American Historical Ephemera & Photography

6 1/2 x 4 1/4 in. albumen photograph on cardstock mount (some toning and surface soiling to image, with spots of discoloration and wear to edges and corners of mount. Luke & Wheeler's imprint and series title "Rocky Mountain Views" printed on mount recto. The gallows can be seen in the upper portion of the image, with the silhouettes of 2 bodies hanging. A sea of spectators and wagons fills the area before the gallows, and a large gap separates this crowd with a second, further back, crowd of onlookers in the foreground. 

The executed men were murderers Francis Gilbert, a coal pit owner who, while drunk, stabbed a man he believed was a swindler, and Merrick Rosengrants, a miner who shot a man during a botched robbery. The use of a new "twitch up" gallows designed to accommodate 2 men and to make the process visible to onlookers attracted an estimated 10,000 people to the hanging. When the trigger released and the nooses cracked, Gilbert’s neck snapped instantly while Rosengrants languished for thirteen minutes until he died of suffocation.