Execution Stereoviews

[Dave Taylor]

Bill,

Rath was in uniform, as you suspected.

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Thanks for the links, Dave!

Here is my first rough draft of the hanging. As such, I tried to focus my efforts on the people standing on the platform. I'll update this with a better version in the future as time allows. Just remember to sit/lean back from your computer's monitor and relax your eyes to take in the whole photo.



A few things stand out to me that I never noticed before. The man standing on the middle beam, has his foot practically hanging off the platform. He might be using the middle beam for support. It seems rather unusual, almost as he either got surprised when the traps opened, or he was attempting to get a better look at Lewis Payne.

It also appears that David Herold's legs were kicking rather fiercely at the moment the photo was taken.

Crowza,

This is great. I'd like to think I'm pretty handy with Photoshop but I've never been able to successfully create one of these. I never know how to match the photos up and where so that it will create a 3D image when I flash them. Mine always just look like the image is shifting left and right. I'm inspired to try it again, though.

[KateH.]

Not to be rude here (just posing a different opinion). I think it's cool to see that someone has the rare skill required to edit pictures like that. However, does anyone else think the image and how it looks like the bodies are moving is a little...sickening? It's an intense image to see and those were real people (not that different from us) who just had their young lives ended in a horrible and painful way. Just wondering. Not attempting to start a fight or insult the artist.

[HerbS]

Maybe that's why watching a hanging isn't in vogue anymore! But,"Death by injection"is commonly obervered today.

[LincolnToddFan]

Not to be rude here (just posing a different opinion). I think it's cool to see that someone has the rare skill required to edit pictures like that. However, does anyone else think the image and how it looks like the bodies are moving is a little...sickening? It's an intense image to see and those were real people (not that different from us) who just had their young lives ended in a horrible and painful way. Just wondering. Not attempting to start a fight or insult the artist.

It's not for the faint of heart is it? No..it isn't just you. I clicked through it, I couldn't really look at it. Each of these four people were guilty of crimes(in varying degrees), they were hardly what I consider innocent. But I don't believe any of them deserved to hang.

[HerbS]

The Supreme Court outlawed capital punishment in 1972 only to bring it back later.So now,hanging is still legal in the states of-Washington and New Hampshire.But yet"Ultimate Fighting"makes a fortune.Go Figure!

[L Verge]

Surratt House has a copy of the Gardner photo taken right at the moment of drop where everything is in focus except the bodies - blurred by the motion of the fall. It is a photo that we know would have today's visitors crowded around taking in every detail. We prefer to keep it in the archives for propriety's sake.

[KateH.]

Not to be rude here (just posing a different opinion). I think it's cool to see that someone has the rare skill required to edit pictures like that. However, does anyone else think the image and how it looks like the bodies are moving is a little...sickening? It's an intense image to see and those were real people (not that different from us) who just had their young lives ended in a horrible and painful way. Just wondering. Not attempting to start a fight or insult the artist.

It's not for the faint of heart is it? No..it isn't just you. I clicked through it, I couldn't really look at it. Each of these four people were guilty of crimes(in varying degrees), they were hardly what I consider innocent. But I don't believe any of them deserved to hang.

Thank you. None of them were 100% innocent. They made mistakes. However, some of those crimes did not merit death. You get a virtual hug.

[LincolnToddFan]

Surratt House has a copy of the Gardner photo taken right at the moment of drop where everything is in focus except the bodies - blurred by the motion of the fall. It is a photo that we know would have today's visitors crowded around taking in every detail. We prefer to keep it in the archives for propriety's sake.

Oh God...I have seen that photo! It's in a book I own by James Swanson about the trial and execution of the conspirators.

[BettyO]

I agree it IS sickening - no, they were NOT innocent - but no one deserves to die in such a horrid manner. Now folk are more or less "humanely" put to sleep....

To heighten the cruelty of the times, some anomyous inhuman monster sent Reverend and Mrs. Powell an envelope full of CDVs - each one showing their son, Lewis, in different positions while hanging. What a horrid thing to do to an innocent family who had already lost 2 sons.

[LincolnToddFan]

Betty O, I remember reading somewhere else on this Forum where you posted about someone sending Powell's parents those photos. It's a good thing I read it on an empty stomach or I would have become violently ill.

No matter where you fall on the North/South, Union/Confederate divide there is no way to understand an action so cruel...borderline depraved.

[BettyO]

I agree!

It was said that Powell's mother never recovered from the shock of her youngest son's hanging and the shame of it. Add to that the deaths of 2 other children (one son died in 1859 from meningitis, the other died of wounds at the Battle of Murfreesboro. She supposedly suffered a nervous breakdown after Lewis' death and took to her bed for two years. She never actually got over it and wore mourning for the rest of her life.

[Gene C]

Let's not forget the number of lives their actions ruined. At any time any one of those hung could have gone to the authorities and stopped this terrible crime. Hanging is ghastly, but no worse than what they did to the many innocent victims.

[L Verge]

And, they paid the price. However, the parents of Powell and descendants of other conspirators did not have to be tortured for what they did. That was the point that Betty was trying to make. The sins of the fathers (et al) do not need to be passed on to the sons - and vice versa.

I have had great-grandchildren of Mary Surratt tell me that we know more of the history than they do because the subject was taboo in their family. The recent letter that I quoted from where a granddaughter of John Surratt, Jr. wrote to James O. Hall that people would cross to the other side of the street rather than walk past him is another example of man's unwillingness to forgive. Anna Surratt and her husband even considered moving out West to avoid the stigma, and her life was likely shortened because of the pain she had endured.

One of Dr. Richard Mudd's sons-in-law once told me that Dr. Richard's own father did not want a tombstone placed at his grave when he died because of the stigma attached to the name. Dr. Sam was not widely discussed in the family either until Nettie wrote her book. It was Dr. Richard who took up the crusade to clear the Mudd name when he was about 27 years old and finally knew most of the details about the assassination.

I had great-nieces of David Herold (ladies that had grown up and been friends with my mother - one was my neighbor and another a volunteer at Surratt House) read the riot act to me because I announced in the Surratt Courier that the house we had just acquired for our James O. Hall Research Center was built in 1937 by their brother, a grand-nephew of Davey. This was in the 21st century, and they still did not want to be associated with the history.

All of these people were still living with the guilt that society had placed on them for what their ancestors had done. Since when do we need to sit in judgment for 150 years over whole generations when the real criminal has already paid the price for his/her sins -- especially sins brought on by a very awful civil war where there is plenty of blame to pass around on both sides.

[MaddieM]

Here is a photo of the execution that I started to colourise but put to one side as it was taking up a lot of my time. I'll get to finish it one day.

What was interesting to me was the small tiny details exposed by the colourisation process. There are objects on the ground around the scaffold, what looks like cigars or bottles and containers. Also, the small shelf on the brick wall behind. I've tried to colourise them to make them stand out more.

I can't seem to get up a really large photo of this as each time I try to load it, it says it's too big so the detail is lost. The original is 750 dpi.

[MaddieM]

Hopefully this is larger.

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And closer.

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And again closer still. I made a mess of the grass. But the four conspirators look almost life like with the colours and stand out so much more.

I'm gonna pass this through Lightroom and see if I can make it more realistic. I spent hours and hours cleaning this up before I could start colouring. I took off every scratch and mark and flaw.



Here after Lightroom, it looks more like a hot summer's day.