The Hanging Club- Max Wolfe 03

A great multitude had already assembled; the windows were filled with people smoking and playing cards to beguile the time; the crowd were pushing, quarrelling, and joking. Every thing told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of objects in the very centre of all – the black stage, the cross-beam, the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death.

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators. If they do not draw spectators they don’t answer their purpose.

Dr Samuel Johnson