhausted and in nerveless horror, to the ignominious tree—his head drooping on his breast, his eyes opening mechanically at intervals, and only kept from fainting and utter insensibility by the unused and fresh morning air, which breathed in his face as if in cruel mockery. I looked once, but looked no more.—Let me hasten to conclude. I was ill for many weeks, and after recovering from a nervous fever, was ordered by my physicians into the country. This was the first blessing and relief I experienced, for the idea of society was now terrible to me. I was secluded for many months. Time, however, who ameliorates all things, at length softened and wore away the sharper parts of these impressions, but to this hour I dare not dwell upon the events of that awful night. If I dream of them, although the horrors fall far short of the appalling reality, yet for the next sun I am discomposed, and can only seek for rest from that Almighty Power, who, in his inscrutable providence, thought fit I should read a lesson so hideous, but—so salutary.—Reader, farewell.