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NEW-HAMPSHIRE STATE PRISON.    539

the prison, the sheriff of the county in which the deed was commit,
ted acting as executioner.

Since this law, one person has been executed, and another is
'    under sentence to be hung the third Tuesday of February, 1874.

The first victim of his crime was Josiah L. Pike, thirty-one years
of age, a native of Portsmouth, but at the time of the deed, was
making his home in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Mr. Thomas
Brown and wife were an aged couple, residing in Hampton Falls,
and living on a small farm with other sufficient means for their
maintenance. Josiah L. Pike was a young man, of loose habits,
and frequently assisted Mr. Brown on his farm, always receiving
fair compensation for his services; besides he was many times the
object of charity from the motherly hands of Mrs. Brown. In the
fall of 1867, he assisted Mr. Brown, and when he left was paid the
full amount for his labor and also received, as a gift from Mrs.
Brown, a pair of new woolen feetings. Through the following
winter he led a dissolute life, frequently being under the influence
of liquor. This conduct naturally brought him into straitened
#»    circumstances, by spring, and very much in want of money.

Through    some source he learned that Mr. Brown had sold a yoke

of oxen and had received his pay for them in money. On the
night of May 7, 1867, he went secretly to the house of Mr. Brown
and inhumanly murdered him and his wife, who had so many times
befriended him in time of need. For this dark and bloody deed,
Pike was    arrested, and in due time, convicted of the murder. He

paid the penalty of his crime by being hung in the south-west cor-
ner of the prison hall, November 9, 1869, Joseph P. Morse, of
Portsmouth, acting as his executioner.

Franklin B. Evans is a native of Strafford, and at the date of the
crime for which he stands convicted, and sentenced, was living in
Northwood, and sixty one years of age. Georgianna Lovering, a

J    niece of    Evans, and only fourteen years of age, lived with her

grandparents, in Northwood near the Strafford line,
j *    Evans    for many years had lived a wandering life, sometimes

!    traveling    through the country as a physician, pretending to effect

wonderful cures ; while at other times he would be dressed in a
sanctimonious garb and assume the profession and duties of an
itinerant preacher, but through all his various professions there
never was a more evil designing and hypocritical heart, than beat
in the breast of Franklin B. Evans. He had long watched Geor*