Following on from the last post, this graphic account of a triple execution in Mecklenburg was featured in the same issue of the Daily Evening Herald.
German journals give a horrible account of the execution by beheading with the sword at Butzau, Mecklenberg, of three murderers, Henry Schaffer, Peter Nopp, and Francis Newmann. The crowd present consisted mostly of prisoners, their wives and children.
But for the scaffold the scene would have looked more like an American Barbecue than an execution, for all present were eating, drinking, singing and chatting merrily.
There were on the grounds numerous vendors of pies, cakes, apples and liquors, and even an Italian with a trained monkey attracted numbers of wondering spectators.
The executioner and his assistants hurried somewhat rudely to the rear of the platform. Schaffer, a herculean man with a high shoulder and a very stout neck, tried to look indifferent and even defiant. His two companions were evidently almost unmanned by their terror.
Their faces looked deadly pale, and they were hardly able to stand on their feet. At this moment, the Klein, who had been in the charge of two officers under the scaffold, was led upon the platform.
He wore the grey uniform of the convicts, and was heavily ironed. He was evidently terrified and shed copious tears. After he had been placed near the judges, in front of the armchair, the executioner approached Schaffer and told him audibly to set down.
The old murderer stepped almost jauntily to it and sat down. In the next moment his hands were untied, and then his arms were fastened securely to the chair’s arms and his legs to the legs of a chair. The doomed culprit still tried to die game, but the sight of the vast crowd seemed to dazzle his eyes, his breast heaved convulsively, and his face turned almost purple.
The President of the Court now stepped forward to read the death warrant. Schaffer’s respirations became more and more spasmodic. He cast wistful glances towards the executioner, who stood near him, and who, as the priest ceased reading, rapidly stepped up to him. The culprit’s neck was bared.
When the executioner touched his skin, Schaffer gave a start and uttered a low, gurgling sound; then his eyes were bandaged. One of the assistants seized him by the hair and drew the head of the struggling criminal, while the executioner took the sword from the morocco case, poised the flashing blade closely, to the right side of the Culprit’s neck, and then cut deliberately into it.
At the moment when the sharp edge cut into his living flesh, Schaffer gave a convulsive start and drew up his legs; but it was soon over, for the headsman’s sword passed surely, though somewhat slowly, through the flesh and vertebrae, with a horrible sound that was audible to a considerable distance, and shocked the bystanders to their innermost.
When the head fell off a stream of blood rose, perhaps, three feet into the air, from the trunk of the decapitated man. It was a ghastly sight, every one turned pale, while the two wretched conspirators, who had witnessed the doom of their accomplice, turned white in their faces, and cordials had to be administered to them to prevent them from fainting away.
Next the corpse was untied, and together with the head put into a coffin. The blood was wiped up with rags, the headsman dried his sword with a towel, and then sharpened it with a piece of steel. When all was ready, he turned with an imperious gesture to Kopp and exclaimed, ’ Now, you step this way.’
The unfortunate man tottered to the fatal chair, more dead than alive, and the same proceeding were gone through with as before. The man moaned audibly during the reading of the death warrant, and when the executioner bared his neck he began to scream piteously.
His yells, which made the blood of the hearers freeze, did not cease until the sharp blow of the headsman cut into his living flesh. He gave a dreadful start when he felt the first sharp touch of the cold metal. The executioner did not cut very straight, for the blade came out near the shoulder, and the head had to be torn off.
Newmann was overpowered by it and fell into a long swoon. Hartshorn was administered to him, and when he re-awoke to consciousness he too was led to the fatal chair and dispatched in the same manner as his accomplices. The whole execution lasted nearly forty minutes.
© Mark Young 2025
Source
Hellish Fiends, and Brutish Men 
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