Although several men have vied for the dubious distinction, including a pair of Rhode Island guys who drove to Nashua to perpetrate a crime that would make their names household words, none of them ever made it to the grisly gallows — keeping intact Alton storekeeper Howard Long’s infamous status as the last prisoner to be executed in New Hampshire.

With the 80th anniversary of Long’s hanging coming up, and the dust finally beginning to settle on state legislators’ passage — over Gov. Sununu’s veto — of the bill doing away with the death penalty, I thought I’d take a look back at the state’s death-penalty history, and share a few things I found regarding Long, who was 32 when he met his fate in a “small storehouse in the State Prison yard” in Concord.

Various sources I was able to access seem to agree that New Hampshire has executed 24 people in all, beginning two days before Christmas in 1739 with a two-fer, if you will.

The hangings of Sarah Simpson and Penelope Henry (surname also listed as “Kenny” in some reports) are notable not only because they were the state’s first, and concurrent, executions, but also because they are two of only three women executed in state history.

The other is Ruth Blay, executed on Dec. 30, 1768 for murder — or more specifically, for “allegedly killing her stillborn child.” Now I’m not going to wax political here, but guess what — according to the report, Ruth was exonerated shortly after her execution.

The three were among 29 women executed across New England between 1623 and 1800, a report states. Most were either white servants or African-American slaves; all were charged with the crime of infanticide.

Back in the day, these hangings were not only conducted in public, they drew plenty of spectators, according to historical accounts. It was a Colonial-era thing, apparently. One account describes execution day, almost ironically given the high attendance, as “a mournful spectacle.”

As the morbidly curious began to assemble, Simpson, said to be 27, and Henry (or Kenny), 20, were brought from jail to two separate churches, where they were each forced to

listen to “execution sermons” delivered by two local preachers.

At least the issue of race doesn’t appear to be a factor in who the state selected for capital punishment over the centuries; Thomas Powers, executed in 1796 for rape, is the only African American sent to the gallows.

Also notable about Thomas, according to the report, is he is the only person executed for a crime other than murder.

Sandwiched between the double-execution and Ruth Blay’s was the hanging of a guy named Eliphas Dow of Hampton Falls in May 1755. Like the rest, except for Powers, his crime was murder; he reportedly beat someone to death with a hoe.

As for Howard Long, the closest we have to a contemporary execution, the then-Nashua Telegraph sent ace reporter Fred Dobens up to Concord to act as one of several newspapermen picked to witness the event.

Long, for the uninitiated, was charged with sexual assaulting and murdering a 10-year-old Laconia boy in September 1937 in the woods off Savage Road in Gilford.

Long, described alternately as a “filling station proprietor” and “shopkeeper” in nearby Alton, was convicted of first degree murder just four months later.

He survived a handful of stays and reprieves, but his fate was sealed when he was sentenced on June 10 to hang on July 14.

“The trap was sprung at 1:20 a.m. and Long was officially pronounced dead by Sheriff Fred A. Elliott at 1:27 a.m.,” Dobens wrote — one can only imagine what those seven minutes were like for him and everyone else present, not to mention the doomed prisoner.

Interestingly, Dobens wrote further down in his story that Long “may be the last” person to hang in New Hampshire — not because the legislature was poised to abolish the death penalty, but because there was expected to be “an attempt on the part of those opposed to hanging to substitute the electric chair as a means of doing away with convicted murderers.”

Talk about a “pick your poison” scenario.

Long wore no particular expression on his face, Dobens reported. As he crossed the prison yard toward the storehouse where he would meet his fate, Long “saw the sky and the stars for the first time since he was moved to (death row), and the last time while he was to be on earth.”

Long “did not falter,” Dobens wrote, as he and a Catholic priest read the Lord’s Prayer together.

To show how much things have changed in 80 years, state officials received but one protest of Long’s hanging in the weeks leading up to the execution.

It came from a Nashua woman named Mrs. M. J. Kendall, according to Dobens. She wrote that while she “held no brief for Long,” meaning she wasn’t writing in support of him and his deeds, she did believe “that if the state must do away with convicted murderers, it should not be through such a cruel and inhuman method as hanging.”

Mrs. Kendall, Dobens wrote, “believes the state should adopt the electric chair” as its method of capital punishment.

Oh well, Mrs. Kendall probably meant well.

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears Sundays in The Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256, dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com or@Telegraph_DeanS.