09/30/2009
The killer groupies Steve mentions below aren’t a new phenomenon. Mark Twain wrote an essay Lionizing Murderers about what he calls "the Pike-Brown assassination case in New Hampshire", which you can read here as State v. Pike. (49 N. H. 399)Here’s his description of the how the women of New Hampshire treated Pike during his brief stay on what passed for Death Row in the mid-19th century (the future tense is because he imagines the murderer speaking to a fortune teller)
"You will rob the dead bodies of your benefactors, and disburse your gains in riotous living among the rowdies and courtesans of Boston. Then you will, be arrested, tried, condemned to be hanged, thrown into prison. Now is your happy day. You will be converted — you will be converted just as soon as every effort to compass pardon, commutation, or reprieve has failed — and then! — Why, then, every morning and every afternoon, the best and purest young ladies of the village will assemble in your cell and sing hymns. This will show that assassination is respectable. Then you will write a touching letter, in which you will forgive all those recent Browns. This will excite the public admiration. No public can withstand magnanimity. Next, they will take you to the scaffold, with great eclat, at the head of an imposing procession composed of clergymen, officials, citizens generally, and young ladies walking pensively two and two, and bearing bouquets and immortelles. You will mount the scaffold, and while the great concourse stand uncovered in your presence, you will read your sappy little speech which the minister has written for you. And then, in the midst of a grand and impressive silence, they will swing you into per — Paradise, my son. There will not be a dry eye on the ground. You will be a hero! Not a rough there but will envy you. Not a rough there but will resolve to emulate you. And next, a great procession will follow you to the tomb — will weep over your remains — the young ladies will sing again the hymns made dear by sweet associations connected with the jail, and, as a last tribute of affection, respect, and appreciation of your many sterling qualities, they will walk two and two around your bier, and strew wreaths of flowers on it. And lo! you are canonized. Think of it, son-ingrate, assassin, robber of the dead, drunken brawler among thieves and harlots in the slums of Boston one month, and the pet of the pure and innocent daughters of the land the next!"
Twain also mentions a similar case that happened in England in the 1840’s.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.