Washington Goode - Hanging

Hanging

In the days before the scheduled hanging, Goode repeatedly professed his innocence to the clergymen who entered his prison cell. On the night before the hanging, Goode attempted suicide by swallowing large pieces of tobacco and paper and slashing the veins in his arms with a piece of glass. When the prison guards entered his cell, he had already lost a considerable amount of blood. However, the prison doctor stopped the bleeding thus saving his life so that he could suffer a more terrible death the next day. Exhausted and weakened by the loss of blood, Goode was carried to the gallows at 9:30am on May 25, by prison guards who had strapped him to a chair. A large crowd had gathered in the rain to watch the gruesome event that took place inside the walls of the Leverett Street Jail. At 9:45am Goode was placed still strapped to the chair on the platform over the drop, the sheriff placed a white hood over his head and the rope was adjusted around his neck. The sheriff then read the warrant signed by the Governor after which the trap door sprang open and Goode plunged several feet. Twenty-five minutes later, doctors examined the body and pronounced him dead. His body was then turned over to his uncle George Myres who took his body back to his house to prepare for the funeral. Perhaps as a testament to their continued opposition to the death penalty, over one thousand people paraded through the tenement where Goode's body laid, escorting it to the South Burying Ground where it was laid to rest in one of the city's tombs.