Yes, slavelucy's last sentence is very true. Being from Down Under, you people have had very little (comparatively speaking) experience with public execution in your history, but in both the United States and Mother England, they were wildly popular, with souvenier salesmen, food vendors, etc. In the nineteenth century, they would sometimes draw crowds of tens of thousands. Some places would charge admission (to hold down the crowds and/or defray the cost of the trial/execution/crowd control). They were looked forward to with great anticipation.

I agree with csr's definition of snuff, which is similar to mine: snuff is death for the explicit purpose of sexual gratification.