In England this inhumane ‘short drop’ method remained unaltered until late in the nineteenth century, when executioner William Marwood introduced the more merciful ‘long drop’ method in which the distance the victim had to fall depended on his or her age, weight, build and general fitness – usually between six and ten feet – death coming almost instantly by the dislocation of the neck’s vertebrae and severance of the spinal cord.
The last public execution in England took place on 26 May 1868. After that date all executions took place behind prison walls, a state of affairs deplored by the public at thus being deprived of what they considered to be their rightful – and free – entertainment, and equally deplored by those who supported the abolition of capital punishment altogether, claiming that being in private, without independent witnesses, executions would become even more brutal.
In the United States of America methods differed widely; most states employed the English method introduced by the early colonists, others diversified. In the 1920s in Connecticut, a diametrically opposite system was employed whereby, instead of falling, the victim was jerked rapidly upwards. It consisted of a noose formed at the end of a 50-foot long rope leading up through the ceiling of the execution chamber and down into an adjoining room, there to pass over a drum which incorporated a ratchet mechanism. At that end of the rope a weight equal to that of the victim was attached and was retained three feet above the floor, held there by linkwork controlled by a foot pedal. At the signal, pressure on the pedal released the weight, the abrupt jerk usually breaking the victim’s neck instantly and propelling the body up to a height of about twelve feet. The drum mechanism would then allow the corpse to be lowered and released from the rope.
A method used earlier in that state involved the noosed and bound victim standing on a small hatch, their weight releasing a quantity of lead shot which rolled rapidly down a slope until its weight exceeded that of the victim and so operated the release of the hatch. Although this method thereby absolved any particular individual of self-induced blame for the death of the victim, it meant that the condemned person was virtually committing suicide and so was discontinued.
In New York State the traditional system was employed, but the drop lever was operated by an official screened from the victim’s view; this anonymity method was also adopted by California, three cubicles being occupied by a guard, each pulling a lever, only one of which caused the trapdoors to open. Other American methods involved not a lever, but a hatchet, which fell, severing the rope. Those who had conspired in the assassination of President Lincoln were dispatched in an even more primitive way. On a platform twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide, the three men and one woman, bound and hooded, their nooses around their necks, stood on the long trapdoors beneath the beam positioned ten feet above the scaffold boards. The trapdoors were held level with the boards by vertical uprights beneath them, and when the officer in charge clapped his hands three times, the four soldiers beneath the scaffold kicked the blocks away, with the inevitable and fatal results.
Hanged, Drawn and Quartered
Hanged, Drawn and Quartered
This was the penalty in England and Scotland for those who, by plotting to overthrow the sovereign by whatever means, were charged with having committed high treason. The method of execution was barbaric in the extreme, as exemplified by the death sentence passed in 1660 on the regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I in 1649:
That you be led to the place from whence you came, and from there drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution, and then you shall be hanged by the neck and, still being alive, shall be cut down, and your privy parts to be cut off, and your entrails be taken out of your body and, you being living, the same to be burned before your eyes, and your head to be cut off, and your body to be divided into four quarters, and head and shoulders to be disposed of at the pleasure of the King. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.
Such appalling punishments were inflicted only on men; women were excused on grounds of modesty, the reason, as phrased by the contemporary chronicler Sir William Blackstone, being ‘for the decency due to the sex forbids the exposure and publicly mangling their bodies’. They were publicly burned instead.
The ‘cutting off of the privy parts’ was a symbolic act to signify that, following such mutilation, the traitor would be unable to father children who might inherit his treasonable nature; hardly necessary in view of his imminent decapitation.
After the half-strangling, evisceration and dismembering of the victim, the severed body parts were displayed in public as deterrents to others who might attempt such foolhardy acts against the sovereign. The heads, after being boiled in saltwater with cumin seed to repel the attentions of scavenging birds, were exhibited in the marketplace or a similar venue in the cities in which the traitors had lived and plotted, the quarters being hung on the gates of those cities.
In the capital they were spiked on London Bridge, where they remained for months until thrown into the River Thames by the Bridge watchman, usually to make room for new arrivals. The Bridge was chosen as the most appropriate venue because for over six centuries it was the only river crossing in London and formed a continuation of Watling Street, the Roman road which traversed Kent from the Channel coast. As at Tyburn, the grisly exhibits were visible warnings to all entering the City of the awful retribution meted out to those who came with criminal intent, or sought to overthrow the realm.
Heads on London Bridge
Lethal Injection
More a hospital operation than an execution, except for the sinister overtones of the wide straps attached to the trolley, by which the ‘patient’ is then secured! The process commences with the condemned person initially receiving an injection of saline solution and a later one of antihistamine, the former to ease the passage of the drugs, the latter to counteract the coughing experienced following the injection of those drugs.
Some little time later the actual execution sequence begins. First an injection of sodium thiopentone, a rapid acting anaesthetic, is administered via a sixteen-gauge needle and catheter inserted into an appropriate vein. The victim next receives pancuronium bromide; this not only has the effect of relaxing the muscles, but also paralyses the respiration and brings about unconsciousness. One minute later, potassium chloride is injected, which stops the heart. This sequence results in the victim becoming unconscious within ten to fifteen seconds, death resulting from respiratory and cardiac arrest within two to four minutes – but only if the correct dosages and intervals between injections are strictly adhered to, otherwise the chemical make-up of the drugs changes adversely.
The risk of such mishaps were ever-present when the drugs were manually administered, but were eliminated to a great extent by a talented technician named Fred Leuchter who invented an automatic, computerised machine which, by controlling an intricate system of syringes and tubing, injects the correct amount of chemicals at precisely the right moment.
Fail-safe devices and a manual back-up arrangement are also incorporated in the system, and a doctor stationed behind a screen constantly monitors the victim’s heart condition, thereby being able to confirm the moment of death.
Just as in a Californian execution by hanging, where a conscience-salving let-out is provided by having three guards in separate cubicles, each pulling a lever, only one of which actually opens the trapdoors, so in an execution by lethal injection two identical systems are used, neither operator knowing which one is functioning.
Apart from problems brought about either by human error or the malfunctioning of components of the system, difficulties also arise in inserting the syringes into the correct vein, especially where it is narrow or unattainable due to prolonged drug taking by the criminal. It is frequently necessary to make an incision in the flesh and lift the vein out in order to insert the needle.
Pillory
The Pillory, Whipping Post and Stocks
Specifically designed to publicly humiliate offend
ers, the town or village pillory was usually sited in the market square for the purpose of punishing those who committed ‘community’ crimes: ‘if the culprit be a witch, a purveyor of putrid meat, stinking fish, innkeepers whose spirit measures contained a layer of pitch at the base, and coalmen whose sacks were narrower or shorter than the regulation size.’
Although various designs existed, the pillory usually consisted of a wooden post set firmly in the ground or on a platform, having at its top two horizontal boards mounted edge to edge, the uppermost one being hinged at one end to the lower one. Each had three semi-circular holes cut in it which matched up when the upper board was lowered. The victim stood immediately behind the post, his or her head being positioned in the central semi-circular aperture, the wrists similarly placed in the outer cut-outs; the upper board was then lowered and locked into place. The outer holes were strategically positioned far enough from the central hole to prevent the culprit from protecting his or her face from any missiles thrown, such as eggs, rotten fruit, or even dead cats. This shaming device, its name derived from the Greek meaning ‘to look through a doorway’, was considered so important by the government of the day that villages lacking one risked losing their right to hold a market, a vital asset to local traders.
Of widespread use in England until it was abolished in 1837, many people suffered in the ‘Stretchneck’, among them being a procuress who, in 1556, was found guilty ‘of supplying harlots to citizens, apprentices and servants’ and was pilloried (it seems that to supply gentlemen with such ladies of the night was permissible!). Four years later a maid who poisoned her mistress not only stood in the pillory but was also branded and had both ears cropped. Inevitably, things got out of hand; in 1731 Mother Needham, a notorious procuress with a ten-year criminal record, was pilloried, the crowd wreaking its own form of social justice by stoning her to death.
German women also suffered that form of public disgrace, as Marie Kurschnerin, described elsewhere in this book, found out before being hanged. She was secured in the pillory by the executioner’s assistant, the Löwe, so named because he roared like a lion as he dragged his victim along to the scaffold.
Scottish Maiden
Its name was perhaps derived from the Celtic mod-dun, the place where justice was administered. Made of oak, the maiden consisted of a five-foot-long horizontal beam to which were fixed two ten-foot-long posts mounted vertically, these being four inches wide by three and a half inches thick, bevelled at their corners. These were sited twelve inches apart and braced by two further lengths of timber attached to the horizontal beam, being secured to the uprights at a height of four feet from the ground. A further brace at the rear held the machine in the upright position, it being attached to a cross rail which joined the two posts together. The axe blade, an iron plate faced with steel, thirteen inches in length and ten and a half inches in breadth, its upper side weighted with a 75-pound block of lead, travelled in the copper-lined grooves cut in the inner surfaces of the posts and was retained at the top by a peg attached to a long cord which, when pulled by means of a lever, allowed the blade to descend at ever-increasing speed.
Three and a quarter feet from the ground a further crossbar joined the two posts, serving as a support for the victim’s neck. This beam, eight inches broad and four and a half inches thick, had a wide groove cut in its upper surface filled with lead to resist the impact of the falling blade after it had passed through the flesh, muscle and spinal column. To prevent the victim withdrawing his or her head, an iron bar, hinged to one upright, was lowered and secured to the other upright before the peg was withdrawn and sentence carried out.
The Scottish Maiden
FOR THE RECORD
1298 – First witchcraft trial in England
1450 – First recorded use of the Tower rack
1547 – Abolition of boiling to death in England
1640 – Use of torture discontinued in England, except by royal prerogative 1649 – Greatest number hanged at one time in England: Tyburn, London, 23 men, 1 woman
1686 – Last hanging for witchcraft in England: Alice Molland
1690 – Last recorded torture in Scotland
1697 – Last burning alive for heresy in England
1708 – Abolition of torture in Scotland
1712 – Last trial for witchcraft in England: Jane Wenham, reprieved
1722 – Last witch believed to be burned in Scotland
1789 – Last woman burned in England: Christian Murphy, coiner
1790 – Abolition of burning in England of women for husband-murder 1791 – Abolition of death penalty for witchcraft in England
1798 – Abolition of torture in France
1809 – Last recorded ducking of scolds in England: Jenny Pipes
1814 – Abolition of beheading in England
1817 – Last person sentenced to ducking stool in England: Sarah Leeke (reprieved, water too shallow, so no Leeke in the pond!)
1817 – Last recorded public flogging of a woman in England
1820 – Abolition of whipping of women in United Kingdom
1827 – Abolition of peine forte et dure in England
1829 – Abolition of branding in England, other than under military law 1832 – Abolition of dissection after hanging in England
1834 – Abolition of gibbeting in England
1837 – Abolition of the pillory in England
1879 – Total abolition of branding in England
1955 – Last woman hanged in United Kingdom: Ruth Ellis for murder
1955 – First woman hanged in new Republic of India, Rattan Bai Jain, for murder
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
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)
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Police Gazette series
EXECUTION
A Guide to The Ultimate Penalty
Geoffrey Abbott
£9.99
Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-84953-255-6
Execution is a gruesomely fascinating account of methods of judicial execution from around the world and through the ages, and includes such hair-raising categories as death by cannibalism, being sewn into an animal’s belly and a thousand cuts.
In his own darkly humorous style, Geoffrey Abbott describes the instruments used and their effectiveness, and reveals the macabre origins of familiar phrases such as ‘gone west’ or ‘drawn a blank’, as well as the jargon of the underworld.
Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen Page 25