In America, the Thaw case, which attracted more interest than the facts deserved, was treated in an ultra-civilized manner. Perhaps, if the events associated with this _cause célèbre_ had taken place in another State of the Union the results would have been different. It is true that the relations between Thaw’s wife and White, the murdered man, had not been resumed after the marriage, though the incidents immediately preceding the shooting at Madison Square Garden should have gone a long way towards saving Thaw. Thaw was dining at the Café Martin, a well-known restaurant something after the type of the Café de la Paix. His wife, the former victim of White, was with him. White entered the restaurant and proceeded to make offensive remarks from an adjacent table. Thaw, no doubt excited by alcohol, was very properly incensed. Later on, after the incident had preyed on his mind, he pulled out his revolver and shot White dead. This was at the Madison Square Roof-Garden. If White had not made offensive remarks at the expense of Thaw and his wife at the Café Martin, it is most improbable that any shooting would have occurred. But what with Thaw’s knowledge of White’s intimacy with the girl in her early days, and the fact that the offender used it as a taunt in a public place, there is little wonder that the _dénouement_ was murder. The strict critic may say that Thaw should not have made such a marriage. The instinct to kill in a man confronted by another who has been intimate with the woman who became his wife must be very strong, particularly among heated temperaments. It is not necessary, one may perhaps assume, to have “brain storms,” paranoia, or incipient insanity, to produce the exact state of mind, under given circumstances, which prompted the shooting at Madison Square Garden. One somehow feels that injustice has been done the “murderer” by stamping him with the brand of lunacy. It was the only alternative, however, as the case went, to the electric chair. The system of electrocution, meted out to murderers in the State of New York, is about as bad, or even worse, than hanging, with which it is intended to deal briefly in the present chapter. There is nothing to be said against capital punishment, at least on the part of anyone who has examined the question in practice, but hanging as the means is an antiquated survival of the witchcraft age (though one vaguely remembers that “witches” were burnt!).