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Hanging once common for executions in U.S., region

Hanging once common for executions in U.S., region

Festive crowds gathered near jail as death sentence carried out

Before lethal injection and the electric chair, hanging reigned supreme as the primary method of capital punishment in the United States.

Thoughts of gallows evoke images of public hangings in medieval Europe, of a time and place estranged from America and particularly Ohio.

But the history of hanging lingers much nearer to the Buckeye State than many today might imagine. In fact, hangings routinely took place in Toledo and the region.

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These executions were not private affairs. The city treated them as summer blockbusters, and publicized them as such.

The Blade offered novelistic accounts of 19th century hangings. From a biography of the convicted to a painstaking description of the gallows — its hauntingly black hue, the length of its rope, precise to the last quarter-inch — execution stories were terrifying, exciting, and bewitching.

Toledoans found hangings even more captivating in person. On an execution day, crowds would throng around the old jail behind the county courthouse. Only a few dozen “spectators” — comprising reporters, judges, city officials, and the condemned’s relatives — were allowed to witness the hanging. But while the jail was cordoned off, the restriction did not discourage hordes of curious citizens.

On Friday evening, June 12, 1857, when J.M Ward was to be hanged for murdering his wife and two others, boys tried scaling the jail’s wall to peek through cracks in the wall and press their ears against the building in hopes of hearing a prayer or seeing any sign of struggle by Ward. Others, according to the newspaper, outside raced up and down the courthouse lawn and pitched pennies in a merry spirit.

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The festivities outside contrasted starkly with the gloomy setting inside, where spectators sat in chairs extending in parallel lines from the gallows. They watched Ward, seated atop a raised platform and accompanied by a priest and the sheriff, offer final remarks before his death.

“Oh my God! I am thine! Thou are mine!” he choked out. Immediately, Ward was dropped straight down, and after one slight motion of his feet, he hung lifeless.

After an explanation of the event, the observers dispersed, eager to rid their minds of what they had just seen, while outside cheering prevailed.

The spirit was much the same throughout the region. 

In 1872 in Allen County, the sheriff invited all of the newspaper publishers in the county to witness the execution of Andrew Brentlinger, 50, who had murdered his second wife, 27.

Edward Walkup, an editor from Delphos, even assisted the sheriff in conducting the prisoner to the scaffold, according to a county history.

That day, a traveling show — with a fat woman and dwarfs — was staged in Lima, and Brentlinger’s bier stood on the street for the crowds to see.

Contact Anthony Kayruz at: akayruz@theblade.com or 419-724-6050.

First Published July 19, 2015, 4:00 a.m.

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