Intemperance and the Gallows by James Berry

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 29, 1907

Intemperance and the Gallows

By James Berry

HAVING been impressed many times during my term of office as public executioner with the fact that intoxicating drink is the main support of the gallows, I think it would be dishonest on my part to my fellow countrymen were I to hide by any subterfuge the truth relative to this all-important matter.

The world would be astonished if it were generally known what quantities of intoxicants were consumed by those in authority in our prisons, and especially at an execution. It seems that the very thing that has been the means of bringing a murderer and his victim to an untimely end must also be used to goad the hangman before he can relentlessly carry out the law of strangulation.

Indeed, I can imagine no man who has in any way reached even a moderate degree of human development capable of deliberately hanging his fellow man before he has first excited his own lower nature by drink. I assert further that, out of all the teetotalers of the United Kingdom, and they now number about five millions, I do not believe it possible that one could be found who, were the post vacant, would declare himself ready to become the public executioner of this country.

In all the seven hundred executions with which I have been connected, whether as hangman or as assistant, I do not know of one teetotaler among those who paid this extreme penalty.

What a country this is for mistakes! In this one thing alone we see the government legalizing a traffic which makes men mad and makes them commit murder; and then, on the other hand, providing a hangman to strangle them to death.—James Berry, for ten years public hangman for the British government. This statement is sent to the Sunday School Times by the Rev. Frank W. Dell, pastor of the Friends' church, Norwich, Ontario.