Hanging has been
a method of capital punishment since medieval times. The act of hanging is carried out by
suspending a person by the neck from a gallows or gibbet of some sort. There are four different methods of judicial
hanging.
Suspension hanging is a short drop, where the
weight of the body tightens the noose upon the trachea. This causes the person to slowly die from
strangulation and can take up to ten to twenty minutes before death. There is little to no struggle since the main
arteries are blocked and blood flow to the brain is reduced.
Short drop is when the noose is placed around the neck and the
rope is then tied to a horse or vehicle before the object is moved away. Stools and ladders were also used for this
type of hanging. Short drop hanging
causes the person to slowly die of strangulation, again this takes between ten
and twenty minutes. Before 1850, the
short drop was the standard method of hanging and is still common in suicides
and lynchings.
Standard drop is a drop between four and six feet. This distance began to be used in 1866, when
an Irish doctor, Samuel Haughton, sought a more humane method for hanging. The standard drop was enough to break a
person’s neck, thus causing immediate paralysis, immobilization, and
unconsciousness.
Long drop was a scientific advancement
from the standard drop. Instead of
everyone falling the same distance, a person’s height and weight were taken
into consideration to determine how much slack in the rope to ensure that the
distance would cause a broken neck, but no so much that the person was
decapitated. Careful placement of the
knot in the noose was also taken into consideration and positioned under the
chin to assure the head was jerked back enough to break the neck.
Prior to 1892,
the standard drop was the customary four to six feet, which caused the neck to
break between the 2-5th cervical vertebrae. Since this caused some decapitations, the
length of the drop was shortened between 1892 and 1913. After 1913, other factors were taken into
account to reduce the force delivered in the drop.
Hangings in
England were a part of judicial execution since the Anglo-Saxon period. In the 19th century, the children
of England were punished in the same manner as adults and could be sentenced to
death for petty theft. During the
Regency Era, in the year 1814, five children under the age of fourteen were
hanged at the Old Bailey, the courtyard outside of Newgate Prison. The youngest child was eight years old.
Before 1783, the
traditional site for hangings in England were conducted at Tyburn, a settlement
west of the city of London, which was used for eight hanging days a year. The gallows were then moved from Tyburn to
Newgate Prison, which was London’s main prison. The reason for the move was due to the journey
from the prison to Tyburn, which tended to draw a carnival like crowd. This festive atmosphere ruined the warning
the authorities hoped to evoke with the sad journey to meet the hangman. With the move, the gallows were also changed
to include a trap door in which the hanged person would drop. The public hangings always drew large
audiences, and although the gruesome sight was done to deter crime, the
atmosphere was riotous and the condemned were often pelted with fruit and
stones.
The offences
that were considered capital crimes were often debated in Parliament, since
many of these crimes were by modern standards, misdemeanors. Criminals could be executed for stealing
items valued above a shilling. From
1810-1820, the House of Lords voted six times to remove theft from the capital
crime list. With England’s poverty level
so high, desperate people were willing to steal rather than starve. England’s alternative from hanging was
transportation. Transportation of
criminals began in the 16th century, but only after the
Transportation Act of 1718 did transportation become a viable form of punishment. Prisoners were shipped to the American
colonies between 1718-1775, and then to Australia after the American
Revolution. Transportation of criminals
ended completely in 1868. This is also
the same year that hangings were removed from the public eye and moved indoors.
A nobleman
sentenced to death could forgo hanging and choose the death of a nobleman,
which is to be beheaded by a swordsman, but this penalty only applied to
treason, not murder.
The death
penalty was mandatory in the United Kingdom until the Judgment of Death Act of 1823
passed, which allowed judges to commute the death penalty except for treason
and murder. In 1965, the Murder Act was
passed which suspended the death penalty for murder. In 1969, the House of Commons reaffirmed its
decision and abolished the death penalty permanently for murder and all crimes.
Here’s a break
down by country in the United Kingdom, although it’s not easy to gleam from
surviving records if all these death sentences were carried out. During the period of 1735-1799, the number of
males executed in England was 6,069, females 375. Thirty-two of these women were burned at the
stake. In Scotland, the number of males
executed was 209, whereas the women 26.
Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands had zero men or women
executed in those years. During the
period of 1800-1899, in England, male executions were 3,365 whereas women were
172. In Scotland the number of males was
275, females 15. From the years
1900-1964, the numbers dropped dramatically, with 748 males being executed in
England and 15 females.
Although my
books take place in the United Kingdom, here’s some information about U.S.
hangings. Hanging was the most popular
means of execution in America. In
colonial America, hangings were conducted in public for all to witness. As the years passed, many of the states
lessened their number of capital offenses, and because of these changes in the
laws, hangings began to decrease. Of
course, in other states there was an increase in hangings, such as in the south
with slavery and lynchings or the Wild West, where lawlessness and crime
flourished. The judges were known to be
strict in these untamed western areas and hangings were commonplace since more
offenses were punishable by hanging. Between
1830-1920, people’s views changed and many were seeing the cruelty of public
hangings, while others considered it a great spectator sport. There were often vendors and merchants
selling souvenirs and alcohol near the gallows.
By 1835, more and more states were performing private hangings. The introduction of the electric chair in
1890 also led to a steady decrease in hangings. The state of Arizona switched to the gas
chamber as its primary means of execution, believing it a more humane way to
execute after a botched hanging in 1930.
In 1972, the
United States Supreme Court found hanging to be in violation with the eighth
amendment of the United States Constitution.
But the Supreme Court overturned the ruling, and in 1976, capital
punishment was legalized again.
Nevertheless, hangings are only legal in the states of Washington, New
Hampshire, and Delaware, but even in these states, it is extremely rare. A Delaware killer was hanged in 1996, this
was the 3rd U.S. hanging in thirty years.
A
special thank you to regencyera.net, Jane
Austen’s England by Roy and Lesley Adkins, and Captialpunishmentuk.org
