The Last Judicial Burning March 13, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
When was the last occasion on which a western government burnt one of its citizens alive judicially? Well, there are several examples from elsewhere in the world, including a North Korean who was supposedly executed by flame thrower in 2014 and various ISIS murders. However, in a western country on the instructions of a judge? The last convincing cases, not including vigilantes and lynchers, date to the mid eighteenth century. However, there is this extraordinary case from 1895, reported in a New York paper and then picked up in the UK.
The World publishes a despatch from Mexico, that 10 heretics have been burned the stake by order of the local judge. The local judge by whose order 10 persons were burned as heretics claims that he was acting according to the will of a God manifested vision. As soon as news reached Mollango, the principal town in the district, the municipal president and minor officials, with escort of 60 men armed with rifles, proceeded to Texaeapa, where they found everybody in the public square executing grotesque dances round the ruins of the gaol in honour of the virgin Guadalupe. The judge related the details of his action with great sang froid, and said that the was unaware of having done any wrong. He claimed that God had wrought miracles confirm what a saint had told him in a vision, and had ordered him to execute heretics. ‘I obeyed the Divine command,’ continued, ‘and ordered out the alquaciles (constables). They took the sinners from their beds and dragged them the darkness, weeping and wailing, to gaol. There they were locked in securely, and I gave orders that the alquaciles should set the building on fire. The heretics were filled with fear and shouted for mercy, but Heaven’s will had be done, and they were consumed to the bones, and the vengeance of Heaven was averted from our community.’
Twenty-one arrests were made in connection with the affair, and although the fanatic mob threatened death to the authorities, the prisoners were securely bound and marched to Mollango, where a judicial investigation was held. The entire population of Texacapa appears to be under the influence of unreasoning insane excitement. All the inhabitants believe that the local judge was commissioned by the Almighty and the saints to destroy the evil doers. In support of this contention they point to the pile of bones, on which they profess to see the forms of saints miraculously traced in outline.
This is a judicial killing, albeit the judge in question seems to have been clinically mad. But of course the real problem is whether the story is true or not. Beach can find no record of this remarkable event in Spanish or in English and American journalists were, in the nineteenth century, sometimes flexible with the truth: i.e. they invented wholesale. There is a possible background to this story too. In April 1895 Bridget Cleary was burnt to death in Ireland in an event that shocked the world. Was a bored journalist inventing material in fall, remembering the most remarkable events of the spring? Can anyone go later: drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com
Source: Nottingham Evening Post (4 Nov 1895), 4
