Breaking on the Wheel
Burned at the Stake
This was the dreaded sentence passed on heretics, sorcerers, witches and women found guilty of treasonable acts. Taken to a public site, usually the marketplace, they were either seated on a stool or made to stand in a tar barrel, secured to a stake by means of a rope or a chain attached to the hinged iron ring about their necks, and ropes or hoops around their bodies. Piles of wood would then be heaped waist-high around them and set alight. As the flames rose and the thick smoke billowed forth, the executioner would either speed their demise by removing the stool so that the ring strangled them, or pulled on the ring so that it choked them but, as occasionally happened, should the conflagration take too fierce a hold, he would be unable to get near, and it would be some hours before the fire abated, leaving just a pile of charred and smouldering ashes. Some victims were given the special privilege of having small bags of gunpowder fastened beneath their arms or between their legs, the eventual igniting of which brought death quicker than by the slow mounting of the flames.
Dissection
In 1832, the Anatomy Act was passed, which permitted surgeons to obtain corpses legally from institutions and hospitals for instructional purposes, if the bodies were unclaimed, or by agreement with the relatives. It also succeeded in stamping out overnight the ghastly practice whereby body-snatchers dug up literally thousands of newly buried corpses in cemeteries and sold them to surgical schools.
Prior to that date the old law stated briefly, ‘that the Body of every Person convicted of Murder shall, after Execution, either be dissected or hung in Chains’. This had a dual purpose: to act as a deterrent to criminals who, not unnaturally, recoiled at the prospect of their cadavers being cut up, and also to provide specimens for the instruction of surgical students who would otherwise have to learn as they went along, on living patients.
As a deterrent, that law had a certain effect on the criminal fraternity, chiefly because in those days hanging consisted of slow strangulation, and should they be cut down while still alive and then, as was usual, rushed to Surgeons’ Hall, the prospect of watching the scalpel approaching their stomachs did not bear thinking about! This dread resulted in convicted criminals arranging for friends to pull their legs once the rope had tightened, or to rescue their ‘corpses’ from the hangman en route to the operating theatre.
Dissection of a Criminal
Electric Chair
With the discovery and potentialities of electricity in the late 1800s, Americans started to adopt it for general use in their homes, but lacking the technical knowledge required to connect and earth devices such as lighting and heating appliances safely, many were electrocuted. It was therefore only a matter of time before some far-sighted and innovative individual realised that if the stuff could kill innocent people, why not use it to replace hanging? It was obviously quicker, much less distasteful a spectacle for official witnesses, and would prove to the world that once again the USA was more progressive than any other nation. And so the electric chair was born.
It consisted of a high-backed piece of oak furniture fitted with straps that secured the victim’s head and chest, arms and legs. Two electrodes, metal plates each sandwiched between a rubber holder and a sponge pad moistened with salt solution, were attached to the felon’s shaven head, and the base of the spine. After a black hood had been positioned over the face, the switch was operated, sending a current of 700 volts through the body for about seventeen seconds; after a brief respite a further charge of 1,030 volts was then delivered, with fatal results, although the body was badly burned.
Later experiments to improve conductivity were tried, some victims having their hands immersed in jars of saltwater to which electric wires were connected, but this was discontinued when it was ascertained that three electrodes, to the head and each ankle, were sufficient. Similarly a leather helmet lined with copper screening and damp sponging, wired to the circuitry, was designed, and the requisite voltage finally determined: two one-minute charges of 2,000 volts, with a ten-second interval would, it was estimated, bring about near-instantaneous death, although on occasions, more ‘jolts’ were needed.
Early Electric Chair
Execution Sword
Although rarely used for judicial executions in England, the most notable being that of Queen Anne Boleyn, the sword was widely employed on the Continent for dispatching those condemned to death. Had it been adopted in England, much unimaginable suffering by the axe’s victims could have been avoided, for, in contrast, the execution sword was a finely honed and superbly balanced instrument of death. About three feet or more in length, it weighed approximately four pounds; the blade, two inches wide, had parallel cutting edges and a broad, blunt tip, no point being necessary to achieve its purpose. A fuller, a wide groove, ran longitudinally along each side to allow the blood to flow towards the handle and not coagulate and so blunt the razor-sharp edges. The comparatively long handle, designed to be gripped with both hands, was covered with leather or fish-skin to provide a non-slip surface, the quillons, the guards, being wide and straight.
Contrary to popular belief the victim did not kneel over a block. Had he or she done so, the headsman himself would also have had to kneel and deliver a vertical blow inevitably lacking the force necessary to decapitate his victim. And if, instead of kneeling, he had stood erect, the blade would have struck the further edge of the block rather than the victim’s neck. The procedure therefore was for the victim to kneel upright or to stand, the executioner swinging the blade horizontally round his head once or twice to gain the necessary momentum before delivering the fatal stroke. If undue suffering and horrific flesh wounds were to be avoided, cooperation by the victim was essential, for if he or she swayed or trembled too violently, more than one blow would be required.
Firing Squad
Depending on the country, firing squads vary in both size and armament, from one man with a pistol, two men with machine guns, to up to twelve men with rifles. Sometimes the target is the back of the victim’s neck, the head or the heart. Generally, the firing squad is of eight to a dozen men, usually but not always soldiers, standing six yards or so from the victim, who is blindfolded and tied to a post, with a circular piece of white cloth over the heart as an aiming point. Rifles are collected at random by members of the firing squad, one weapon traditionally being loaded with a blank, reputedly to salve their consciences, enabling them to persuade themselves that they were not responsible for the victim’s death, but with modern weaponry a blank-loaded rifle does not ‘kick’ as does one with a live round, nor is the cartridge ejected from the weapon.
The signal is given by the officer in charge by word of command, the hand, a wave of a cane or handkerchief, depending on the circumstances. The sergeant in charge of the squad is armed with a pistol and, should the victim show signs of life after the fusillade of shots, he has the responsibility of administering the coup de grâce, a shot to the temple.
Gas Chamber
This basically consists of a small airtight room made of steel, with two plate-glass observation windows – one for the benefit of the spectators, the other for officials to ensure that the execution is proceeding according to plan – and a chimney to vent the fumes afterwards. It is virtually a room within a room, resembling a space capsule just large enough to contain one or more chairs bolted to the floor, together with other essential equipment, one of the items being a container of sulphuric acid.
The victims are secured to the chairs by straps and after the officials have vacated the chamber, the door is closed tightly, hermetically sealing the room. The executioner, stationed in an adjoining room, operates a red-painted lever which, through linkwork, rotates a long rod extending into the gas chamber, thereby allowing it to lower a cloth sachet of sodium cyanide pellets into the acid, the resultant chemical reaction generating hydrogen cyanide, prussic acid (HCN). Exposure to three hundred parts of this toxic cocktail to one million parts of air is fatal, and e
ven if the victim attempts to hold their breath, the longer they attempt to do so, the deeper the eventual breath – and the more rapid the death from asphyxiation.
This method of execution poses various hazards for those in the immediate vicinity. To ensure that only the victim dies by being gassed and not the officials and spectators as well, it is essential that the chamber is completely air-tight, that the seals around the chimney and operating rod, and in particular those around the door and the two windows, are totally effective. To further reduce the risk of a gas leakage, a pump to reduce the air pressure slightly inside the chamber is sometimes incorporated, so that a faulty seal would result in air being sucked in, rather than allowing the poisonous gas to leak out.
Nor do the risks end when the execution is over. For having to handle a victim after execution by the rope, electric chair, lethal injection or even broken on the wheel, might not be pleasant, but is at least safe and straightforward; picking up the component body parts after the sword, axe or guillotine had done their work must have been messy in the extreme, but was hardly dangerous to the individual involved; but carrying out the same tasks after a gas chamber execution is fraught with risks. Although powerful pumps extract the gas via the chimney before anyone re-enters the chamber, not only does the gas tend to condense on the walls and floor, but the clothes worn by the victim, even his or her very skin, become impregnated with the highly toxic prussic acid. All the surfaces within the room and the corpse itself have to be sprayed with neutralising bleach or ammonia, and the members of the prison staff detailed to remove the body have to wear protective clothing and oxygen masks.
Gibbet
This consisted of an upright with an arm at right-angles at the top resembling a signpost, on which was displayed a criminal’s body as a deterrent. Where men and women conspired together to commit crimes, only the man faced being gibbeted, the woman being hanged; in the case of Catherine Hayes, described in this book, her two male accomplices, Wood and Billings, were gibbeted.
The corpse was initially enclosed in ‘irons’, a man-sized cage of narrow iron straps; the author Albert Hartshorne in his book Hanging in Chains, published in 1891, related that ‘the irons were made to measure before the execution, and many a strong man who had stood fearless under the dread sentence of death, broke down when measured for his irons.’ The procedure at Newgate Prison was to cut down the cadaver from the gallows and take it to the ‘kitchen’ where it was immersed in a cauldron of boiling tar or pitch, in order to preserve it for as long as possible against the ravages of birds and the weather. It was then placed in the irons, the ends of the iron straps being cold-riveted together tightly around the corpse by the prison blacksmith, after which it was suspended from the gibbet arm by a chain until it slowly rotted away, the smaller bones of the limbs first dropping out of the cage, followed later by the hips, shoulder blades, and finally by the skull. Gibbets, which were erected all over the country, usually on a hill or at crossroads, presented a macabre sight to passers-by, the creaking of the chains a terrifying sound at night.
The Gibbet
Guillotine
Introduced in France just in time for the multiple executions resultant upon the Revolution, the basic guillotine consisted of two six-inch thick oak uprights, ten feet high and secured by a crosspiece, mounted on a high wooden base. An inch-deep groove, cut vertically down the inner surfaces of each upright, provided the channels down which the triangular shaped blade travelled. This blade was six inches in depth and weighed fifteen pounds, with an iron block weighing 65 pounds mounted on top in order to maximise the speed of descent.
The blade was held in the raised position by a rope which passed through a ring on its top, each end passing through brass pulleys installed high up on each upright, the two lengths of rope then hanging down the outsides of the uprights and secured there. A block of wood, four inches wide and eight inches deep, scooped out to accommodate the victim’s throat, was bolted to the base between the uprights. A transverse groove cut across its top allowed the falling blade to be brought to a shuddering halt after it had passed through the victim’s neck, and attached to one side of this block was a hinged iron crescent, the lunette (so-called because it resembled a half-moon), which pressed the neck down, thereby holding the head immobile.
A narrow bench extended from the neck block at right-angles to the uprights, and at its free end was hinged a plank, the bascule, against which the victim was held facing the guillotine while his or her body and legs were quickly strapped to it. The plank was then rapidly pivoted into a horizontal position and slid forward, thereby placing the victim’s neck between the two uprights. The iron crescent was instantly dropped into place, and on the release of the rope, the blade would descend, the severed head falling into the waiting basket. The torso was then rolled by the executioner’s assistants into a full-length wicker basket positioned next to the guillotine, into which the head would also be transferred after having first been held high for the crowd’s acclaim and abuse, the remains later being taken away for an ignominious burial.
So effective was the ‘Widow Maker’ that, after minor modifications had been incorporated, Monsieur de Paris, the executioner Charles-Henri Sanson, who had dedicated himself to dispatching his aristocratic victims as speedily and therefore as mercifully as possible, perfected his expertise to the extent that eventually he and his highly organised team of assistants were capable of executing 12 victims in 13 minutes, 20 in 42 minutes, 300 in three days and 1,300 in six weeks – a veritable production line of death. This was an incredible achievement when it is realised that these timings included not only the time taken by the actual decapitations, but also by Sanson having to go down the scaffold steps each time, call out the name of the next victim waiting patiently in line, shepherd them up the steps – not easy, their arms being bound behind them – and then manoeuvre them into position facing the bascule, to which they had to be secured.
The Guillotine
Hanging
This is possibly the oldest method of execution. In twelfth-century England the gallows generally consisted of two uprights joined by a crossbeam capable of accommodating up to ten victims at a time. They would be forced to mount a ladder propped against the beam, the hangman’s assistant, straddling the beam, would position the rough hempen rope with its primitive slip knot around their necks, and the hangman would twist the ladder, ‘turning off ’ the victim, death coming slowly and agonisingly by strangulation. As a concession the hangman would sometimes permit the victim’s friends or servants to hasten the end by pulling the victim’s legs or thumping the chest, the body then left for an hour before being cut down.
The general practice was to execute the criminal as near as possible to where he or she had committed the crime, but eventually more permanent sites were established in open areas rather than in the narrow streets and lanes, in order to accommodate the vast crowds that would inevitably gather. London’s chief execution site was Tyburn, its name being derived from Ty-bourn, a small stream that once flowed there. The area was originally called ‘The Elms’, the stream being bordered by elm trees, a variety considered by the Normans to be the tree of justice, and being situated by the main road leading into the capital from the northwest, it was obvious that the spectacle of the scaffold and the corpses of those who had recently been hanged, swaying on the gibbets there, would have the greatest deterrent effect on visitors entering the City.
Its precise site is difficult to determine, but there is little doubt that the scaffold itself stood near the junction of Edgeware Road and Oxford Street (the latter once named ‘Tyburn Way’) and in fact, should one venture on to the small traffic island there, a plaque will be found, set in the cobbles. But in view of the fast-moving traffic, extreme caution should be exercised lest yet another tombstone should bear the inscription ‘Died at Tyburn’!
Site of Tyburn Gallows
In 1571, in order to increase production – or rather, extermination – the Tybur
n gallows were modified, a third upright and crossbar joining the other two, this triangular arrangement allowing a maximum of 24 felons to be hanged at the same time, eight from each arm. This device was christened the Triple Tree, and colloquially as the three-legged mare, the three-legged stool, and the deadly evergreen (because it bore fruit all the year round). The ladder method was also replaced, the victims being brought to the scaffold in a cart which halted beneath the gallows just long enough for the malefactors to be noosed; the horse would then receive a smart slap on the flanks, causing it to move away and take the cart, but not the passengers, with it.
The last execution took place there on 7 November 1783, after which, due to the expansion of the City’s residential suburbs into the Tyburn area, the site was moved to Newgate Prison, executions still being carried out in public outside the walls of that gaol on a portable scaffold which, when required, was erected not unlike a flat-packed piece of furniture, albeit for much more sinister use, by twenty men who started the work at 10 p.m. the night before, completing it by 7 a.m. the following morning, for which each labourer received a pint of porter (a dark, sweet ale brewed from black malt) and the princely sum of 6s 8d.
Triple Tree, Tyburn
The platform was equipped with two parallel crossbeams positioned over the trapdoors: the ‘drop’. These were eight feet wide and ten feet long, large enough to accommodate ten felons, and were designed to fall when a short lever was operated. After being hooded – to conceal their contorted features from the vast crowd of spectators – and noosed, the victims were allowed to fall a mere three or four feet, thereby dying a slow, lingering death by strangulation, watched by the sheriff and other officials who sat in the comfortable seats arranged at one side of the scaffold.
Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen Page 24