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[birdy51]

1.

[Persus13]

1.

[kingawsume]

1.

[notquitethere]

You drop the pennies into the squire's palm without question and take your proper place in the stalls. From your privileged position you can see the whole proceeding with ease, and it'll certainly do your reputation no harm for you to be seen so prominently at a hanging.

Miss Featherbrook sits next to you. "I like it when they're brave," she says. "You can really tell someone's character by how they die." The laudanum-addled man is pulled to the edge of the cart. He has no last words for the crowd, barely registering the hangman as the noose is placed around his neck and the knot adjusted. The beadles call for quiet and they read out his crimes. One Michael Potts had been convicted of housebreaking and robbery some years prior and had had his sentence commuted to transportation. By unlawfully returning from Virginia, he had ensured his own early demise. The crowd begin to jeer at his poor showing.

1. Jeer along.
2. Jeering is undignified.
3. The man doesn't deserve my scorn.

[birdy51]

3.

Poor fellow.

[kingawsume]

3.

Quite

[notquitethere]

He's at the end of his life, and few could face such an ordeal head-on. You remain quiet as those around you shout out for him to give a speech that never comes.

Next is Emily Thistle. She stands stoically, casting her eyes out across the crowd. The beadles once more call for quiet, and five hundred or more people fall silent, the air thick with anticipation. As the executioner puts the noose around her neck, the beadle calls out her crimes. Emily Thistle, a house servant of some years, has been convicted of theft from her mistress of goods to the sum of seventeen shillings.

Mrs Prunella must have been more determined to find a thief than to find the truth.

1. I should have done more to see that justice was done.
2. It's not my fault the wrong person was hanged. I only wish I could have gotten a better deal from it.
3. I feel so terrible for poor Miss Thistle. If only I could have saved her from hanging.

[kingawsume]

Oh... well then.
1.

[notquitethere]

As you stand before the spectacle of the hanging, you silently make your vows for the future.

"Only God may judge me today," Miss Thistle shouts out to the crowd, "and it seems only God knows that I have done no wrong. I do not fear death for I know I will soon be in the House of the Lord!"

And with that she takes a running leap off the end of the cart. The rope goes taut and she's pulled back, her head lolling to the side as her neck snaps. Her hanging body bumps against the side of the cart and the crowd bursts into rapturous cheering and applause.

1. Cheer: it was a brave death.
2. Cheer: it was a good speech.
3. Cheering is beneath me.
4. Don't cheer: her death was a tragedy.
5. I already tire of the spectacle.

[Archangel]

Definitely 4.

[kingawsume]

Definitely 4.

[birdy51]

All of 4.

We'll need to redouble our efforts. ;.!

[notquitethere]

Seventeen shillings is a sorry price to pay for a life. Miss Thistle must have had a heartless mistress to press such a charge against her.

Michael Potts, in his laudanum haze, looks on in horror at the hanging body before him. He knows he's next. The executioner hits the flank of one of the horses on the cart and the vehicle slowly jerks forward. Potts, on tiptoe, pulls himself back as far as possible on the cart, until at last his feet slip off and he swings out, hanging in mid-air, his hands still bound. His body twitches back and forth as the noose begins to choke him. A slim fellow like him could last twenty minutes or more. Some of his friends and family rush forward to pull his legs and speed the end, but the beadles hold them back.

1. Help the beadles.
2. Help the family.
3. Enjoy the additional entertainment.
4. Leave before the rest of the crowd.

[Yoink]

2.   

Or maybe 4? Heck, I don't know.