This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: maryachtrh Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.wright/15237.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Appears in "The Wapanucka Press" 9 July 1903, Wapanucka, Johnston County, Indian Territory, now Oklahoma WILL DIE TOGETHER Charles Barrett and Dora Wright Ready to Die, But Hope for Commutation South McAleste: Some time between the hours of sunrise and sunset on Friday, July 17, Charles Barrett and Dora Wright will meet death together on a scaffold to be erected against the ease wall of the federal jail in this city. Preparations are now will under way for the execution. Plans for the scaffold have been accepted and will soon be turned over to the contractors. The ropes are now en route as are also the steel trap doors, invented and manufactured by the Pauley Jail Company, of St. Louis. The scaffold proper will be eighteen feet high and of heavy pine. It will have two traps, so that both prisoners will be dropped into eternity at the same instant. The traps will be steel. Each one has two steel plate doors, which form a small square in the center of the scaffold. The prisoner stands on these plates. The rope is fixed to the brace above, the black cap drawn down and the signal given. The hangman jerks a small lever and the steel trap, or flooring, parts in the center and falls downward, where each side is caught by a spring. The prisoner falls ten feet. The scaffold will be reached by a stairway at the north side of the structure. In case the condemned collapse, they will be strapped to boards and held in an upright position on the trap. The distasteful duty of overseeing the execution falls upon Chief Deputy Marshal F. S. Genung, who will personally supervise the executions. The hangman has not been selected, neither have his assistants. Mr. Genung has been familiarizing himself with the grewsome work at St. Louis and Washington. Ropes will be stretched around the scaffold to prevent a crush of invited spectators. Invitations will be issued to a few outside members of the press and officials. Carpenters are now completing a small building in the jail yard, which will contain two cells for the condemned. The prisoners will be confined there until the execution and a death watch will be put over them as soon as the change is made. Barrett is now the sole inhabitant of the hospital building and is closely watched. The Wright woman is confined in the female ward with other women. Charles Barrett says he is ready to die. He protests that he is innocent of the murder of old John Hennessey, and says that God has forgiven him of all sins. He still has hope of commutation, although his minister and guards have repeatedly told him that there is little or not hope. The Wright woman says she has religion and is ready to die, but she insists that the whipping she inflicted upon her child did not produce death. She, too is hopeful of a commutation to life imprisonment. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.