The
traditional method of execution involves suspending victims from a
gallows or crossbeam until they have died of asphyxiation.
In
another common method, persons to be hanged stand on a trapdoor, and,
when the trap is released, they fall several feet until stopped by the
rope tied around their neck.
The jerk breaks the cervical vertebrae and is thought to cause immediate loss of consciousness.
A knot or metal eyelet (the hangman’s knot) in the noose helps jerk back the victim’s head sharply enough to break the neck.
Hanging
was one of the modes of execution under ancient Roman law, and it was
subsequently derived by the Anglo-Saxons from their Germanic ancestors.
It
had become the prescribed mode of punishment for homicide in England by
the 12th century, and in time it came to supersede all other forms of
capital punishment for felony convictions until the abolition of capital
punishment in Great Britain in 1965.
Public hangings were held in England until 1868, when they were removed to prisons.
Hanging
became the standard mode of execution throughout the British Empire and
wherever else the Anglo-American common law was adopted.
It also
came into use in Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Japan. Hanging was the
preeminent means of execution in the United States until the mid-20th
century.
In the United States and elsewhere, hanging was also usually the mode of murder used in lynchings.
Garrote, device used in strangling condemned persons. In one form it consists of an iron collar attached to a post.
The victim’s neck is placed in the collar, and the collar is slowly tightened by a screw until asphyxiation occurs.
Another form of garrote is a length of wire with wooden handles at the ends, held by the executioner.
Guillotine, instrument for inflicting capital punishment by decapitation, introduced into France in 1792.
The
device consists of two upright posts surmounted by a crossbeam and
grooved so as to guide an oblique-edged knife, the back of which is
heavily weighted to make it fall forcefully upon (and slice through) the
neck of a prone victim.
Previous to the French Revolution,
similar devices were in use in Scotland, England, and various other
European countries, often for the execution of criminals of noble birth.
In 1789 a French physician and member of the National Assembly named
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was instrumental in passing a law that required
all sentences of death to be carried out by “means of a machine.”
This
was done so that the privilege of execution by decapitation would no
longer be confined to the nobles and the process of execution would be
as painless as possible.
After the machine had been used in
several satisfactory experiments on dead bodies in the hospital of
Bicêtre, it was erected on the Place de Grève for the execution of a
highwayman on April 25, 1792.
At first the machine was called a
louisette, or louison, after its inventor, French surgeon and
physiologist Antoine Louis, but later it became known as la guillotine.
Later the French underworld dubbed it “the widow.”
During the
French Revolution, the guillotine became the primary symbol of the Reign
of Terror and was used to execute thousands of people, including King
Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.
The use of the guillotine
continued in France well into the 20th century, diminishing during the
1960s and ’70s, with only eight executions occurring between 1965 and
the last one in 1977.
In September 1981 France outlawed capital punishment and abandoned the use of the guillotine. Compare beheading.
Guillotine, instrument for inflicting capital punishment by decapitation, introduced into France in 1792.
The
device consists of two upright posts surmounted by a crossbeam and
grooved so as to guide an oblique-edged knife, the back of which is
heavily weighted to make it fall forcefully upon (and slice through) the
neck of a prone victim.
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