Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (53 page)
‘When the cords were fixed, four stout, young and vigorous horses were whipped into action and continued their repeated efforts above an hour, without doing anything further towards the dismembering of the unhappy criminal than stretching his joints to a prodigious length; which probably was owing to the youth and vigour of the horses, as being for that reason too headstrong and unmanageable for pulling with a concerted effort. The physician and surgeon then acquainted the commissioners that, unless the principal sinews of the sufferer were cut, it would be very difficult, if not almost impossible, to put that part of the sentence into execution.
As night was coming on, and it was desirable that the execution should be accomplished before the day was over, this was done, the executioner severing the sinews with a sharp knife. These being cut, the horses began to draw anew and after several pulls, a thigh and an arm were torn from the body. Damiens looked at his several limbs, and had some remains of sense after the other thigh was pulled off; nor did he expire until the other arm was likewise torn away.
As soon as there was no appearance of life left, the trunk and dismembered quarters were thrown into a large blazing pile of wood erected for that purpose near the scaffold, where they continued burning till seven o’clock the next morning. Afterwards, in accordance with the sentence of the court of Parliament, his ashes were scattered in the air.’
Referring to the frightful ordeal, Casanova, who witnessed the execution, wrote in his
Memoirs
: ‘I was several times obliged to turn away my face and to stop my ears as I heard his piercing shrieks, half his body having been torn from him.’ It should not be thought, however, that France had the monopoly of such appalling penalties; on the contrary, as the historian Matthew Paris testifies:
‘In 1238 Henry III in, being at Woodstock, a certain learned squire came to the court. He feigned madness, and demanded of the King that he should give up the Crown. The King’s attendants sought to drive him away, but the King forbade this.
In the middle of the night the man came again, bearing an open knife. He made his way into the King’s bed chamber, but the King was not there, being with the Queen. But one of the Queen’s maids, Margaret Bisseth, was awake, and sitting by the light of a candle, sang Psalms, for she was a holy maid and one devoted to the service of God. Margaret gave the alarm and the man was secured.
He declared that he had been sent on purpose to kill the King and, on learning this, the King ordered that, as one guilty of an attempt to kill the King’s majesty, he should be torn by horses, limb from limb, a terrible example, and a lamentable spectacle to all who should dare to plot such crimes.
In the first place he was drawn asunder by the horses, then beheaded, and his body was divided into three parts, each of which was dragged through one of the greatest cities of England, and afterwards hung on the robbers’ gibbet.’
TWENTY-FOUR CUTS
Should it be thought that this method would be infinitely preferable to that of being executed by a thousand cuts, second thoughts are earnestly recommended, there being little to choose between them when it came to degrees of suffering.
Practised and perfected in the Far East by past masters in the art of delicate butchery, the only instrument required was a finely honed knife. Wielding this with exquisite accuracy, the executioner would remove the victim’s eyebrows with the first two strokes, and pare the shoulders to the bone with cuts three and four. The breasts were amputated with the next two strokes, cuts seven and eight then carving away the flesh between hands and elbows.
Numbers nine and ten strokes of the now-dripping blade left the victim bereft of the flesh of his upper arms, while that covering his thighs was sliced off with strokes 11 and 12. The calf muscles of each leg now fell away with the application of the next couple of strokes, and then came the one fervently anticipated by the hideously mutilated wretch for, far from being the unkindest cut of all, number 15 was the coup de grâce,
the knife thrust through the heart.
Even though he was now butchering a corpse, the executioner continued the ghastly sequence. Cut number 16 removed the head, 17 and 18 detached the hands; 19 and 20 severed the arms, and the next two lopped off the feet.
And with two final flourishes of the blade, the legs were expertly detached from the hips, thereby reducing what was once a man to nothing more than a torso, a decapitated head and a collection of limbs, all weltering in a mass of blood-soaked flesh.
There were always ‘one-offs’ in methods of execution, a sudden whim on the part of an emperor, a spur-of-the-moment idea by a dictator. Saturninus, Bishop of Toulouse, was tied by the ankles to the tail of a bull, the animal then being driven down the long flight of steps leading to the temple; Marcus, Bishop of Arethusa, was smeared with honey and confined in a large wicker basket, the container then being hoisted into a tree: the scorching Egyptian sun and the swarms of wasps did the rest.
Phocas, Bishop of Pontas, was first thrown into a hot limekiln, then into a scalding-hot bath, while in France prisoners of Louis XIV would find themselves in a cage together with one or two wild cats – and to make sure that none of the occupants dozed off, the cage was slowly heated.
Sometimes, as a departure from the standard methods, ingenious devices would be constructed, such as the iron coffin of Lissa, in which the victim was placed, there to watch its heavy lid slowly descend on him, days passing before he was crushed to death. In the Tower of London, the device known as Skeffington’s gyves was employed. The brain-child of a lieutenant of the Tower in the reign of Henry VIII, it consisted of a broad hoop of iron which opened on a hinge. The victim was forced to kneel as tightly as possible within the hoop, calves pressed against thighs, thighs against stomach, and then either by the executioner pressing on the hoop, or by a screw mechanism, the hoop would be tightened, crushing the victim’s ribs and breast-bone, the blood gushing not only from mouth and nose but from toes and fingertips as well.
A wide variety of death-dealing tortures was inflicted on the Christian martyrs by the Romans: the martyrs were suspended by the feet, their tormentors then hitting their heads with hammers; women were hanged by their hair, weights being attached to their ankles; others were mangled with curry-combs; forced to walk over glowing coals while molten lead was poured over their heads; or forced to wear a red-hot iron helmet.
In conclusion, all that can be said is that, just as there is no end to man’s inventiveness, whether in the fields of medicine or mechanics, science or space travel, so, regrettably, his ability to conjure up methods of torture and death is equally infinite; literally, there is no end to man’s fiendish imagination.
JARGON OF THE UNDERWORLD
Ackerman’s Hotel
Newgate Prison (Akerman was the gaoler in 1787)
Admiral of the red
nickname of the French executioner
Anodyne necklace
the noose, anodyne meaning ‘relief from pain’
Babes in the wood
felons in the pillory
Bascule
pivoting board of guillotine
Charlot
nickname of Charles-Henri Sanson, executioner
Clink
Southwark Prison, later applied to all prisons (from clink of chains)
Cramp words
sentence of death spoken by the judge
Crapping cull
hangman (from the fifteenth-century Old Dutch
crappen
, ‘to snap’)
Cry cockles
being hanged (the sound made when being strangled)
Danced the Newgate hornpipe
struggled at the end of the rope
Danced at the sheriff’s ball and lolled his tongue out at the company
struggled when hanged, tongue protruding
Deadly nevergreen
gallows, bears fruit all year round
Dempster
hangman (Scottish)
Derrick
hangman in 1608; name given to gallows, later to gibbet-shaped crane
Doomster
hangman (Scottish)
Executioner of the high works
name given to French executioner
Fall of the leaf
Irish hanging (victim stood on hinged board on a balcony)
Galga
Saxon word for gallows
Gallows’ apples
those being hanged
Gaoler’s coach
hangman’s cart
Gentleman of three ins in
gaol,
in
dicted, and due to be hanged
in
chains
Gone west
direction of route from the Tower/Newgate to Tyburn
Go up a ladder to bed
to be hanged
Go to rest in a horse’s nightcap
to die in the noose
Gregorian tree
the gallows (after Gregory Brandon, hangman)
Haltering place
under the left ear (position of noose knot)
Hand of glory
hanged man’s hand, used as charm or cure
Hangman’s day
Friday
Hangman’s wages
13 pence halfpenny; 12 pence for the execution, 1½ pennies for the rope; originally the Scottish fee was 1 mark, its value being set by James I at 13½ pence
Have a dry mouth and a pisson pair of breeches
physical result of being hanged
Hearty choke
hanged (have an artichoke, and caper sauce, for last meal)
He’ll piss when he can’t whistle
he’ll be hanged
Hempen casement
the noose
Hempen collar
the noose
Hempen cravat
the noose
Hempen fever
die by hanging
Hempen habeas
the noose
Hempen snare
the noose
Hempen widow
one whose husband has been hanged
Hot squat
the electric chair
Jack Ketch’s kitchen
hangman’s room in Newgate Prison where heads were parboiled for display
Jack Ketch’s pippins
those who have been hanged
La bécane
jocularly the guillotine (applied to old shunting-engines which, like the guillotine, rumbled along the rails)
Löwe
German executioner’s assistant (meaning ‘lion’ because he traditionally roared loudly while dragging accused before judge)
Lud’s bulwark
Ludgate Prison
Mate of death
executioner (Germany)
National razor
the guillotine
Neckweed
the hempen rope
Norway neckcloth
the pillory (usually made of Norwegian fir)
Nubbing
hanging
Old Smoky
the electric chair
Overseer
a felon in the pillory (overlooking the crowds)
Paddington Fair
Tyburn on hanging day
Paddington frisk
the dance performed by a hanged man
Paddington spectacles
blindfold
Parboiling
the part-boiling of severed heads with cumin seed and salt to deter sea birds when the heads were on display
Patriotic shortener
the guillotine
People’s avenger
the guillotine
Picnic basket
wicker receptacle for the body at the guillotine
Red theatre
the scene at the guillotine
Ride backwards up Holborn Hill
in the hangman’s cart
en route
to Tyburn
Scaffold
platform on which execution takes place
Scragboy
hangman (to scrag meant ‘to throttle’)
Scrag’em Fair
Tyburn
Scragged, ottomised, and then grin in a glass case
hanged, anatomised (dissected), then displayed in Surgeon’s Hall
Scrag squeezer
the gallows
Sheriff’s picture frame
the gallows
Stabbed with a Bridport dagger
hanged (ropes were made in Dorset)
Staffman
hangman (Scottish)
Sus. per coll. (suspensus per collum)
hanged by the neck
Three-legged mare
Tyburn’s triangular gallows
To look over the wood at St James’s
to stand in the pillory
To look through the little window
to have one’s neck in the guillotine’s lunette
Topping cove
the hangman (to top meant ‘to behead’)
Triple tree
triangular gallows at Tyburn
Tumbril
the executioner’s cart
Turned off
hangman removes ladder, leaving felon to hang
Tyburn blossom
a young thief soon to ripen into the fruit of the deadly nevergreen, the gallows tree
Tyburn tippet
the noose (a tippet is a lady’s collar)
Tyburn tree
the gallows
Widow
the guillotine, because it made widows of so many wives
Wooden ruff
the pillory
Wryneck day
hanging day (awry, meaning ‘to one side’)