One Man They Could

Not Hang

A Tale of Old Levuka

By F. J. Ryan

TO be marched past your coffin, to stand by your open grave while part of the burial service was read over you, and then to be hanged by the neck, is an experi ence few men have lived through, to tell the tale.

It was just one of the many things that could have happened only in Fiji. It happened in Levuka, In the days of good King Cakobau.

The prisoner, a rough sailor man, had committed murder and was luly sentenced to be hanged. But (records a resident of those days) ‘the job was done by amateurs and vas badly bungled.” It was true that he was hanged by the neck, out not hanged until he was dead.

Those early reports do not seem ;o have mentioned the name of the orisoner. Probably, he was the least mportant among those present on ;hat interesting occasion. Though mportant enough, no doubt, to the >oor wretch who, in that fresh morn ng scene, was looking across the jalm water at the tall ship which lor him had indeed dropped its ,ast anchor.

The victim’s name is also not mentioned. But, strangely enough, it crops up in the reminiscences of a Treasury official, a Mr. J.

Chish(olm, who states the victim was a native of sorts by the name of Muvi, who had been stabbed to the heart in a quarrel on a vessel called the Marion Rennie, then lying in Levuka Harbour. The Treasury was apparently interested in the affair because the knife had passed through a wad of Fiji notes that the victim had in his breast pocket and which, says Mr. Chisholm, “were in a fearful state with coagu lated blood, and were brought to the Treasury to be exchanged.”

“Some persons of a morbid state of mind wished to buy them,” re marked the Treasury official, “but they were burned.”

In the Government which had been formed by King Cakobau in 1872 the members of the Cabinet, with the exception of the King and the Viceroy, were Europeans or Americans. A commentator of those days described it as an honest effort on the part of the Executive “to rule” while Cakobau “reigned.” In this case the accused, having been found guilty by a jury of his countrymen, the King, on the ad vice of his ministers, signed the death warrant.

THE first hitch came when all had assembled at 7 a.m., on May 27, for the execution. The

Sheriff who was to carry it out was, however, not among those present.

He sent word to say that his wife was dying and he could not leave her. There being no deputy sheriff the execution was postponed.

During the day, efforts were made to have the sentence commuted on the grounds that, as the King’s warrant fixed May 27 for the execu tion, it could not apply to any sub sequent date. The Court impeached the Sheriff for neglect of duty, appointed a deputy sheriff, and ordered him to execute the King’s warrant at six o’clock the next morning.

The gruesome preliminaries were again enacted, and the hangman, his face masked, proceeded with his task. He then found that the rope, which had been hanging in the tropical rain all day and night, had swollen to such an extent that it

would not move frzely in the noose.

By this time the “amateur” hang man was no doubt only too anxious to get the unpleasant business over as quickly as possible and, trusting to the six foot drop to tighten it around the murderer’s neck, he slipped the rope over the man’s head and pulled the bolt. The prisoner dropped.

For ten minutes not a muscle moved. The man was apparently dead, and the crowd began to move away. Suddenly h 2 began to struggle. He got one hand loose and, seizing the rope above his head, began to pull himself up. Then, in a husky voice he called out: “Shoot me! I cannot die like this!”

The chief of police cut the rope and the man was led back to his cell by the Chaplain.

What had happened was that the rope had simply caught the tip of his chin and the back of his neck, and left the wind-pipe untouched.

While the drop had rendered him unconscious, it did not interfere with his breathing through the nostrils. He said his first sensa tion when he recovered was that he was drowning.

An hour after he had been cut down the condemned man was eat ing a hearty breakfast of beefsteak, which had been prepared for the hangman. The Premier, in the meantime, had decided to take the case to the King, and the sentence was commutTd.

But this was not the end of the difficulties which the bungled hang

ing involved. With Government’s permission, the chief of police had drawn up a will under which the prisoner had left £25 to the Chaplain for his kindness to him, and £25 to the Wesleyan Missionary Society.

Sitting “in banco” the Chief Justice, Sir Charles St. Julian, decided that the man was legally dead, and ordered the will to be executed.

This was done, but the money be-

queathed to the Chaplain and the Missionary Society was returned to the prisoner.

He subsequently left Fiji for San Francisco, and the Rev. N. Nettle ton, who wrote an early account of the episode, stated that when last heard of by the Chaplain he was doing well in a small business he was conducting under another name.