Today’s Just Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Stephen Clark was hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1821. No one had been hurt when Clark had set fire to a barn late one night the previous summer, but the fire had spread to some of the neighboring wooden houses, and arson of a dwelling during the night was a capital crime. Ever since his conviction in February, petitions had been presented to the governor seeking to have Clark’s sentence commuted to imprisonment. Clark was easy to sympathize with. He was only sixteen years old, pale and thin, with no criminal record, from a respectable family. But clemency had been denied. “Those who have been so anxious to have him spared, would allow mercy to wink justice out of sight,” one local newspaper insisted; “they do not take into their estimation the vast amount of anxiety, of distress and misery that has followed his crime.”
The execution began around noon, when Clark was taken from jail to the gallows in a carriage, escorted by a military guard, along with the sheriff and his deputies, mounted and armed. The jailer road with Clark, as did a few ministers, who raced the clock to ensure that Clark attained penitence, and thus the possibility of an infinite afterlife, before it was too late. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of spectators walked alongside the procession. They caught no glimpse of Clark until the carriage arrived at the gallows.
As the crowd watched quietly, Clark emerged and climbed the steps up to the scaffold. The ministers and the sheriff followed. Clark wobbled and nearly fainted from fear; he had to lean on one of the ministers while the sheriff read his death warrant to the crowd. When the time came for Clark to address the spectators, he was too shy to speak. Instead, at his request, the Reverend Mr. Cornelius read a few sentences Clark had composed in jail the day before. “May the youth who are present take warning by my sad fate, not to forsake the wholesome discipline of a Parent’s home,” Clark urged with the aid of Cornelius’s voice. “May you all pray to God to give you timely repentance, open your eyes, enlighten your understandings, that you may shun the paths of vice and follow God’s commandments all the rest of your days. And may God have mercy on you all.” [You really think he wrote that? – DeSpair] The Reverend Mr. Carlisle delivered a sermon. The two ministers joined Clark in private prayer for a few minutes. Then the ministers hurried down the steps, leaving Clark on the stage with the sheriff and his deputies.
The deputies tied Clark’s hands behind his back and opened his shirt a bit so the rope would touch his skin. Clark submissively lowered his head to make it easier for the deputies to slip the noose around it. Up on the platform, surrounded by spectators, Clark seemed young, small, helpless before the assembled power of the state. Sighs and groans could be heard from the crowd. Like many executions, Clark’s would inspire maudlin but evidently sincere poetry, placing in ironic juxtaposition the stern justice imposed on Clark the criminal and the widely felt tenderness toward Clark the human being. When the deputies drew the cap over Clark’s head, obscuring his face, everyone knew the moment was near. The sheriff gave a signal, a deputy sprang the trap door in the floor, and Clark dropped, stopping with a sudden jerk a few feet down, “dangling between heaven and earth” as the nineteenth-century cliché put it.
Culled from: The Death Penalty: An American History
Here’s a typically (and wonderfully) melodramatic account of the execution from the Salem Register:
EXECUTION OF CLARK
The public execution of Stephen Merrill Clark took place in this town on Thursday last, and surely a scene more solemn, impressive and affecting never was exhibited in this Commonwealth. It is impossible to give adequate expression to the deep and awful feelings to which the memorable transactions of that day gave birth.
At an early hour the place of execution was literally surrounded by anxious multitudes, waiting the arrival of the fatal moment that was to consign one of their fellow mortals to an untimely grave; their eyes now fixed on the instrument of death before them, and now turned in that direction where the funeral escort of the unhappy criminal was expected to appear in sight. Soon the mournful procession met their view, and was seen slowly winding its way to the fatal spot; preceded and accompanied by additional multitudes of spectators, and at about half past one, it halted just without the area on which the gallows stood. In a few moments the peace officers commanded an opening to be made through the crowd, and the young and interesting object of universal attention and commisseration [sic] was led into the space—but O, how changed from that sturdy, robust and apparently unconcerned youth, who, but a few weeks before, was convicted and sentenced to suffer death.—Then his countenance was flushed and ruddy with the glow of health, his eye was quick and animated, his nerves unshaken by the array and circumstance of judicial proceedings, and his whole frame was firm and strong—Now, a ghastly paleness covered his face, his eye was languid and declined to earth, his aspect bespoke an inward grief and agony that could not uttered, and as the Rev. Clergymen supported his feeble steps toward the scaffold, his very soul appeared to quake at the terrors of the law that surrounded him.
He was conducted up the first flight of steps, to the principal floor; and here the agony of his spirits almost overpowered his strength, and he was near fainting, but was in some measure revived by the kind and assiduous attentions of those about him, and he leaned upon his Spiritual Guides while the high Sheriff read the warrant for his execution. A profound and solemn silence reigned throughout the vast multitude of spectators, whose countenances were marked by the feelings of the deepest interest, and who remained uncovered during the residue of the tragic scene. The Rev. Mr. Cornelius then read the dying words of the hapless youth, and the Rev. Mr. Carlile addressed the throne of Heavenly mercy in his behalf; after which the attendants joined in prayer with the prisoner alone. This service being ended, the Rev. Clergymen took their last, affectionate leave of their charge, and left him in the hands of the Executive Officers. The tender solicitude manifested toward the unhappy sufferer by the humans and worthy Sheriff of the County, was scarcely less than that which marked the conduct of his Clerical friends, and when he ascended the second flight of steps, and took his stand upon his last support, the sympathies and pity of the beholders were raised to the highest pitch, and when his bosom and neck was bared and he meekly inclined his head to enable Mr. Brown to adjust the fatal cord, and submissively placed himself in the position most convenient for the dreadful purpose for which he was brought there, the feelings of the multitude could no longer be suppressed, and mingled sighs and groans were heard in every direction. These preparations were soon finished, and at a signal from the High Sheriff, the spring was touched, and Clark was, in a moment, launched into eternity!—Thus died Stephen Merrill Clark, aged 17 years—cut off in the morning of his life, for a heinous offence, and made a public example of the terrible retribution of the present world, and held up as an awful warning to all survivors, and especially to young persons, to shun the paths of vice. May the warning not be lost.
In other news, look for my new single, “The Young and Interesting Object of Universal Attention,” from my forthcoming album, “A Profound and Solemn Silence.” – DeSpair
Post-Mortem Portrait Du Jour
Crying Mother
Circa 1846 – sixth-plate daguerreotype – 3.75″ x 3.25″
A crying woman holds her young son across her lap.
Culled from: Beyond the Dark Veil