A Hanging in Alexandria
In June of 1852, Robert A. Robinson (sometimes listed as Robertson) shot and killed Moses Guard along the Licking River near Leitch’s Station in modern-day Wilder. He was arrested and tried but the jury could not reach a verdict, so he was re-tried, and, in June of 1853, the Circuit Court at Alexandria found him guilty sentencing him to be executed by hanging in that city.
As his final day, Saturday September 3, 1853, approached, Robinson was naturally upset about his predicament, and slashed his arms with a razor that Friday night, but the jail guards saved his life.
During his failed suicide attempt, Robinson lost much of his blood. The next morning, while traveling from the jail to the gallows to meet his demise, he suddenly fainted. He soon recovered but did not appear well. One witness described him as looking like a “poor, dejected trembling wretch…He was so weak that he tottered like a little child.”
He mustered up the strength to climb the scaffolding’s steps and speak to the crowd, still proclaiming his innocence and claiming self-defense. “Had I intended to kill him, I would not have shot him in the leg.”
“I am perhaps better prepared to die now than I should be two months hence,” he solemnly admitted, expressing gratitude that authorities had not delayed the time of his demise.
Around 12:30, his end finally came as he walked to the trap door. The sheriff acted quickly: “Before the criminal had time to realize his situation, the trap gave way, and his body was dangling in the air.”
This report added: “He died easy. He passed from earth to the spirit world with scarcely a struggle.”
Robinson’s lifeless body remained in place briefly before friends claimed it; they buried him the next day.
This was the first public hanging in Campbell County in ten years. “The excitement was general, but not intense,” and two local newspapers differed in their views of the scene.
The Covington Journal noted: “let it be said to the credit of the people of Campbell County that
comparative few were at the execution,” but the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer wrote that “about five hundred persons assembled” to witness this gruesome occurrence, yet this writer was “disappointed in not seeing a greater gathering.”
The scaffold used to terminate Robinson’s life was used again in Newport in 1866.