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BY THE NECK by August -- Ed. Mencken

BY THE NECK

By

Pub Date: May 21st, 1942
Publisher: Hastings House

Accounts by witnesses, from contemporary sources in newspapers, magazines, books and pamphlets, dealing with hangings from 1733 to 1936 in England, Scotland, Canada and the United States. With a brief review of each crime for which capital punishment was administered, these reports present data on individual and mass hangings, on the prisoner's attitude and behavior, the hangmen, officials, witnesses, and reflect the change in attitudes toward these events. From the death of Gooch, first to be executed under the Lindbergh Law in 1926, back to the famous Burke, the subjects range from a Harvard professor to a pirate, from John Brown to Gerald Chapman, the murderer of Garfield, the Haymarket anarchists, the Molly McGuires, etc. Interesting for real crimes and their rewards, for patterns controlling the conduct of human beings and demanding necessary obliteration.