This week in 1892

“I have this to say: That I know nothing about the murder. The people bore false witness against me. I hired Mr. Platt to defend me and told him all I knew, but he turned against me and went over to the other side. That is the reason I am on the scaffold to-day. If I did the deed and knew what I was doing, I ought to be hanged for it, but I did not know what I was doing.”

— Charles Wall, convicted of murder, hanging, Pennsylvania.
Executed March 8, 1892

A large crowd pushed past prison gates and some even jumped walls to stand in ankle- deep snow to see Wall hang. Wall, convicted of axing his wife in a field in front of her father, remained calm in his cell the morning of his execution. Prison guards were surprised by Wall’s happy mood in the death cell and claimed that he was bothered only by the fact that his favorite horse had just died.