jail under sentence of death until they swing from the
gallows. The following extract from the Temple Bar (1866) reveals the
fact that this custom is not confined to the United States.--"on December
31, 1841, a man named John Johnes, a shoemaker, murdered his sweetheart,
Mary Hallam, the daughter of a respectable laborer, at Mansfield, in the
county of Nottingham. He was executed on March 23, 1842. He was a man
of unsteady habits, and gave way to violent fits of passion. The girl
declined his addresses, and he said if he did not have her no one else
should. After he had inflicted the first wound, which was not
immediately fatal, she begged for her life, but seeing him resolved,
asked for time to pray. He said that he would pray for both, and
completed the crime. The wounds were inflicted by a shoemaker's knife,
and her throat was cut barbarously. After this he dropped on his knees
some time, and prayed God to have mercy on two unfortunate lovers.
He made no attempt to escape, and confessed the crime. After his
imprisonment he behaved in a most decorous manner; he won upon the good
opinion of the jail chaplain, and he was visited by the Bishop of
Lincoln. It does not appear that he expressed any contrition for the
crime, but seemed to pass away with triumphant certainty that he was
going to rejoin his victim in heaven. He was visited by some pious and
benevolent ladies of Nottingham, some of whom declared he was a child of
God, if ever there was one. One of the ladies sent him a while camellia
to wear at his execution."]

"You will live in New Hampshire. In your sharp need and distress the
Brown family will succor you--such of them as Pike the assassin left
alive. They will be benefactors to you. When you shall have grown fat
upon their bounty, and are grateful and happy, you will desire to make
some modest return for these things, and so you will go to the house some
night and brain the whole family with an ax. You will rob the dead
bodies of your benefactors, and disburse your gains in riotous living
among the rowdies and courtesans of Boston. Then you will, be arrested,
tried, condemned to be hanged, thrown into prison. Now is your happy
day. You will be converted--you will be converted just as soon as
every effort to compass pardon, commutation, or reprieve has failed--and
then!--Why, then, every morning and every afternoon, the best and purest
young ladies of the village will assemble in your cell