Prisons and Prayer Part 39

From your son in Christ, F. A.

Mother Wheaton:

Dear Mother: We just received your loving letter last night and was glad to hear from you. Oh, dear mother, my darling boy is gone; never can I see his loving face in this cruel world. Oh, it is terrible; it seems too hard for me to stand. Just think, my only darling child. But I know he is in heaven. He died on the 16th. We went to see him and he was so glad to see us. He kissed his papa and all of us and said he wanted us not to grieve any more than we could help.... His last words were "Good-bye, mamma," with a smile and wave of his hand just like I was coming back again. He said he would like to be buried close to home.

Poor, darling boy; he loved to be close to home and mamma in life, but it is hard to think that he had to spend his last days away from us, all on account of whiskey.

Your friends as ever, MRS. A. AND L.

(The above was from the aged mother and the young wife.)

Think you, dear reader, that these experiences are pa.s.sed by lightly when I must enter into the sorrows of these mothers and loved ones who must give up their dear ones in this way? Only the grace and love of G.o.d can sustain me and these dear bereaved ones in these trials. This was one of my saddest experiences, as I was personally acquainted with the parents and the dear young wife of one of these young men, having been entertained at their home some days at a time during their sorrow. This is only another example of what strong drink is doing in our land. G.o.d pity those who in the least favor this traffic.

I give below short extracts taken from _The Daily News_ of Denver concerning these cases:

"Not yet has the final word for F. A., C. P. and N. A., under sentence of death, been said.

"It is likely that it will not be said for at least a week or ten days. The Board of Pardons adjourned late yesterday afternoon without deciding the fate of the three boys....

"But, though the tragic element was lacking, there was present throughout the meeting an undercurrent of deep human woe. The mother of A. was there, clad in black, with a hopeless expression on her face pitiful to see. Beside her at all times was the wife of A., young, pretty in an indefinite sort of way, her blue eyes holding ever before them the wreck of her shattered girlish romance. Both women wept freely at times.

"With the two women were a dozen of their women friends, whose coming had been actuated by a mixture of curiosity and sympathy.

FRIEND OF ALL PRISONERS.

"Mrs. Elizabeth R. Wheaton, friend of prisoners the world over, was there too. She sat next Mrs. A., the elder, and wept copiously in sympathy. 'Mother' Wheaton visited the boys at Canon City, and she told the board the impression of her visit, how, she was sure, they had repented of their deed and had their sins forgiven.

"She also pleaded for their lives on the ground of opposition to capital punishment. She has been in state prison rescue work for twenty-one years, and her silver hair, refined face and gentle manner have brought comfort to criminals everywhere."--News, May 6.

SESSION OF THE BOARD.

The Board of Pardons met in special session at 10 o'clock yesterday morning for the purpose of pa.s.sing finally upon the applications of the three boys for commutation of sentence from death to imprisonment for life.

Interest in the proceedings of the morning centered around four women, two mothers, a sister and a wife of the condemned boys.

They were Mrs. J. A., bowed with the weight of her seventy years, who had come all the way from Buffalo, N. Y., to be present at the meeting; her daughter, Miss A., of Denver; Mrs. J. A. and Mrs. F. A., mother and wife, respectively, of F. A. All four were present throughout the hearing and made personal pleas to the Board.

After the hearing was concluded they went together into the outer office of the executive chamber and sat huddled up in one corner of the big room, their eyes fixed on the door which led to the inner office where four men were deciding whether the boys they loved should live or die.

HEARD THE BAD NEWS.

When the news of the Board's action was conveyed by Secretary C.

E. Hagar to the four women waiting in the outer office, their grief was pitiful in the extreme. Mrs. A. very nearly collapsed.

She clung to the arm of her daughter and moaned in heart-breaking accents. The daughter, too, was almost overcome, but controlled herself for her mother's sake.

The mother and wife of F. A., while it was evident they were suffering keenly, maintained an outward composure except for the tears which welled from their eyes. They hurriedly left the capitol building together. The young wife will go to the penitentiary Friday to say a last good-bye to her husband.

PLEA OF ATTORNEY.

W. E., attorney for A., made a wonderfully eloquent plea for his client's life. It was logical, pathetic and at times scathing in its denunciation of the methods used by the police to extort confessions from the boys. He said these methods, in their horrible brutality, were without parallel anywhere.

"The only evidence upon which N. A. was convicted," he said, "was the alleged confession wrung out of him by police brutality. This confession was made after the prisoner had been 'sweated' and intimidated. One ear had been almost torn off, he had been cuffed, kicked and trampled upon, and then, under the influence of threats, he made his alleged confession."

NEWS THAT SON IS TO HANG BROKEN TO AGED WOMAN BY HER DAUGHTER AND CAUSES COLLAPSE.

Sitting and staring with a blank look into s.p.a.ce, at intervals relieving the tension of her misery by low moans, and then again e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. pitifully, "Oh, my boy! My poor, poor boy! Can I live and know that you died upon the gallows?" Mrs. J. A. is now hovering on the borderland of life at the home of her daughter in Denver.

It was not until noon yesterday that Mrs. A. was told that the pardons board had refused to grant her son, N. A., a commutation of sentence from death to life imprisonment. Up to that moment when the terrible knowledge became hers she had a mother's hope that the pardons board must save her boy. From the moment she heard from her daughter's lips that the son and brother must die, Mrs. A. has been verging upon a semi-comatose condition, and under the constant care of a physician.

She was illy prepared to hear the news yesterday, for she had spent the night previous without closing her eyes in sleep. It was not until 5 o'clock that slumber came to her mercifully, and even then she merely slept in a fitful doze until 8 o'clock.

SUPPRESSED EMOTION.

The serious phase of Mrs. A.'s condition, her physician regards, is that with her it is all suppressed emotion. She does not cry out or rave, but endures her intense suffering in quiet. It is but seldom that tears come to her relief, and the only vent her emotion has is in her low moans for her "poor boy."

After the news was broken to her, Mrs. A. spent most of the day in bed. Late last night she was still in the same condition, and the gravest anxiety is felt by her relatives.

Mrs. A. is 70 years old. She lives in Buffalo, N. Y., and made the long trip of 1,500 miles to personally plead with the State Board of Pardons for the life of her son.

TO TEST GALLOWS.

Warden C. will today test the automatic scaffold upon which N. A.

and F. A. will be executed next week. He will see that everything about the device is in perfect order and will make a final test just prior to taking the first of the two to his death. The execution house, where the men will be confined until the final summons, is 28x30 feet. It contains three condemned cells and across the hall from these are two large rooms. In the center of one is a large iron plate and on this the condemned is asked to stand after the noose and cap have been adjusted. The weight of the man causes the plate to drop about an inch. This closes the circuit of a current connecting with a bucket of water which stands on a shelf in a closet in an adjoining room. By a magnet arrangement a plug in the bottom of the bucket is pulled and the water begins to flow out. As soon as the vessel is empty an automatic connection releases a catch holding a bag of sand on the end of the noose.

The sand, being heavier than the man, falls, causing the body at the other extremity of the rope to be jerked off the floor to the height of three feet. The sandbag is in the room containing the closet where the bucket is and the rope from the noose reaches that room over a pulley and through a hole in the wall.

The condemned man does not see any of the details of the execution when he enters the death cell. The iron plate in the floor and the noose around his neck are the only parts he can see. He does not hear the dropping of the water nor the working of any of the mechanism.

The instant the man is jerked off his feet and suspended at the end of the rope his neck is broken. The time intervening between the pulling of the plug in the bucket and the falling of the sand is usually about a minute. The suspense to the prisoner, however, is not regarded as any more cruel than that experienced by a man in the electrical chair or on the scaffold while he awaits the fatal current or the springing of the trap.

The hanging apparatus was invented by a convict fifteen years ago.--_News_, May 20.

As shown by foregoing letters these cases were continued till June 16.

Such is the suspense, sorrow of heart and grief through which many are constantly pa.s.sing in this world, all on account of sin. What are we trying to do to lend a hand of relief?

Such, dear reader, are a few of the many, many cases of this cla.s.s with which I have had to do in these more than twenty years of ministry to those that are bound. Some were hardened criminals, others innocent of the crime for which they were condemned and others no more guilty than thousands that the world honors. For all, Christ died; and many others beside these I have mentioned have given evidence of saving faith in the blood that is able to cleanse the deepest stain that sin has made.

One case is just as near and dear to my mother heart as another and yet how different in many respects are these condemned men--different in their natural inclinations and unlike because of their different circ.u.mstances in life. Among them are found the refined, the educated, the gifted, the beautiful as well as the low, the ignorant, the degraded. All must share the same fate. All are shown in the worst possible light to a gaping, sensation-loving, curious world. Let us, dear reader, take these cases home to our hearts as if they were our very own and so learn to have that charity that suffereth long and is kind. Even Moses and David took life, yet they were forgiven, and Moses who in haste slew the Egyptian, became the prophet so wonderfully used of G.o.d because of his meekness of spirit; and David in his thankfulness declared, "This poor man cried and the Lord heard him and delivered him out of all his troubles."