Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [109]
Steenburgh, a black man, had been convicted of the murder of a farmer named Jacob S. Parker; he confessed to this and many other crimes. On the morning of the execution, there was a scene of pandemonium outside the jail, beginning at nine o‘clock. The weather was fine: a “gentle breeze tempered the rays of the sun.” The area was “blackened with people. Stands had been erected for the sale of sandwiches, ginger-bread, chewing gum and ginger-pop.... Hundreds of boys were dodging among the multitude crying out copies of the ’Confession.’”
Steenburgh had “slept soundly” until nine-thirty. After he dressed and “performed his ablutions,” he said a prayer. His “mistress and their child” appeared at the gate; officials refused to let the woman in “for fear of unduly exciting the prisoner”; but “little Susie” did get to see her father one last time. For the execution, Steenburgh was given a “new suit of clothes and a linen shirt.” At 12:50 P.M., a drum began beating and a “procession made its appearance around the corner of the jail.” Soldiers marched on either side of the doomed man. At the scaffold, two priests prayed for Steenburgh’s soul. Steenburgh’s wrists, thighs, and ankles were bound by leather straps. Shouts and noises came from the “more disorderly of the mob” of onlookers. The sheriff asked Steenburgh if he wanted to make a last statement; Steenburgh spoke briefly, and said he was ready to die.
The noose was fitted around his neck and a black cap placed on his head. Steenburgh begged for five minutes’ grace, then for ten. The crowd wanted blood. At one o’clock, the black cap was put on again; the sheriff’s assistant touched “the lever with his foot,” the iron weight fell with a crash, “and Steenburgh’s body was jerked sideways and upward about five feet.... As he came down he swung and swayed from left to right for a few seconds.” The newspaper lovingly recorded every twitch and contraction of the body, every detail of Steenburgh’s pulse rate, until (after ten minutes) the doctors pronounced him dead. The body was lowered at 1:23 P.M. and placed in a coffin; the crowd pressed forward to look at the body.100
Crowds were present, in fact, at many “private” executions. Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, went to the gallows on July 1, 1882; according to a newspaper account, the “representation of morbid sightseers was remarkably small”; yet over two hundred people crowded into the jail to watch, and hundreds more stood outside the jail, “staring.”101 When Lloyd Majors was executed in the jail yard in Oakland, California, in 1884, the streets were full of people who hoped to catch a glimpse of the show. Some of the spectators climbed on roofs; a few from atop the Sagehorn Building might have been actually able to see the event itself. The jail yard was jammed with viewers. Outside, “several boys had climbed into a tall poplar tree in front of the jail, in full view of the scaffold.”102 When an execution took place “in private” at the Tombs, in New York City, “the neighboring buildings are black with people, seeking to look down over the prison walls and witness the death agonies of the poor wretch who is paying the penalty of the law.”103
Of course, when all is said and done, not many people could climb trees or roofs, or watch an execution with opera glasses; but millions could read all about it in the daily press. The newspapers of the late nineteenth century adored executions; they described the major executions in lip-smacking detail. When Nathan Sutton was hanged in California, in January 1888, the Oakland Tribune delivered to the breathless public a blow-by-blow account. People had climbed to the housetops in a desperate attempt to watch Sutton die an agonizing death. When Sutton was dropped, the rope cut deeply into his neck; his head almost separated from his body. According to the Tribune a “noise was heard ... like the gurgle of wind”; blood was “spurting from the left side of his neck ... bubbling from the right side