Hunter's execution was the next but one to Lipski's, and his crime
was one which has always seemed to me about the most heartless I
ever heard of. Hunter was a striker in a foundry by trade, but a
tramp by choice. He left his wife and two children and went on tramp,
eventually striking up a sort of partnership with a Scotch woman who
had six illegitimate children. One of these, a little girl between
three and four years of age, went tramping with them, and of course,
the poor wee mite was utterly unfit for the exposure and the many
miles of walking which they made her accomplish daily. Hunter and the
woman were both cruel to the child, and carried their cruelty to such
an extent that on one occasion at any rate, they were remonstrated
with, and eventually turned out of a common lodging-house on account
of their conduct. At last, one day after a long tramp, the little
mite began to cry from weariness, and Hunter, to stop her crying,
beat her with a switch. Later, for the same purpose, he thrashed her
with a stick that he picked up in the road. Still later in the day he
continued his ill-treatment until he had beaten the life out of the
poor little creature. In justice to the man--or brute--it should be
said that when he found that the child was insensible (it was really
dead), he fetched water to bathe its poor battered head; and when he
realised that it was dead he cut his own throat and very nearly killed
himself--but these considerations seem very little extenuation for the
harsh brutality of his conduct. One would have thought that the man
who had thus heartlessly tortured to death a helpless child would have
been execrated by all men; yet the crowd that assembled at Hunter's
execution wore quite a holiday air. There were some 1500 people,
most of whom laughed and jested. When the flag was run up there was
no demonstration, perhaps the Carlisle people are not demonstrative.
However that may be, the contrasted conduct of the crowds at the two
executions struck me forcibly; and though it is sad that men should
rejoice at the death of a fellow-man, if the cheers had been given at
Hunter's death which greeted the death of Lipski, I think they would
have been more natural and more English than light jests and laughter.
CHAPTER XIII.
Incidents and Anecdotes.
As is always the case when a man attains any prominence or notoriety,
a number of utterly groundless stories have got afloat about my doings
and adventures. Others, which were originally founded on fact, have
been so modified and altered that I do not recognise them when they
come back to me again. Altogether I have been credited with being the
hero of so many surprising adventures that I am afraid the few little
incidents which have really occurred to me will seem tame by the side
of the fictions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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