Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (45 page)

STRANGULATION

‘The garotte was employed not only in Spain but also in its South American colonies, albeit of an improved design whereby an iron collar held the victim’s neck firmly against the post, while a screw mechanism, or alternatively a lever, drove a knob forward, dislocating the spinal column.’

Death by strangulation can be achieved in ways other than by hanging the victim from a set of gallows. For instance, the
St James’s Gazette
for 8 August 1893 reported the execution in Austria of a dangerous criminal, Emil Brunner, before a crowd of a hundred or more spectators, which took place in the courtyard of the prison at Krems. The process of strangulation was accomplished partly by the tightening of a noose around the felon’s neck by the executioner, the latter completing his duty by compressing the victim’s wind passage with his hands.

The execution took five minutes to complete, but it was not until two minutes later that the prison doctor was able to certify that life had finally departed from the condemned man.

A similar method was employed in China in earlier centuries, it requiring the criminal to be secured to a wooden cross, with a bow-string passing around his throat. The executioner, bracing himself with one knee against the cross, then pulled on the cord with both hands until the victim had been choked to death.

Spain adopted this primitive method, giving it the name ‘garotte’, the word meaning ‘cudgel’, it being found easier to tighten the rope around the victim’s neck and the upright by twisting a stick or cudgel in it rather than pulling it by hand.

The garotte was employed not only in Spain but also in its South American colonies, albeit of an improved design whereby an iron collar held the victim’s neck firmly against the post, while a screw mechanism, or alternatively a lever, drove a knob forward, dislocating the spinal column. A later method replaced the knob by a spike or narrow blade which, similarly operated, penetrated between two vertebrae and severed the spinal cord.

Subsequently, relatively more merciful results were obtained when the knob and the blade were in turn replaced by a double collar, the hand-operated mechanism pulling on the lower half and pushing on the upper half of the collar until the spinal cord was broken.

As with other forms of execution, death by the garotte had its own macabre ceremony. On the evening preceding execution the condemned man was escorted from his cell by two priests and under strong guard to the prison chapel, where he knelt before the high altar. Together with the priests, he prayed for his salvation, and this continued for many hours, broken only by a brief rest in a pew.

As dawn approached, he was asked to confess his guilt and generally did so, Spanish law requiring such an admission before execution could take place. Clad only in a black tunic, he was then conducted to where a chair had been secured to a post firmly fixed in the ground. Once strapped in the chair, the collar was placed around his neck and the executioner operated the mechanism, bringing rapid if not instantaneous death.

The garotte was one legacy left to the victors of the Spanish-American War of Central America, and was used to execute four men in 1902 in the town of Puerto Rico. Such occasions were usually classed as gala events there, but only a few officers and priests were permitted by the American governor to attend.

The condemned men, after having spent the night listening to the exhortations of priests, were brought out, each clad in a long black robe and with hands pinioned behind them, to where four chairs, secured to posts, ominously awaited. There, the men were strapped in position and, once the brass collars had been placed around their necks, their faces were hidden from view by black cloths being spread over them. When all was ready, the screws on each garotte were tightened, puncturing the spinal column, the bodies remaining upright until the removal of the collars and straps.

SUFFOCATION

‘The two men “about midnight, the children lying in their beds, came into the chamber and sodainly lapped them vp among the clothes, so bewrapped them and entangled them, keping down by force the fetherbed and pillowes hard vnto their mouthes…”’

Without doubt, one of the most momentous cases of suffocation ever to have occurred is the one that altered the whole course of English history, involving, as it did the deaths of the two small boys known as the Little Princes. While their deaths were classed as murder rather than judicial execution, the instigator was nevertheless a King of England, his true identity still unproven.

The two boys were 12-year-old Edward and his younger brother, 9-year-old Richard, the sons of Edward IV and his Queen, Elizabeth Woodville. The death of the king in 1483 meant that young Edward immediately became King Edward V, but things were not that straightforward. On 1 May of that year the Queen, on hearing that the boys’ uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had seized the young King had, to quote Sir Thomas More:

‘in gret fright and heuines, bewailing her childe’s ruin, her frendes mischance, and her own infortune, damning the time that euer shee diswaded the gatheryng of power aboute the king, gate herslefe in all the haste possible with her yonger sonne and her doughters oute of the Palyce of Westminster in whiche she then laye, into the Sainctuarye, lodginge her selfe and her coumpanye there in the Abbottes place.’

On 4 May Gloucester and the young King reached London, and on 19 May the King was lodged in the Tower, ostensibly in readiness for his coronation. On 16 June the Queen was persuaded by one of Gloucester’s friends, John, Lord Howard, and others, to allow the young King’s brother, Richard, to join him for company in the Tower. Gloucester escorted him through the city, ‘where he joined the King in the Tower and from which neither of them ever emerged alive’. Ten days after the young boys were reunited, on 26 June 1483, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, usurped the kingdom and was crowned Richard III in Westminster Abbey.

More’s account, written in 1557, goes on to describe how James Tyrrell, a strong supporter of Richard of Gloucester, was sent by him with a letter to the Constable of the Tower, Sir Robert Brackenbury, directing him to deliver up the keys to the bearer for one night. Thereupon Tyrrell took possession and directed Miles Forrest, one of the princes’ attendants, ‘a felowe fleshed in murther before time’, and John Dighton, ‘a big brode square strong knaue’, to smother them in their sleep.

The two men ‘about midnight, the children lying in their beds, came into the chamber and sodainly lapped them vp among the clothes, so bewrapped them and entangled them, keping down by force the fetherbed and pillowes hard vnto their mouthes, that within a while smored and stifled, theyr breath failing, thei gaue vp to God their innocent soules...’

The murderers then called in Tyrrell who, ‘vpon the sight of them, caused those murtherers to burye them at the stayre foote, metely depe in the grounde vnder a great heape of stones’. Tyrrell then rode off to Richard, who ‘gaue hym gret thanks and, as some say, there made him knight, but allowed not the burying in so vile a corner, but that he would haue them buried in a better place, because thei wer a kinges sons. Whereupon a prieste toke up the bodyes again and secretely entered them in such place, as by the occasion of his deathe, could neuer synce come to light.’

So the burial place of the royal bodies was not known. Nineteen years later, in 1502, Sir James Tyrrell and Dighton were arrested on a charge of treason against Henry VII and confessed to the murders, though denied all knowledge of the whereabouts of the corpses. Sir James Tyrrell himself died beneath the axe on Tower Hill on 6 May 1502.

However, nearly two centuries later, on Friday 17 July 1674, during demolition of contiguous buildings to the south of the White Tower, a wooden chest was found beneath a stairway which led to the Chapel Royal of St John, and within the chest were remains of two small boys. This fact was reported to the King, Charles II, who, on the presumption that these were the bones of the little princes, commanded that they be placed in a marble urn and deposited in the Chapel of King Henry VII in Westminster Abbey.

Following representations to the Dean of Westminster in 1933, the urn was opened and the remains were examined in detail by Lawrence E. Tanner MVO, MA, FSA and Professor William Wright FRCS, FSA. After lengthy analysis the two learned gentlemen concluded that the bones were those of two boys of slightly different ages. The details of the dentition led Professor Wright and Dr Northcroft of the British Society of Orthodontics and British Dental Association to the conclusion that of the two boys, the elder was about the age of 12, while the younger could be placed between 9 and 11, with a strong leaning to an age about midway between the two extremes.

It was possible to estimate the statures of the boys as being 4 feet 9½ inches and 4 feet 6½ inches respectively. These were slightly higher than the average of boys of that day (1933), but it had to be remembered that their father, Edward IV, was over 6 feet 3 inches tall and was known as ‘Long Limbs’.

Physiological evidence also emerged to substantiate the hypothesis that the two were related, and it was also observed that ‘Edward’s’ facial skeleton bore an extensive stain of a distinctly blood-red colour above, of a dirty brown colour below, and was obviously of fluid origin, this lending support to the traditional account of the manner of the brothers’ deaths, suffocated ‘under feather beds and pillows, kept down by force hard unto their mouths’. Suffocation by such means is well known to be associated with intense congestion of the face.

The final conclusions seemed to leave no doubt that the bones in the urn were those of the princes. The age of Edward V when he was brought to the Tower was 12 years and 6 months, and that of his brother Richard probably 9 years and 10 months. There is evidence that the double murder took place 3 months after the boys entered the Tower, i.e. in August 1483, when Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was King.

Had the murders taken place after the Battle of Bosworth, in which Richard III was slain, Edward would have been 14 years and 10 months old, his brother approximately 12, ages which are entirely and definitely at variance with the anatomical evidence.

The two princes were, then, already dead many months before Henry VII seized the throne, and so he was not culpable. The chances that a further pair of related skeletons still moulder within the Tower’s grounds are remote, and it can only be assumed that the bones found were those of the princes and that they died in 1483.

Further confirmation of the date of their likely demise can be deduced from the fact that shortly after Richard’s coronation, not only did the King confiscate the older boy’s property but also the property of the girl, a princess of the House of Plantagenet, the prince had been contracted to marry.

Suspicions were also raised in respect of the titles held by the boy Richard, who, in addition to being Duke of York, was Earl of Nottingham (12 June 1476), Duke of Norfolk (7 February 1477) and Earl Marshal (5 May 1479).

Richard of Gloucester was crowned king on 26 June 1483. Two days later he created his friend William, Lord Berkeley, to be Earl of Nottingham, while another friend, John, Lord Howard, was given the titles of Duke of Norfolk and Earl Marshal. Cynics may wonder how Richard III knew that those titles were vacant.

Although suffocation was far from being a pleasant way of dying, nevertheless this method was granted as a privilege in Antwerp, a city in what was, in the 1770s, Austrian Flanders. The prison there was described as having two rooms for citizens (ordinary prisoners), and in a room above was a cage, about 6½ feet square, in which were penned criminals awaiting torture.

During that ordeal the condemned man wore a long white shirt, was blindfolded, and was attended by a doctor and a surgeon. After a confession had been extracted from him, and he had imbibed some wine, he was required to sign his confession, his execution following during the next 48 hours.

In the depths of the prison, however, was a small dungeon wherein the prisoner was confined. Should his family wish to avoid the disgrace of a public execution, brimstone, literally burning stone, would be brought in and ignited, the choking fumes of the sulphur suffocating the condemned man.