This week in 1899

“As she clung there, looking up into my face with such a pleading, pitiful face, I thought that surely I had no
heart at all, for such pleading would have melted a heart of stone…I took a plank and struck her on the head and face several times; then pushed her under the water with the plank and held it on her a few seconds.
Then she sank.”

— Hiram Hall, convicted of murder, hanging, Tennessee.
Executed April 13, 1899

Before confessing, in gruesome detail, to the murder of his wife, Hiram Hall coolly made his way to the gallows with a cigar hanging from his mouth. He claimed that his mother put him up to the deed because she didn’t like his wife. Hall also claimed that his mother had encouraged him to kill his father, but Hall never followed through on that. Hall’s mother abandoned him after his arrest, leaving his attempts to contact her unanswered. However, his father defended him and attended his execution.