Dora Wright and Charles Barrett - a double hanging in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.

Dora Wright and Charles Barrett had been convicted of separate murders in the United States court at South McAlester before Judge W. H. H. Clayton at the end of May and the beginning of June 1903, respectively.

Both were sentenced to death on Wednesday the 3rd of June 1903. According to the shorthand notes of the court stenographer the following was the exact language used : The Court: “Barrett, you stand convicted of murder.

You were defended by a lawyer of your choice and tried by a jury substantially of your own selection, and the jury has found you guilty of murder. Have you anything to say why the sentence of the law should not be pronounced against you? Prisoner - No response.

“The sentence of the law as pronounced by the court against you, Charles Barrett, for the crime of murder, of which you stand convicted in this court, is, that the marshal of this district shall now take you to the United States jail, located at South McAlester, in the Central district of the Indian Territory, and there safely keep you until Friday, the 17th day of July, 1903, on which day, on peril of what may befall him, between the hours of sunrise and sunset, he shall cause execution hereof by taking you to some convenient place within the Central district of the Indian Territory to be selected by him and there cause you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may God have mercy on your soul.” Dora Wright then received the same sentence.

Barrett was found guilty of the murder of John Hennessey, at Calvin. Hennessey was an older man who worked on the Choctaw railway at Calvin. On the afternoon of Sunday the 7th of December 1902 he had gone down to the creek to wash his shirt. He was smoking a pipe at the time when Barrett came up behind him and shot him in the head. The motive for the murder was robbery and he took $30 from Hennessey’s trouser pockets.

Barrett strongly maintained his innocence until four days before his death when he admitted his guilt in a written statement in which he implicated two other persons living at Calvin.

Dora Wright, described in the contemporary press as a 38 year-old black woman, was convicted of beating, torturing and mutilating Bessie Williams a young girl of between 7 and 10 years old, who apparently was her stepdaughter.

The Capital newspaper called the crime "the most horrible and outrageous ever committed" in that part of the Oklahoma Territory. It went on to state that "The child had been literally cut to pieces with switches," it reported, "but the demon did not stop here. There were burned marks and holes on the flesh, where a hot iron had been applied. "Then the fiend used some instrument upon the child to complete the hellish crime, probably to lead the officers to believe that criminal assault had been committed, but medical skill could not thus be baffled."

Wright admitted beating the girl, saying she punished her for associating with white boys.

The woman's defense attorney, Hamble Carrington, tried to persuade jurors that the child had been raped before her murder suggesting that a man killed the child. The jury dismissed that defense.

Carrington twice tried to intercede on Wright’s behalf with President Roosevelt, stating it was brutal to hang a woman. The president's reply was: "If that woman was mean enough to do a thing like that, she ought to have nerve enough to meet her punishment."

The scaffold was described in the press as being eighteen feet high and constructed of heavy pine and was erected against the east wall of the federal jail in South McAlester.

It had two double door traps, each made of steel which form a small square in the scaffold. The scaffold will be reached by a stairway at the north side of the structure. In case the condemned collapse, they will be strapped to boards and held in an upright position on the trap. The ropes and the steel trap doors were supplied by the Pauley Jail Company, of St. Louis.

The Capital newspaper described the executions as follows:

A large crowd gathered outside the federal jail starting at 5 a.m., but a high wall surrounding the jail prevented most of them from seeing anything. The executions were overseen by Deputy US Marshall Genung.

The hangings were originally scheduled for just after sunrise, but they were delayed as authorities awaited the late arrival of a Choctaw train carrying jurors who had wired ahead that they were coming. A few officials, press representatives and friends of the murderers were allowed inside.

Three minutes before he mounted the scaffold, Barrett turned to the chief jailer and said, "Goodbye, Mr. Grady, I'll meet you up yonder." At 6:54 a.m., the condemned were led to the scaffold and placed in position, Barrett on the right and Wright on the left.

After starting up the stairs, Wright stopped to say goodbye to her fellow prisoners. The Rev. Charles Roebuck and Dr. M.C. Wilson stood one each side of her, holding her arms, as she mounted the scaffold.

The arms and legs of Barrett and Wright were fastened with straps before Genung put black caps over their heads. "You are getting that too tight," Barrett murmured as Deputy Marshal Crockett Lee adjusted the noose around his neck. Wright's last words were nearly identical. "Don't make it quite so tight," she said as jailer J.C. Wilkinson adjusted her noose.

At 6:58 a.m., Genung, his hand trembling, dropped a handkerchief as a signal for Deputy Marshal Henry Donathan to pull the lever that let Wright and Barrett fall to their death.

The bodies each dropped 7 feet. Doctors checked the pulses and pronounced Barrett dead after 12 minutes, Wright after 13. "After they had been cut down their faces were examined and there was no trace of the work of pain. Except for the dislocation of their necks, one could not have told but what they had died peacefully in their beds."

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