0:09 [SPEAKER_00]: It was raining on the day of the execution, as Flutter described it. 0:14 [SPEAKER_01]: The rain during the forenoon had the effect of making the streets and almost every other place exceedingly sloppy and muddy. 0:21 [SPEAKER_01]: The ground having recently been frozen, the mud was not very deep, but every place was very slippery. 0:28 [SPEAKER_01]: While the crowd were assembled around the jail waiting, a rather green, young man attempted to show his agility and sweetness by starting off in a fast run. 0:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, he slipped and fell in full view of the whole crowd, and when he picked himself up, he was decidedly the dirtiest man in Wallbash County. 0:47 [SPEAKER_01]: The effect was ludicrous in the extreme, and the shouts of laughter stunned the ears of the mortified young man as he attempted to escape from observation. 0:56 [SPEAKER_00]: After named Fletcher's earnest request, a no-one attend, 6,000 people showed up, and accounting with a total population of 14,000 by the sound of it pretty much everyone within a day's journey, who could get away with it, made the trip. 1:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Fletcher stood apart from the mob, saddened by what he saw. 1:14 [SPEAKER_01]: As the time drew near, those who stood on the wood pile on the rain and cold became very impatient and very noisy. 1:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And at length, as their patience became exhausted, they became exceedingly rude and began to call out in a loud voice to bring him out. 1:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Put the rope around his neck, string him up, hang the damned old scoundrel, and many other wicked and disgusting cries. 1:40 [SPEAKER_00]: There was a wooden enclosure surrounding the scaffold, as prescribed by Section 134 of Indiana's legal statutes, but it was too short, and that may have been on purpose. 1:51 [SPEAKER_00]: As the crowd pressed up against it, they began to tear the wooden planks off the scaffold down, in order to improve their view. 1:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Back inside his gel cell, while the crowd outside chanted his name, in a cold, drizzling rain, John Hubbard was preparing for the end. 2:07 [SPEAKER_01]: At 2 o'clock, Hubbard parted for the last time with his wife. 2:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Ever since their arrest they had occupied the same cell, their parting has said to be very affecting. 2:17 [SPEAKER_01]: They embraced several times and mits cries and sobbs. 2:20 [SPEAKER_01]: He told his wife that he was about to leave her forever. 2:24 [SPEAKER_01]: that he would be dead and at rest. 2:26 [SPEAKER_01]: He wanted her to cheer up and prepare to meet him in heaven. 2:29 [SPEAKER_01]: The bystanders who had retired from the cell were very much affected and several of them shed tears. 2:35 [SPEAKER_01]: After the separation, Hubbard was conducted upstairs in the prison. 2:39 [SPEAKER_01]: He sat down and requested some brandy but not enough to intoxicate him. 2:44 [SPEAKER_01]: The sheriff gave him a little brandy with warm tea. 2:48 [SPEAKER_01]: After his brandy, 2:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Hubbard smoked his pipe in another attempt to calm his nerves. 2:53 [SPEAKER_00]: He studied himself and stood to face the door. 2:56 [SPEAKER_01]: At 30 minutes before 3 o'clock, the prisoner door was thrown open at the prisoner, supported by a Reverend Skinner and Reverend Townsend. 3:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Baptist ministers came out, followed by the sheriff, with a rope in his hand, and by the deputy sheriff. 3:12 [SPEAKER_01]: They ascended the scaffold, and the prisoner was seated on the chair. 3:16 [SPEAKER_01]: He looked exceedingly pale. 3:18 [SPEAKER_01]: He looked intensely for a moment at those within the enclosure. 3:22 [SPEAKER_01]: He then glanced at the dense crowd on the outside towards the courthouse and made a very low bow to them. 3:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Reverend Townsend found the scene as disturbing as did flutcher, he said of the mob. 3:34 [SPEAKER_03]: Three thousand of those thousands present were not only excited, but they seemed to be raving maniacs yelling at the top of their voices. 3:43 [SPEAKER_03]: By this time the crowd had overrun the guards and threatened to tear down the jail if Hubbard was not immediately brought out. 3:50 [SPEAKER_03]: They had formed an 3:54 [SPEAKER_03]: and, if so, they intended to take the matter into their own hands. 4:00 [SPEAKER_00]: At this point, the sheriff and jailers were starting to lose control. 4:04 [SPEAKER_00]: They were outnumbered, about a thousand to one. 4:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And if the mob became violent, there was no telling what might happen next. 4:10 [SPEAKER_00]: They approached Elder Townsend for advice. 4:13 [SPEAKER_00]: He said he didn't know. 4:15 [SPEAKER_00]: They decided to hang him early. 4:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Hubbard turned around quite suddenly at the multitude, spreading his hands as if addressing the people, and praying and allowed trembling voice. 4:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Lord, Jesus have mercy upon me. 4:30 [SPEAKER_01]: I trust in the dear Jesus. 4:33 [SPEAKER_01]: I hope I shall soon be with the Jesus. 4:36 [SPEAKER_03]: I took Him in hand, accompanied by Elder Skinner. 4:41 [SPEAKER_03]: We mounted the steps from the jail to the scaffold. 4:44 [SPEAKER_03]: This seemed to pacify the crowd and silence ensued. 4:48 [SPEAKER_03]: Hubbard was asked if he had anything to say. 4:50 [SPEAKER_03]: He told me to tell them he was not guilty of the murder of the French family 4:58 [SPEAKER_03]: I grew dizzy and told Elder Skinner to address the audience on behalf of Hubbard, which he did. 5:05 [SPEAKER_03]: The rope was placed around his neck, he was made to stand on the trapdoor, and the cap was drawn over his face. 5:13 [SPEAKER_03]: I then stepped up to him, gave him my hand, and asked if he knew me. 5:18 [SPEAKER_03]: He said he did. 5:20 [SPEAKER_03]: I told him to look to Jesus. 5:23 [SPEAKER_01]: All things being made ready, the sheriff took hold of the lever attached to the bolt under the trap door and told him that he had two minutes. 5:32 [SPEAKER_01]: At this moment, the stillness became intense, and every eye was riveted upon the prisoner who stood alone in full view of almost every part of town. 5:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Remember. 5:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The main entry point to Wallbash is through a deep cut down into a small river valley. 5:50 [SPEAKER_00]: The core house sits on the opposite side of this valley, elevated around the town so that the proceedings would have been visible for more than a mile away. 5:58 [SPEAKER_00]: The crowd paused and waited, with the sheriff's hand upon the lever, the clock ticked, and it was as time froze, and for one last moment, John Hubbard stood by his own power, under the strain of his unimaginable tension. 6:13 [SPEAKER_01]: His knees began to give out." 6:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Every muscle of John Hubbard's body seemed to quiver, and several times it appeared that he would sink down. 6:22 [SPEAKER_01]: He told the sheriff that he could not stand. 6:25 [SPEAKER_01]: At this point, Elder Townsend and one or two others took leave of him. 6:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Last of all came the deputy sheriff, Mr. Thomas, and took the prisoner by the hand and said, goodbye, Hubbard. 6:38 [SPEAKER_01]: The prisoner said, 6:43 [SPEAKER_01]: As their hands parted, the trapdoor fell instantly. 6:47 [SPEAKER_01]: I stepped one side. 6:49 [SPEAKER_03]: The trigger was sprung, and Hubbard was swinging below by the neck. 6:53 [SPEAKER_01]: The wretched murderer was suspended between the heavens and earth, a dying man. 6:59 [SPEAKER_01]: He fell about four feet, but his neck was not broken, nor did the new straw very tight around his neck. 7:06 [SPEAKER_01]: His pulse continued to beat for 16 minutes. 7:09 [SPEAKER_01]: There was a slight draw upon the feet several times, which gave a tremulous motion to the suspended body. 7:18 [SPEAKER_03]: I aim to go down the stairs and see no more of what was going on, but I became so bewildered that the sheriff from Peru, seeing my situation, led me to the corner of the platform, where I took hold of the banister, and soon recovered sufficiently to go down the steps. 7:37 [SPEAKER_03]: I had resolved not to see him hanging on the gallows, but when I went down the steps, I could only get my back against the jail door, because the crowd was in the way, and 7:48 [SPEAKER_03]: was swinging right before me. 7:50 [SPEAKER_00]: In for 16 minutes, while he's swayed and strangulated, Reverend Townsend blocked by the crowd on every side, had no choice but to stand beside the hanging man, and with a crowd of 6,000 was forced to patiently watch him die. 8:05 [SPEAKER_00]: In his final days, Hubbard had been tormented by the thought of what would happen to his body following execution. 8:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Body snatching was a thing back then. 8:14 [SPEAKER_00]: People would steal corpses from cemeteries, to sell to doctors and surgeons so that they might explore an experiment on the anatomy of the human body. 8:23 [SPEAKER_00]: When criminals and undesirables died, they often skipped burial altogether and went directly under the knife. 8:29 [SPEAKER_00]: The thought of his own dismembered body haunted Hubbard, and I think most of us would agree that this is a very normal thing to feel, to relay his fears, towns in a gree to stay with his body, until the moment his coffin was sealed shut. 8:43 [SPEAKER_03]: I had to stand beside his dying, hanging body, until he was taken down and carried into the jail. 8:51 [SPEAKER_03]: The sheriff, knowing my promise, came to me to see the body laid in the coffin and the 8:59 [SPEAKER_03]: And the next day, the coffin put on the packet for Fort Wayne. 9:03 [SPEAKER_03]: But I was afterwards told, there was only a log of wood in the coffin, and that the doctors had divided the body of Hubbard among them, as for the facts I know not. 9:18 [SPEAKER_00]: As offensive and disrespectful as the body snatching tradition may be, it was an open secret in the medical community. 9:26 [SPEAKER_02]: Ben Franklin, for example, in the 1700s, did quite a number of illegal dissections, and still doctors were doing it. 9:34 [SPEAKER_00]: What Reverend Townsend did not know was arrangements for Hubbard's body had already been made. 9:39 [SPEAKER_02]: They had made an arrangement to get the body already. 9:43 [SPEAKER_02]: The sheriff says no no, you can watch me nail the coffin clothes so they do. 9:48 [SPEAKER_02]: And that night the doctors at their appointed hour go to a random farm out in the country they didn't give him a stone or anything. 9:56 [SPEAKER_02]: They bury the body by covering it with their I used air quotes over bury because it was not at all a burial. 10:05 [SPEAKER_02]: They did not dig anything. 10:07 [SPEAKER_02]: And then, on a ray of county doctors show up and they agree that a guy from the fountain, a small town near here, had dibs on the body, and that after he was done doing whatever he would do with it, he would give pieces of it to the other doctors to share. 10:24 [SPEAKER_02]: And so, John Hubbard ended up being parted out, essentially. 10:29 [SPEAKER_02]: His body was then on display in a drugstore window. 10:32 [SPEAKER_02]: It had been reassembled. 10:34 [SPEAKER_02]: The skeleton was there. 10:35 [SPEAKER_02]: And then it was put in the LaFountain High School, where it was eventually transferred to Wabash High School. 10:42 [SPEAKER_02]: And then it was put in a closet for about 60 years. 10:46 [SPEAKER_02]: And then when they tore that high school building down, they gave the bones to the museum, found them and gave them to the museum. 10:54 [SPEAKER_00]: In the immediate aftermath of the hanging, the gruesome appetites of the crowd were still unsatisfied. 11:00 [SPEAKER_01]: About 500 persons are said to have gone into the enclosure and touched the body of Hubbard as he hung from the scaffold. 11:07 [SPEAKER_01]: A minister inquired of one person why he wished to touch the body and was answered that he did so as a charm against witchcraft. 11:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, what country? 11:17 [SPEAKER_01]: What ignorance? 11:18 [SPEAKER_01]: After the body was cut down, the rope by which he had been suspended was cut up into many pieces and divided among the simple. 11:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Some of these pieces were carried away as momentos, others as preventative of eggu and other diseases. 11:34 [SPEAKER_03]: I had seen mad cattle in a panic, but never thought the rational human beings in a Christian land could be induced to acso. 11:42 [SPEAKER_03]: As soon as Hubbard was taken away, the number of men that were pressing forward to obtain a small portion of the rope to carry in their pockets to drive away witches, or to cure toothache, or something else, impaled me to wonder if I were not dreaming. 12:02 [SPEAKER_03]: If I were to look out in the dark, I could see, Hubbard, swinging before me. 12:09 [SPEAKER_00]: On the day before his execution, Hubbard finished the final draft of his life story. 12:14 [SPEAKER_03]: I was called away the day before his execution, and got Elder Skinner to visit him, and to receive whatever he had written to be given to me. 12:23 [SPEAKER_03]: The citizens of Wallbash, hearing that Elder Skinner had the document, 12:27 [SPEAKER_03]: met at the courthouse and sent for Elder Skinner to bring it there. 12:32 [SPEAKER_03]: Finding that some of their best citizens were implicated and slandered. 12:37 [SPEAKER_03]: They committed it to the flames. 12:42 [SPEAKER_00]: When Hubbard died that day, he did so without knowing that his story would never be told. 12:46 [SPEAKER_00]: We can only ever guess what that book contained. 12:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And as a historian, I find that absolutely maddening. 12:52 [SPEAKER_00]: As an investigator, I find it deeply troubling. 12:55 [SPEAKER_00]: This certainly looks like an open and shut case, but there's an old saying, among those who distrust vigilante justice and mob violence, that if everyone agrees that an accused should be convicted, then he should be released right away for he must be innocent. 13:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that Hubbert was innocent, but there's something disturbing about destroying his life story by burning the only copy. 13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: What threat could the testimony of this dead man really be? 13:21 [SPEAKER_00]: If none of his accusations were true, are damning in any way. 13:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Remember, all of the evidence brought trial, however compelling, was entirely circumstantial, which is to say there was no 13:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Also remember that Judge John McWallus had turned his head and wept openly from the bench. 13:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The local doctor, James Ford, a man so respected to this day that his house has become a local museum testified for the defense. 13:53 [SPEAKER_00]: History is ultimately told by the victors, and due to the actions of Reverend Skinner in the quote, prominent citizens of Wabash, the story of John Hubbard will never be told at all. 14:05 [SPEAKER_00]: In this, if nothing else, Sheds a sliver of doubt on the official story of the French 14:12 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a very large sliver, but it does exist, and I'm glad it does. 14:16 [SPEAKER_00]: As far as I'm concerned, I deserve it. 14:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Not because I think these unnamed prominent citizens are guilty, but because that's how much I hate book burning. 14:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Along with the handcuffs and lock from Hubbard's imprisonment, the museum holds ahead and shoulders bust of the executed man. 14:34 [SPEAKER_02]: We have a plaster casting of John Hubbard's head and face and in it you can tell the rotation of his head relative to his shoulders that his neck has been broken. 14:46 [SPEAKER_02]: and they literally said in court hang from the neck until such a time as you are dead, just like they do in the movies. 14:53 [SPEAKER_02]: And his friendly witness James Ford did the death mask then in there. 14:58 [SPEAKER_02]: And he remarks in his diary because James Ford was a prolific writer of memoirs. 15:07 [SPEAKER_02]: He said that if you look at that plaster cast, it doesn't look like a murderer. 15:11 [SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't look like crazy person. 15:13 [SPEAKER_02]: It might even be a nice guy. 15:15 [SPEAKER_02]: And he said that was the scariest part of it. 15:18 [SPEAKER_02]: But everyone admitted that it was a good likeness. 15:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Every time I look at John Hubbard, I find myself agreeing with James Ford. 15:27 [SPEAKER_00]: I also recall the last sentence of the description that had been given to the paper at the time of his arrest. 15:33 [SPEAKER_00]: His whole appearance marks him a man capable of committing any crime, no matter how revolting. 15:39 [SPEAKER_00]: That sounds a bit dramatic to me. 15:41 [SPEAKER_00]: After John's execution, Sarah Hubbard follows her husband's lead in applying for a change of venue. 15:51 [SPEAKER_02]: Sarah Hubbard applies for a change of venue, same lawyers, and they move her to Grant County, where the Quakers were her anti-death penalty. 16:00 [SPEAKER_02]: She ends up being sentenced to life in prison in the women's penitentiary in Indianapolis, where she lived into the 1900s. 16:09 [SPEAKER_02]: As a very old woman, a news crew came down from the Wabash plain dealer, our main daily newspaper, interviewed her, and they said she seemed like a nice old lady and that you would never have thought that she murdered seven people, then they asked her about the trial or to say anything about her husband. 16:31 [SPEAKER_02]: She said, that's a closed book and I'm not going to discuss it. 16:34 [SPEAKER_02]: According to the prison, she was a model prisoner. 16:38 [SPEAKER_02]: Richard Hubbard ended up getting taken in adopted by a guy who worked on the canal and then they moved him to Fort Wayne because people bothered him, here, due to who his parents were and what they'd done. 16:52 [SPEAKER_02]: He remains working on the canal in Fort Wayne and then when his adopted father died, 16:59 [SPEAKER_02]: his son adopted him because being a state idiot he could never be an independent person he was completely harmless and never heard anybody or did anything wrong and he's buried up and forewame so Richard Everard was perfectly normal. 17:17 [SPEAKER_02]: There was also a rumor for some time that Sarah Hubbard was pregnant at the time she was arrested. 17:23 [SPEAKER_02]: and there have been various people throughout the sort of inner-seeding years who have claimed to be the descendants of John Hubbard, but there was never any verification because when the the prison that she was in in Indianapolis no longer exists and most of the paperwork relating to it was lost and her body was buried in an unmarked grave. 17:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Life in Wavash went on much like it had before, but with a new plot of darkness in its past. 17:56 [SPEAKER_00]: A whole generation of young people had been introduced to the spectacle of public, fatal violence. 18:03 [SPEAKER_00]: In his memoir, Reverend Townsend recalls a group of local boys imitating the execution by holding a mock trial and hanging a local dart by his neck until dead. 18:14 [SPEAKER_03]: The next Sunday. 18:15 [SPEAKER_03]: The boys of Wabash collected in the courthouse to form a sham court, having their judge, jury, sheriff, and lawyers. 18:24 [SPEAKER_03]: The court being opened, the judge or clerk read the charges against an old dog for killing a cat. 18:31 [SPEAKER_03]: The prisoner was ordered into court, the sheriff brought him in, and after the merits of dogs and cats were fully discussed, the case was given to the jury. 18:42 [SPEAKER_03]: who soon found the old dog guilty and brought in their verdict accordingly. 18:47 [SPEAKER_03]: The judge passed the sentence and the boys proceeded to hang the old dog on the same gallows where Hubbard was hanged. 18:54 [SPEAKER_03]: On Monday morning, I went downtown and seeing a group of men collected, I went in among them and found them discussing what to do with the boys. 19:03 [SPEAKER_03]: Some said they must everyone be whipped. 19:07 [SPEAKER_03]: I told them to let the boys alone, and for them to quit hanging men, and the boys would quit hanging dogs. 19:14 [SPEAKER_03]: I want it distinctly understood that, if they hang anymore men, they would do it without me. 19:21 [SPEAKER_00]: As I mentioned at the beginning of the series, the bones of John Hubbard are currently on display in my studio here in Wabash. 19:29 [SPEAKER_00]: If you ever drop in on your way through the quote, Crossroads of America, you'll notice that the top of his head was removed for the study of his brain on that farming of Fountain all those years ago. 19:53 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to thank local historians, Ron Woodward, and especially TJ Honeycutt for their guidance and involvement in this series. 20:00 [SPEAKER_00]: It would not have been possible without them. 20:02 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're ever in the area, I'd encourage you to swing by the Wabash County Museum, just down the street from my studio. 20:08 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're lucky, one of those two will be in there to greet you, and if not, it's still a great place to visit, especially for kids.
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