till a diversion was created by the appearance of the gallows, which was received with continuous yells. As day broke the character of the crowd was betrayed. There were but few women, except of the most degraded sort; the men were mostly young men--"sharpers, thieves, gamblers, betting men, the outsiders of the boxing ring, bricklayers' labourers, dock workmen, German artisans and sugar-bakers, ... with the rakings of cheap singing-halls and billiard-rooms, the fast young men of London. But all, whether young or old, men or women, seemed to know nothing, feel nothing, to have no object but the gallows, and to laugh, curse, or shout, as in this heaving and struggling forward they gained or lost in their strong efforts to get nearer where Müller was to die." The actual execution made some impression. The crowd was for a moment awed and stilled by the quiet rapid passage from life to death! But before "the slight slow vibrations of the body had well ended, robbery and violence, loud laughing, oaths, fighting, obscene conduct, and still more filthy language reigned round the gallows far and near. Such too the scene remained with little change or respite till the old hangman (Calcraft) slunk again along the drop, amid hisses and sneering inquiries of what he had had to drink that morning. He, after failing once to cut the rope, made a second attempt more successfully, and the body of Müller disappeared from view."[121] It was preposterous to claim for such a scene as this that it conveyed any great moral lesson, or had any deterring influence. Numbers of humane and thoughtful persons had long been convinced of this. Already the urgent necessity for abolishing public executions had been brought before the House of Commons by Mr. Hibbert, and the question, as part of the whole subject of capital punishment, had been referred to a royal commission in January 1864. Full evidence was taken on all points, and on that regarding public executions there was a great preponderance of opinion towards their abolition, yet the witnesses were not unanimous. Some of the judges would have retained the public spectacle; the ordinary of Newgate was not certain that public executions were not the best. Another distinguished witness feared that any secrecy in the treatment of the condemned would invest them with a new and greater interest, which was much to be deprecated. Foreign witnesses, too, were in favour of publicity. On the other hand, Lords Cranworth and Wensleydale recommended private executions; so did Mr. Spencer Walpole, M.P. Sir George Grey thought there was a growing feeling in favour of executions within the prison precincts. Colonel (now Sir Edmund) Henderson was strongly in favour of them, based on his experience of them in Western Australia. He not only thought them likely to be more deterrent, but believed that a public ceremony destroyed the whole value of an execution. Other officials, great lawyers, governors of prisons,