Becky Millinger
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Re:Last Public Hanging - 2006/08/26 13:55
In 1937, the last execution by hanging in the State of Missouri was conducted in Ste. Genevieve. The location was on the grounds of the County Poor Farm on Little Rock Road. Hurt Hardy, Jr. was hung from the gallows on February 26 for the brutal murder of Ethel Fahnestock who had spurned his romantic advances.
Reports in the St. Louis newspapers indicated that some 400 people were crowded around the gallows with another 1000 including women and children trying to peer through the 16-foot stockade fence. Insinuating that locals turned this into a gala event, "even bringing their children", one St. Louis newspaper gloated, "Ste. Genevieve-Missouri's oldest community and heir to centuries of French culture--has proven as primitive as the rest of us when humanity is allowed to be exposed to the raw."
In response, druggist Mildred Rutledge, whose drugstore was located directly across from the jail where the crowds first assembled, wrote, "This morbidly curious crowd you refer to so scathingly was not composed of our citizens, but of people from all over the state."
Another Ste. Genevieve citizen was apalled at the insinuations of the out-of-town newspapers and wrote, "Yes, the hanging which took place in Missouri's oldest community was a spectacle, and we citizens, who try to carry on the French culture of centuries to which we have fallen heirs, bitterly resent the spectacle which outside people made of the hanging of Hurt Hardy. If the number of people counted in the photographs you spoke of were from Ste. Geneviveve, we would bow our heads in shame. The effect of all this ugly publicity is to cast a shadow of shame over Ste. Genevieve and to leave the impression that the inhabitants of this city are people of low nature, bloodthirsty and mentally depraved, in spite of their being heirs to centuries of culture and other elevating influences."
Such was Ste. Genevieve's sense of pride in its citizenry and heritage. The inhumane nature of execution by hanging led to the eventual outlawing of hanging in favor of electrocution.
(From Ste. Genevieve, A Leisurely Stroll Through History, by Bill and Patti Naeger and Mark L. Evans, Published by Merchant Street Publishing, Ste. Genevieve, Missouri)
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