Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
22 November 2010
Execution by Hanging
Except for those subjected to it, execution by
hanging has been among the world’s most popular methods of ending the lives of criminals
Humans have been creative in finding barbaric ways to end the lives of condemned persons. In past centuries they’ve used: crucifixion, boiling in oil, drawing and quartering, impalement, strangulation, beheading, burning alive, crushing, tearing asunder, stoning, and drowning.
In more recent times, the traditional method of execution throughout the English-
Long Drop
Method of Hanging
The death sentence when it was passed in Canada was “to be hanged by the neck until dead.” If the hangman did his job well and used what in his specialized profession was known as the “long drop,” the end was quick.
The sequence of events in a long-
Brain death occurs after a few minutes and complete death comes after 15 to 20 minutes. However, apart from that very brief moment of consciousness after the neck is broken the prisoner is unaware of anything. For the person on the end of the rope, death is close to instantaneous and, according to the best medical guess, painless.
Short Drop Aims to Inflict Pain
The short drop is a method of execution that is designed to make subject suffer before death comes as a release, so such executions were usually carried out in public to act as a warning to others.
Short-
In the procedure, the condemned person is made to stand on a stool or chair which is then kicked out, or is put into the back of a truck which is then driven away. The technique preferred in Iran is to hoist the subject off their feet using a telescoping crane. Death comes slowly through excruciating strangulation and takes between 10 and 20 minutes.
Jemmy Botting at Newgate Prison
One exponent of the short drop was James (Jemmy) Botting, who was the executioner at Newgate Prison in London from 1817 to 1819. Botting was a busy man having claimed to despatch 175 men and women during his time at Newgate and in other places where he practiced his craft.
Botting’s executions were mostly carried out in public; when he took care of the sentence placed on banker and fraudster Henry Fauntleroy the crowd is estimated to have been around 100,000.
Whole families would show up for these events and they wanted entertainment. They did not want a quick drop and sudden end to a criminal’s life, they wanted to see the villains dancing at the end of the rope.
Many of the prisoners from Newgate were taken by open cart to be executed at Tyburn
to the west of the prison shown above in the woodcut of about 1680. Capitalpunishmentuk.org
describes the hangings as “a leisurely, and in some ways almost a theatrical process.
“Time seemed to matter very little (unlike 20th century hangings) and everyone went to enjoy the morbid entertainment. In some cases, the prisoners seemed to enter into the spirit of the occasion. They were, after all, the stars of the show wearing their best clothes and behaving with as much courage as they could summon, even joking and making speeches from the carts.”
Bernard Cornwell gives a historically accurate account of Jemmy Botting practicing his ghoulish trade in his 2001 novel Gallows Thief.
Hanging now Used less Frequently
According to Amnesty International, in 2009 “Eighteen countries were known to have carried out executions, killing a total of at least 714 people; however, this figure does not include the thousands of executions that were likely to have taken place in China, which again refused to divulge figures on its use of the death penalty.”
Several of these countries – Japan, Singapore, India, and Jamaica – still employ hanging, and it’s still available as an option in America in New Hampshire and Washington.
Sources
“ ‘Black Jack’ Tom Ketchum was Left in Three Pieces.” Executed Today, April 26, 2010.
“Witnesses to an Execution.” Richard Kim, The Nation, August 15, 2005.
© Canada and the World, November 2010
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Tom Ketchum’s execution was a rather messed up affair. As often happened, in the American frontier, because there were no professionals available the hanging was done by local officials with no experience.
They used too long a drop of about seven feet; this had the effect of decapitating Ketchum.
When notorious criminals were hanged in England in the 17th and 18th centuries, the hangman would sell the rope used in the execution by the inch as souvenirs. This has given rise to the expression “money for old rope.”
GRACE
UNDER PRESSURE
It may be a myth, but Tom Ketchum is believed to have told his executioners: “I’ll
be in hell before you start breakfast, boys;” and then, when the hood was placed
over his head, “Let ‘er go boys.”
In 1928, George Appel was executed in New York’s electric chair. His last words were: “Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel.” In a similar vein, James French, who died in Oklahoma’s electric chair in 1966, said: “How about this for a headline for tomorrow’s newspaper? ‘French fries.’ ”
Albert “Babe” Mancine was hanged in Pentonville Prison, London in October 1941. Just as the trapdoor was sprung, Mancini was heard to say “Cheerio.”
The last executions in Canada were of Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas on December 11, 1962.
When told the death penalty was not likely to be used in Canada again and that these two men would be the last in Canada to face capital punishment, Lucas said “Some consolation,” and added he would just as soon someone else had the distinction.