Types and variations of the death penalty. Hanging. Death penalty by strangulation

Such a death was considered humiliating

The most popular types of execution in the Middle Ages were beheading and hanging. Moreover, they were applied to people of different classes. Beheading was used as a punishment for noble people, and the gallows was the lot of the rootless poor. So why did the aristocracy beheaded and the common people hanged?

Beheading is for kings and nobles

This type of death penalty has been used everywhere for many millennia. In medieval Europe, such punishment was considered “noble” or “honorable.” Mostly aristocrats were beheaded. When a representative of a noble family laid his head on the block, he showed humility.

Beheading with a sword, ax or ax was considered the least painful death. A quick death made it possible to avoid public agony, which was important for representatives of noble families. The crowd, hungry for spectacle, should not have seen the low dying manifestations.

It was also believed that aristocrats, being brave and selfless warriors, were prepared specifically for death from knives.

Much in this matter depended on the skills of the executioner. Therefore, often the convict himself or his relatives paid a lot of money so that he could do his job in one blow.

Decapitation leads to instant death, which means it saves you from frantic torment. The sentence was carried out quickly. The condemned man laid his head on a log, which was supposed to be no more than six inches thick. This greatly simplified the execution.

The aristocratic connotation of this type of punishment was also reflected in books dedicated to the Middle Ages, thereby perpetuating its selectivity. In the book “The History of a Master” (author Kirill Sinelnikov) there is a quote: “... a noble execution - cutting off the head. This is not a hanging, an execution of the mob. Beheading is for kings and nobles.”

Hanging

While nobles were sentenced to beheadings, commoner criminals ended up on the gallows.

Hanging is the most common execution in the world. This type of punishment has been considered shameful since ancient times. And there are several explanations for this. Firstly, it was believed that when hanging, the soul cannot leave the body, as if remaining hostage to it. Such dead people were called “hostages.”

Secondly, dying on the gallows was painful and painful. Death does not occur instantly; a person experiences physical suffering and remains conscious for several seconds, fully aware of the approaching end. All his torment and manifestations of agony are observed by hundreds of onlookers. In 90% of cases, at the moment of suffocation, all the muscles of the body relax, which leads to complete emptying of the intestines and bladder.

For many peoples, hanging was considered an unclean death. No one wanted his body dangling in plain sight after the execution. Violation by public display is a mandatory part of this type of punishment. Many believed that such a death was the worst thing that could happen, and it was reserved only for traitors. People remembered Judas, who hanged himself on an aspen tree.

A person sentenced to the gallows had to have three ropes: the first two, pinkie-thick (tortuza), were equipped with a loop and were intended for direct strangulation. The third was called a “token” or “throw” - it served to throw the condemned to the gallows. The execution was completed by the executioner, holding onto the crossbars of the gallows and kneeling the condemned man in the stomach.

Exceptions to the rules

Despite the clear distinction between belonging to one class or another, there were exceptions to the established rules. For example, if a noble nobleman raped a girl whom he was entrusted with guardianship, then he was deprived of his nobility and all the privileges associated with the title. If during detention he resisted, then the gallows awaited him.

Among the military, deserters and traitors were sentenced to hanging. For officers, such a death was so humiliating that they often committed suicide without waiting for the execution of the sentence imposed by the court.

The exception was cases of high treason, in which the nobleman was deprived of all privileges and could be executed as a commoner.

The main news of today was undoubtedly the execution of the DPRK Defense Minister on charges of treason. The minister was shot at a military school from an anti-aircraft gun. In this regard, I would like to recall what types of death penalty exist in the world today.

The death penalty is the capital punishment, which today is prohibited in many countries of the world. And where it is permitted, it is used only for extremely serious crimes. Although there are countries (for example, China) where the death penalty is still used quite widely for much lesser offenses, such as bribery, pimping, counterfeiting banknotes, tax evasion, poaching and others.

In Russian and Soviet legal practice, the euphemisms “the highest measure of social protection”, “the capital punishment”, and in later times “an exceptional measure of punishment” were used to refer to the death penalty at different times, since it was officially believed that the death penalty in the USSR was the penalty is not practiced, but is applied as an exception as punishment for particularly serious ordinary and state crimes.

Today there are 6 different types of death penalty most common in the world.

A type of death penalty in which killing is achieved using a firearm. Currently the most common of all other methods.

The execution is carried out, as a rule, from shotguns or rifles, less often from other hand-held firearms. The number of shooters is usually from 4 to 12, but may vary depending on the situation. Sometimes, to ease the conscience, live ammunition is mixed with blanks. Thus, none of the shooters knows whether he was the one who fired the fatal shot.

According to the legislation of the Russian Federation, execution is the only form of death penalty. Although the death penalty has not been abolished by law in our country, only a moratorium on it is observed, caused by international obligations related to Russia’s accession to PACE. There has been no actual execution of a death sentence since 1996.

In Belarus, shooting is also the only method of executing the death penalty.

Until 1987, firing squad was the official method of execution in the GDR.

In the United States, firing squad is retained as a backup method of execution in one state—Oklahoma; in addition, theoretically, 3 people sentenced to death in the state of Utah before the legislative abolition of execution here could be shot, since this law does not have retroactive effect.

In China, where the largest number of death sentences are carried out today, a kneeling convict is shot in the back of the head with a machine gun. The authorities periodically organize public demonstration executions of convicted bribe-taking government officials.

Today, 18 countries use hanging as the only or one of several forms of execution.

A type of death penalty consisting of strangulation with a noose under the influence of the weight of the body.

Murder by hanging was first used by the ancient Celts, making human sacrifices to the air god Esus. Cervantes mentioned execution by hanging in the 17th century.

In Russia, hanging was practiced during the imperial period (for example, the execution of the Decembrists, “Stolypin ties,” etc.) and by warring parties during the civil war.

Hanging was later practiced during the short period of wartime and the early post-war years against war criminals and Nazi collaborators. At the Nuremberg trials, 12 senior leaders of the Third Reich were sentenced to death by hanging.

Today, 19 countries use hanging as the only or one of several forms of execution.

A method of carrying out the death penalty, which consists of introducing a sentenced solution of poisons into the body.

Used at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, the method was developed in 1977 by forensic scientist Jay Chapman and approved by Stanley Deutsch. The condemned person is fixed in a special chair, and two tubes are inserted into his veins. First, the sentenced person is injected with the drug sodium thiopental - it is usually used (in a smaller dose) for anesthesia during operations. Pavulon, which paralyzes the respiratory muscles, and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest, are then injected through the tubes. Texas and Oklahoma soon passed laws allowing the combination; the first use occurred in Texas in late 1982. Following them, similar laws were adopted in 34 other US states.

Death occurs between 5 and 18 minutes after the start of the execution. There is a special machine for administering drugs, but most states prefer to administer solutions manually, believing this to be more reliable.

Today, 4 countries use lethal injection as the only or one of several types of execution.

A device used to carry out death sentences in some US states.

The electric chair is a chair made of dielectric material with armrests and a high back, equipped with belts to firmly secure the prisoner. The arms are attached to the armrests, the legs are secured in special clamps on the chair legs. The chair also comes with a special helmet. Electrical contacts are connected to the ankle attachment points and to the helmet. The hardware includes a step-up transformer. During the execution, an alternating current with a voltage of about 2700 V is supplied to the contacts; the current limiting system maintains a current through the body of the convicted person of about 5 A.

The electric chair was first used in the United States on August 6, 1890, at the Auburn Penitentiary in New York. William Kemmler, the murderer, became the first person to be executed in this manner. Currently, it can be used in seven states - Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia at the choice of the convicted person along with lethal injection, and in Kentucky and Tennessee only those who committed a crime before a certain date have the right to choose the use of the electric chair.

Today, the electric chair is used as the only or one of several types of execution only in the United States.

The physical separation of the head from the body is accomplished using a special tool - a guillotine or chopping tools - an ax, sword, knife.

Decapitation certainly leads to brain death as a result of rapidly progressing ischemia. Brain death occurs within minutes of the head being separated from the body. Stories that the head looked at the executioner, recognized its name and even tried to speak are, from the point of view of neurophysiology, greatly exaggerated. The head loses consciousness 300 milliseconds after being severed and almost all higher nervous activity, including the ability to feel pain, is permanently stopped. Some reflexes and facial muscle spasms may continue for several minutes.

Today, 10 countries in the world have laws allowing beheading as the death penalty, however, reliable information about their use exists only in relation to Saudi Arabia. Most beheadings these days have been carried out in jurisdictions under Islamic Sharia law, by militant Islamists in hotspots, and by paramilitary organizations and drug cartels in Colombia and Mexico.

A type of death penalty familiar to the ancient Jews.

Currently, stoning is practiced in some Muslim countries. As of January 1, 1989, stoning remained in the legislation of six countries around the world. Several media reports reported the execution of a teenage girl in Somalia on October 27, 2008 by an Islamist court after she was allegedly raped by three men on the way from her hometown of Kismayo to visit relatives in Mogadishu. According to Amnesty International, the convicted woman was only thirteen years old. At the same time, the BBC noted that journalists present at the execution estimated her age at 23 years old, and convicting a 13-year-old girl for adultery would be contrary to Islamic law.

On January 16, 2015, it was reported that militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were stoning a woman accused of adultery in the Iraqi city of Mosul they captured.

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The executioner stood on the victim’s tied hands and on this improvised stirrup he jumped as hard as he could. This method of execution was nicknamed “brittle withers.”

Other executioners, such as those in Lyon and Marseille, preferred to place the slip knot over the back of the head. The rope had a second blind knot that prevented it from slipping under the chin. With this method of hanging, the executioner stood not on his hands, but on the head of the condemned man, pushing it forward so that the blind knot would fall on the larynx or trachea, which often led to their rupture.

Today, according to the "English method", the rope is placed under the left side of the lower jaw. The advantage of this method is the high likelihood of spinal fracture.

In the US, the loop knot is placed behind the right ear. This method of hanging leads to a strong stretching of the neck, and sometimes to the tearing off of the head.

Execution in Cairo in 1907.

Engraving by Clément Auguste Andrieu. XIX century Private count

Let us remember that hanging by the neck was not the only widespread method. Previously, hanging by the limbs was used quite often, but, as a rule, as an additional torture. They hung the victim by the hands over the fire, by the legs - giving the victim to be eaten by dogs, such an execution lasted for hours and was terrible.

Hanging by the armpits was fatal in itself and guaranteed prolonged agony. The pressure of the belt or rope was so strong that it stopped blood circulation and led to paralysis of the pectoral muscles and suffocation. Many convicts, suspended in this way for two or three hours, were removed from the gallows already dead, and even if alive, they did not live long after this terrible torture. Adult defendants were sentenced to a similar “slow hanging”, forcing them to confess to a crime or complicity. Children and teenagers were also often hanged for capital crimes. For example, in 1722, the younger brother of the robber Cartouche, who was not yet fifteen years old, was executed in this way.

Some countries sought to extend the execution procedure. So, in the 19th century in Turkey, the hands of hanged people were not tied so that they could grab the rope above their heads and hold on until their strength left them and after a long agony death came.

According to European custom, the bodies of hanged people were not removed until they began to decompose. Hence the gallows, nicknamed “bandit”, which should not be confused with ordinary gallows. On them hung not only the bodies of those hanged, but also the corpses of convicts killed by other means.

“Bandit gallows” personified royal justice and served as a reminder of the prerogatives of the nobility, and at the same time were used to intimidate criminals. For greater edification, they were placed along crowded roads, mainly on hillocks.

Their design varied depending on the title of the lord holding court: a nobleman without a title - two beams, the owner of the castle - three, a baron - four, a count - six, a duke - eight, a king - as many as he considered necessary.

The royal “bandit gallows” of Paris, introduced by Philip the Fair, were the most famous in France: they usually “showed off” fifty to sixty hanged people. They rose in the north of the capital, approximately where Buttes-Chaumont is now located - at that time this place was called the “Montfaucon Hills”. Soon the gallows themselves began to be called that.

HANGING CHILDREN

When children were executed in European countries, they most often resorted to death by hanging. One of the main reasons was class: children of nobles rarely appeared in court.

France. If we were talking about children under 13–14 years old, they were hanged by the armpits; death from suffocation usually occurred within two to three hours.

England. The country where the largest number of children were sent to the gallows, they were hanged by the neck like adults. Hanging of children continued until 1833, the last such sentence being imposed on a nine-year-old boy accused of stealing ink.

When many countries in Europe had already abolished the death penalty, the English criminal code stated that children could be hanged from the age of seven if there was “clear evidence of mischief.”

In 1800, a ten-year-old child was hanged in London for fraud. He falsified the ledger of a haberdashery store. The following year Andrew Branning was executed. He stole a spoon. In 1808, a seven-year-old child was hanged in Chelmsford on charges of arson. That same year, a 13-year-old boy was hanged on the same charge in Maidstone. This happened throughout the first half of the 19th century.

The writer Samuel Rogers writes in Table Talk that he saw a group of girls in colorful dresses being taken away to be hanged at Tyburn. Greville, who followed the trial of several very young boys condemned to hanging, who burst into tears after the verdict was announced, writes: “It became clear that they were completely unprepared for this. I’ve never seen boys cry like that.”

It may be assumed that teenagers are no longer legally executed, although in 1987 Iraqi authorities executed fourteen Kurdish teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17 after a mock court-martial.

Montfaucon looked like a huge block of stone: 12.20 meters long and 9.15 meters wide. The rubble base served as a platform to which one climbed up a stone staircase; the entrance was blocked by a massive door.

Sixteen square stone pillars, ten meters high, rose on three sides of this platform. At the very top and in the middle, the supports were connected by wooden beams from which iron chains hung for corpses.

Long, strong ladders standing at the supports allowed the executioners to hang the living, as well as the corpses of those hanged, wheeled and beheaded in other parts of the city.

Hanging of two murderers in Tunisia in 1905.

Engraving. Private count

Hanging in Tunisia in 1909.

Photographic postcard. Private count

In the center there was a huge pit where the executioners dumped rotting remains when they needed to make room on the beams.

This terrible dump of corpses was a source of food for thousands of crows that lived on Montfaucon.

It is easy to imagine how ominous Montfaucon looked, especially when, due to a lack of space, they decided to expand it by building two other “bandit gallows” nearby in 1416 and 1457 - the gallows of the Church of Saint-Laurent and the gallows of Montigny.

Hanging on Montfaucon would cease during the reign of Louis XIII, and the structure itself would be completely destroyed in 1761. But hanging will disappear in France only at the end of the 18th century, in England in the second half of the 19th century, and until then it will be very popular.

As we have already said, gallows - ordinary and bandit - were used not only for executions, but also for putting those executed on public display. In every city and almost every village, not only in Europe, but also in newly colonized lands, they were stationary.

It would seem that in such conditions people had to live in constant fear. Nothing like this. They learned to ignore the decomposed bodies swinging from the gallows. In an effort to frighten the people, they were taught to be indifferent. In France, several centuries before the revolution that gave birth to the “guillotine for all,” hanging became “entertainment,” “fun.”

Some came to drink and eat under the gallows, others looked for mandrake root there or visited for a piece of “lucky” rope.

The terrible stench, rotten or withered bodies swaying in the wind did not prevent innkeepers and innkeepers from trading in the immediate vicinity of the gallows. People led a cheerful life.

HANGED PEOPLE AND SUPERSTITION

It has always been believed that whoever touches a hanged man will gain supernatural powers, good or evil. According to popular beliefs, nails, teeth, the body of a hanged man and the rope used for execution could relieve pain and treat some diseases, help women in labor, cast a spell, and bring good luck in games and the lottery.

Goya's famous painting depicts a Spanish woman pulling out a tooth from a corpse right on the gallows.

After public executions at night, people could often be seen at the gallows looking for mandrake - a magical plant that supposedly grows from the sperm of the hanged man.

In his Natural History, Buffon writes that French women and residents of other European countries who wanted to get rid of infertility had to walk under the body of a hanged criminal.

In England, at the dawn of the 19th century, mothers brought sick children to the scaffold to be touched by the hand of the executed, believing that it had a healing gift.

After the execution, pieces were broken off from the gallows to make a toothache remedy.

Superstitions associated with the hanged also extended to executioners: they were credited with healing abilities, which were allegedly passed on by inheritance, like their craft. In fact, their grim activities gave them some anatomical knowledge, and executioners often became skilled chiropractors.

But mainly the executioners were credited with the ability to prepare miraculous creams and ointments based on “human fat” and “bones of hanged men,” which were sold for their weight in gold.

Jacques Delarue, in his work on executioners, writes that superstitions associated with those sentenced to death still persisted in the middle of the 19th century: as early as 1865, one could find sick and disabled people gathering around the scaffold in the hope of picking up a few drops of blood that would will heal.

Let us remember that during the last public execution in France in 1939, many “spectators”, out of superstition, dipped their handkerchiefs into the blood splashes on the pavement.

Pulling out the teeth of a hanged man.

Engraving by Goya.

Francois Villon and his friends were one of these. Let's remember his poems:

And they went to Montfaucon,
Where a large crowd has already gathered,
It was full of girls and noisy,
And the body trade began.

The story told by Brantome shows that people were so accustomed to hanging that they did not feel any disgust at all. A certain young woman, whose husband was hanged, went to the gallows, guarded by soldiers. One of the guards decided to hit on her, and was so successful that “he twice had the pleasure of laying her on the coffin of his own husband, who served as their bed.”

Three hundred reasons to be hanged!

Another example of the lack of edification of public hangings dates back to 1820. According to the English report, of the two hundred and fifty condemned, one hundred and seventy had already been present at one or more hangings. A similar document, dated 1886, shows that of the one hundred and sixty-seven prisoners condemned to hang at Bristol Gaol, only three never attended an execution. It got to the point that hanging was used not only for an attempt on property, but also for the slightest offense. Commoners were hanged for any offense.

In 1535, under penalty of hanging, it was ordered to shave the beard, since this distinguished nobles and military men from people of other classes. Ordinary petty theft also led to the gallows. You pulled out a turnip or caught a carp - and there’s a rope waiting for you. Back in 1762, a maid named Antoinette Toutant was hanged on the Place de Greve for stealing an embroidered napkin.

JUDGE LYNCH'S GALLOWS

Judge Lynch, from whom the word “lynching” comes, is most likely a fictional character. According to one hypothesis, in the 17th century there lived a certain judge named Lee Lynch, who, using the absolute power given to him by his fellow citizens, allegedly cleared the country of evildoers through drastic measures. According to another version, Lynch was a farmer from Virginia or the founder of the city of Lynchburg in this state.

At the dawn of American colonization in a vast country where numerous adventurers flocked, not so many representatives of justice were unable to apply existing laws, so in all states, in particular in California, Colorado, Oregon and Nevada, committees of vigilant citizens began to be formed, which hanged criminals caught in the act without any trial or investigation. Despite the gradual establishment of a legal system, lynchings occurred every year until the mid-20th century. The most common victims were blacks in segregationist states. It is believed that at least 4,900 people, mostly blacks, were lynched between 1900 and 1944. After hanging, many were doused with gasoline and set on fire.

Before the revolution, the French criminal code listed two hundred and fifteen crimes punishable by hanging. The criminal code of England, in the full sense of the word, the country of the gallows, was even more severe. They were sentenced to hanging without taking into account mitigating circumstances for any offense, regardless of severity. In 1823, in a document that would later be called the Bloody Code, there were more than three hundred and fifty crimes punishable by capital punishment.

In 1837, there were two hundred and twenty of them left in the code. Only in 1839 the number of crimes punishable by death was reduced to fifteen, and in 1861 to four. Thus, in England in the 19th century, as in the dark Middle Ages, people were hanged for stealing a vegetable or for cutting down a tree in someone else’s forest...

The death penalty was imposed for theft of a sum exceeding twelve pence. In some countries, almost the same thing is happening now. In Malaysia, for example, anyone found in possession of fifteen grams of heroin or more than two hundred grams of Indian hemp is hanged. From 1985 to 1993, more than a hundred people were hanged for such offenses.

Until complete decomposition

In the 18th century, hanging days were declared non-working days, and at the dawn of the 19th century gallows were still erected throughout England. There were so many of them that they often served as milestones.

The practice of leaving bodies on the gallows until they were completely decomposed persisted in England until 1832; the last person to suffer this fate is considered to be a certain James Cook.

Arthur Koestler, in Reflections on a Hanging, recalls that in the 19th century, execution was an elaborate ceremony and was considered a first-class spectacle by the gentry. People came from all over England to attend the “beautiful” hanging.

In 1807, more than forty thousand people gathered for the execution of Holloway and Haggerty. About a hundred people died in the stampede. In the 19th century, some European countries had already abolished the death penalty, and in England seven-, eight-, and nine-year-old children were hanged. Public hanging of children continued until 1833. The last death sentence of this kind was imposed on a nine-year-old boy who stole ink. But he was not executed: public opinion demanded and achieved a mitigation of the punishment.

In the 19th century, there were often cases when those hanged in a hurry did not die immediately. The number of convicts who hung on the gallows for more than half an hour and survived is truly impressive. In the same 19th century, an incident occurred with a certain Green: he came to life already in a coffin.

Long drop execution in London.

Engraving. XIX century Private count

During autopsies, which became a mandatory procedure since 1880, hanged people often came back to life right on the pathologist’s table.

Arthur Koestler told us the most incredible story. The available evidence eliminates the slightest doubt about its veracity, and besides, the source of information was a famous practitioner. In Germany, a hanged man woke up in an anatomical lab, got up and ran away, using the help of a forensic expert.

In 1927, two English convicts were taken from the gallows after fifteen minutes, but they began to breathe spasmodically, which meant that the condemned men had returned to life, and they were hastily brought back for another half hour.

Hanging was a "fine art" and England tried to achieve the highest degree of perfection in it. In the first half of the 20th century, commissions were repeatedly established in the country to solve problems related to the death penalty. The latest research was carried out by the English Royal Commission (1949–1953), which, having studied all types of execution, concluded that the fastest and most reliable method of instant death could be considered “long drop,” which involved a fracture of the cervical vertebrae as a result of a sharp fall.

The British claim that thanks to the “long drop,” hanging has become much more humane.

Photo. Private count D.R.

The so-called “long drop” was invented by the Irish in the 19th century, although many English executioners demanded credit for their authorship. This method combined all the scientific rules of hanging, which allowed the British to claim, until the abolition of the death penalty for criminal offenses in December 1964, that they had “successfully transformed the originally barbaric execution by hanging into a humane method.” This “English” hanging, which is currently the most common method in the world, takes place according to a strictly prescribed ritual. The convict's hands are tied behind his back, then he is placed on the hatch exactly at the line of the junction of two hinged doors, fixed horizontally with two iron rods at the level of the scaffold floor. When the lever is lowered or the locking cord is cut, the doors swing open. The prisoner standing on the hatch has his ankles tied and his head covered with a white, black or beige - depending on the country - hood. The loop is placed around the neck so that the knot is under the left side of the lower jaw. The rope is coiled over the gallows, and when the executioner opens the hatch, it unwinds after the falling body. The system for attaching the hemp rope to the gallows allows it to be shortened or lengthened as necessary.

Hanging of two convicts in Ethiopia in 1935.

Photo "Keystone".

MEANING OF ROPE

The material and quality of the rope, which are of great importance during hanging, were carefully determined by the executioner; this was part of his duties.

George Mauledon, nicknamed the "Prince of Executioners", served in this position for twenty years (from 1874 to 1894). He used ropes made to his order. He took hemp from Kentucky, wove it in St. Louis, and wove it in Fort Smith. Then the executioner soaked it in a mixture based on vegetable oil so that the knot would slide better and the rope itself would not stretch. George Moledon set a unique record that no one has even come close to: one of his ropes was used in twenty-seven hangings.

Another important element is the knot. It is believed that for good sliding the knot is made in thirteen turns. In fact, there are never more than eight or nine of them, which is approximately a ten-centimeter roller.

When the noose is placed around the neck, it must be tightened without in any way cutting off the blood circulation.

The coils of the noose are located under the left jaw bone, exactly under the ear. Having correctly positioned the noose, the executioner must release a certain length of rope, which varies depending on the weight of the convict, age, build and his physiological characteristics. Thus, in 1905 in Chicago, murderer Robert Gardiner avoided hanging due to the ossification of the vertebrae and tissues, which excluded this type of execution. When hanging, one rule applies: the heavier the convicted person, the shorter the rope should be.

There are many weight/rope charts designed to eliminate unpleasant surprises: if the rope is too short, the prisoner will suffer from suffocation, and if it is too long, his head will be blown off.

Since the condemned man was unconscious, he was tied to a chair and hanged in a sitting position. England. 1932

Photo. Private count D.R.

Execution of killer Raines Deacy in Kentucky. The sentence is carried out by a female executioner. 1936

Photo "Keystone".

This detail determines the “quality” of the execution. The length of the rope from the sliding loop to the attachment point is determined depending on the height and weight of the convicted person. In most countries, these parameters are reflected in the correspondence tables that are available to executioners. Before each hanging, a thorough check is carried out with a bag of sand whose weight is equal to the weight of the condemned person.

The risks are very real. If the rope is not long enough and the vertebrae do not break, the condemned person will have to slowly die from suffocation, but if it is too long, then the executed person’s head will be torn off due to too long a fall. According to the rules, an eighty-kilogram person must fall from a height of 2.40 meters, the length of the rope must be reduced by 5 centimeters for every three additional kilograms.

However, the “correspondence tables” can be adjusted taking into account the characteristics of the convicts: age, obesity, physical data, especially muscle strength.

In 1880, newspapers reported the “resurrection” of a certain Hungarian Takács, who hung there for ten minutes and returned to life half an hour later. He died from his injuries only three days later. According to the doctors, this “anomaly” was due to the extremely strong structure of the throat, protruding lymph glands and the fact that it was removed “ahead of schedule.”

In preparation for the execution of Robert Goodale, executioner Berry, who had experience of more than two hundred hangings, calculated that, given the weight of the condemned man, the required fall height should be 2.3 meters. After examining him, he discovered that his neck muscles were very weak, and reduced the length of the rope to 1.72 meters, that is, by 48 centimeters. However, these measures were not enough; Goodale's neck was even weaker than it looked, and the victim's head was torn off with a rope.

Similar terrible cases were observed in France, Canada, the USA and Austria. Warden Clinton Duffy, director of St. Quentin Prison (California), who was present as a witness or supervisor at more than one hundred and fifty hanging and gas chamber executions, described one such execution in which the rope was too long.

“The face of the convict was shattered into pieces. A head half torn off from the body, eyes bulging out of their sockets, burst blood vessels, a swollen tongue.” He also noticed the terrible smell of urine and excrement. Duffy also spoke about another hanging, when the rope was too short: “The condemned man slowly suffocated for about a quarter of an hour, breathing heavily, wheezing like a dying pig. He was convulsing, his body was spinning like a top. I had to hang on to his legs so that the rope would not break from the powerful shocks. The condemned man turned purple and his tongue was swollen.”

Public hanging in Iran.

Photo. TF1 archives.

To avoid such failures, Pierrepoint, the last executioner of the British kingdom, usually, a few hours before the execution, carefully examined the condemned man through the peephole of the cell.

Pierrepoint claimed that from the moment he took the condemned man out of the cell until the hatch lever was lowered, no more than ten to twelve seconds passed. If in other prisons where he worked, the cell was further from the gallows, then, as he said, everything took about twenty-five seconds.

But is speed of execution an indisputable proof of effectiveness?

HANGING IN THE WORLD

Here is a list of seventy-seven countries that used hanging as a legal method of execution under civil or military law in the 1990s: Albania*, Angila, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bangladesh*, Barbados, Bermuda, Burma, Botswana , Brunei, Burundi, Great Britain, Hungary*, Virgin Islands, Gambia, Granada, Guyana, Hong Kong, Dominica, Egypt*, Zaire*, Zimbabwe, India*, Iraq*, Iran*, Ireland, Israel, Jordan*, Cayman Islands, Cameroon, Qatar*, Kenya, Kuwait*, Lesotho, Liberia*, Lebanon*, Libya*, Mauritius, Malawi, Malaysia, Montserrat, Namibia, Nepal*, Nigeria*, New Guinea, New Zealand, Pakistan, Poland*, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Singapore, Syria*, Slovakia*, Sudan*, Swaziland, Syria*, CIS*, USA*, Sierra Leone*, Tanzania, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia*, Turkey, Uganda*, Fiji, Central African Republic, Czech Republic*, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea*, South Africa, South Korea*, Jamaica, Japan.

An asterisk indicates countries where hanging is not the only method of execution and, depending on the nature of the crime and the court that passed the sentence, the convicted are also shot or beheaded.

Hanged.

Drawing by Victor Hugo.

According to Benley Purchase, coroner for North London, findings from fifty-eight executions proved that the real cause of death by hanging was separation of the cervical vertebrae, accompanied by rupture or crushing of the spinal cord. All injuries of this kind lead to instant loss of consciousness and brain death. The heart can beat for another fifteen to thirty minutes, but, according to pathologists, “we are talking about purely reflex movements.”

In the United States, one forensic expert, who opened the chest of an executed man who had been hanging for half an hour, had to stop his heart with his hand, as is done with a “wall clock pendulum.”

The heart was still beating!

Taking all these cases into account, in 1942 the British issued a directive stating that a doctor would pronounce death after the body had been hanging in the noose for at least an hour. In Austria, until 1968, when the death penalty was abolished in the country, this time period was three hours.

In 1951, the archivist of the Royal Society of Surgeons stated that out of thirty-six cases of autopsy of hanged corpses, in ten cases the heart beat seven hours after execution, and in two others - after five hours.

VOICE OF PRESIDENTS

In Argentina, President Carlos Menem announced in 1991 his intention to reintroduce the death penalty into the country's criminal code.

In Peru, President Alberto Fujimori spoke in 1992 in favor of reinstating the death penalty, abolished in 1979, for crimes committed in peacetime.

In Brazil, in 1991, Congress received a proposal to amend the constitution to restore the death penalty for certain crimes.

In Papua New Guinea, the presidential administration reinstated the death penalty for bloody crimes and premeditated murder in August 1991, which had been completely abolished in 1974.

The Philippines reintroduced the death penalty in December 1993 for murder, rape, infanticide, hostage-taking and grand corruption crimes. Once upon a time in this country they used the electric chair, but this time they chose the gas chamber.

A famous criminologist once said: “He who has not learned the art of hanging will carry out his work contrary to common sense and subject the unfortunate sinners to torture as long as it is useless.” Let us recall the terrible execution of Mrs. Thomson in 1923, after which the executioner attempted suicide.

But if even the “best” English executioners in the world faced such gloomy vicissitudes, what can we say about the executions that took place in other parts of the world.

In 1946, the executions of Nazi criminals in Germany and Austria, as well as the executions of those sentenced to death by the Nuremberg Tribunal, were accompanied by terrible incidents. Even using the modern “long drop” method, the performers more than once had to pull the hanged people by the legs, finishing them off.

In 1981, during a public hanging in Kuwait, the condemned man died from asphyxia for almost ten minutes. The executioner miscalculated the length of the rope, and the height of the fall was not enough to break a cervical vertebra.

In Africa, they often prefer hanging “English style” - with a scaffold and a hatch. However, this method requires some skill. Paris Match's account of the public hanging of four former ministers in Kinshasa in June 1966 reads more like a tale of torture. The convicts were stripped down to their underwear, hoods were put on their heads, and their hands were tied behind their backs. “The rope is pulled tight, the chest of the condemned person is at the level of the scaffold floor. Legs and hips are visible from below. Short spasm. Everything is over". Evariste Kinba died quickly. Emmanuel Bamba was a man of extremely strong build; his cervical vertebrae were not broken. He suffocated slowly, his body resisted to the last. The ribs protruded, all the veins on the body appeared, the diaphragm compressed and unclenched, the spasms stopped only in the seventh minute.

CONFORMITY TABLE

The heavier the convicted person, the shorter the rope should be. There are many weight/rope correspondence tables. The most commonly used table is the one compiled by executioner James Barry.

Convict Weight – Rope Length

54 kg minimum………… 2.46 m

56.6 kg……………………………2.40 m

58.8 kg……………………………2.35 m

61.2 kg……………………………2.23 m

63.4 kg……………………………2.16 m

65.7 kg……………………………2.05 m

67.9 kg……………………………2.01 m

70.2 kg ……………………………… 1.98 m

72.5 kg ……………………………… 1.93 m

74.7 kg ……………………………… 1.88 m

77.2 kg ……………………………… 1.83 m

79.3 kg ……………………………… 1.80 m

81.5 kg ……………………………… 1.75 m

83.8 kg ……………………………… 1.70 m

86.1 kg ……………………………… 1.68 m

88.3 kg ……………………………… 1.65 m

90.6 kg ……………………………… 1.62 m

92.8 kg ……………………………… 1.57 m

95.1 kg ……………………………… 1.55 m

99 kg and more………………… 1.52 m

Agony 14 minutes long

Alexander Makhomba died almost instantly, and the death of Jerome Anani became the longest, most painful and terrible. The agony lasted fourteen minutes. “He was also hanged very poorly: the rope either slipped at the last second, or was initially poorly secured; in any case, it ended up above the convict’s left ear. For fourteen minutes he spun in all directions, twitched convulsively, beat, his legs shook, bent and unbent, his muscles tensed so much that at some point it seemed that he was about to free himself. Then the amplitude of his jerks sharply decreased, and soon the body became quiet.”

THE LAST MEAL

The recent publication both outraged US public opinion and provoked a scandal. The article listed the most exquisite and delicious dishes that the condemned ordered before execution. In the American prison "Cummins" one prisoner, who was being taken away for execution, said, pointing to dessert: "I'll finish it when I get back."

Lynching of two black murderers in the USA.

Photo. Private count

Public hanging in Syria in 1979 of people accused of spying for Israel.

Photo. D.R.

HANGING

Classic hanging by the neck is the most common of all types of this method of killing, but there are many others, much more cruel.

The Romans and many Eastern peoples hung prisoners by their hair and genitals. Hanging by the genitals existed in Europe throughout the Middle Ages. But the most terrible were the hangings, when the executed person was lifted up on an iron hook, which was driven into the body, clinging to one of the bones. Usually a rib was chosen, from behind or in front, sometimes they were hooked onto the pectoral muscles, strong enough to support the weight of the condemned person. Suspension from a hook by the rib until death was provided for by the medieval Japanese code. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Turks hooked the condemned man by the leg and arm on one side. The English did the same thing in the 18th century when executing rebellious natives in their African colonies by placing a hook around the chest or just below the shoulder. Those executed were left to die in terrible agony, which lasted for several days. They may have borrowed this practice from Arab slave traders. In Algeria, the dei hung the condemned in this way on hooks driven into the walls of the palaces.

Hanged for the place where they sinned.

Engraving by D.R.

Hanging from hooks in Turkey.

18th century engraving. Private count

Hanging from hooks in Turkey.

Engraving. Private count

Slow execution for parricide. Dahomey, 1903

Engraving. Private count

A black man hanged alive by the ribs in 1796.

Engraving by William Blake. D.R.

Hanging by the feet in Persia, 1910

GARROTTE.

A device that strangles a person to death. Used in Spain until 1978, when the death penalty was abolished. This type of execution was performed on a special chair with a metal hoop placed around the neck. Behind the criminal was the executioner, who activated a large screw located behind him. Although the device itself has not been legalized in any country, training in its use is still carried out in the French Foreign Legion.

There were several versions of the garrote, at first it was just a stick with a loop, then a more “terrible” instrument of death was invented. And the “humanity” was that a sharp bolt was mounted into this hoop, at the back, which stuck into the neck of the condemned person, crushing his spine, getting to the spinal cord. In relation to the criminal, this method was considered “more humane” because death came faster than with a regular noose. This type of death penalty is still common in India. Garrote was also used in America, long before the electric chair was invented. Andorra was the last country in the world to outlaw its use in 1990.

SCAPHISM.

The name of this torture comes from the Greek “scaphium”, which means “trough”. Scaphism was popular in ancient Persia. The victim was placed in a shallow trough and wrapped in chains, given milk and honey to induce severe diarrhea, then the victim’s body was coated with honey, thereby attracting various kinds of living creatures. Human excrement also attracted flies and other nasty insects, which literally began to devour the person and lay eggs in his body. The victim was fed this cocktail every day to prolong the torture by attracting more insects to feed and breed within his increasingly deadened flesh. Death ultimately occurred, probably due to a combination of dehydration and septic shock, and was painful and prolonged.

HANGING, Evisceration and Quartering. Half-hanging, drawing and quartering.

Execution of Hugh le Despenser the Younger (1326). Miniature from "Froissart" by Louis van Gruuthuze. 1470s.

Hanging, drawing and quartering (eng. hanged, drawn and quartered) is a type of capital punishment that arose in England during the reign of King Henry III (1216-1272) and his successor Edward I (1272-1307) and was officially established in 1351 as punishments for men found guilty of treason.

The condemned were tied to a wooden sled that resembled a piece of wicker fence, and dragged by horses to the place of execution, where they were successively hanged (without allowing them to suffocate to death), castrated, gutted, quartered and beheaded. The remains of those executed were displayed in the most famous public places of the kingdom and capital, including London Bridge. Women sentenced to death for treason were burned at the stake for reasons of “public decency.”

The severity of the sentence was dictated by the seriousness of the crime. High treason, which jeopardized the authority of the monarch, was considered an act deserving extreme punishment - and although during the entire time it was practiced, several of those convicted had their sentence commuted and they were subjected to a less cruel and shameful execution, most traitors to the English crown (including scores of Catholic priests executed during the Elizabethan era, and a group of regicides involved in the death of King Charles I in 1649) were subject to the highest sanction of medieval English law.

Although the Act of Parliament defining treason remains part of current UK law, the reform of the British legal system that lasted most of the 19th century replaced execution by hanging, drawing and quartering by horse-drawn and hanging. to death, posthumous beheading and quartering, then declared obsolete and abolished in 1870.

The above-mentioned execution process can be observed in more detail in the film “Braveheart”. The participants of the Gunpowder Plot, led by Guy Fawkes, were also executed, who managed to escape from the arms of the executioner with a noose around his neck, jump from the scaffold and break his neck.

BREAKING BY TREES - Russian version of quartering.

They bent two trees and tied the executed person to the tops of their heads and released them “to freedom.” The trees unbent - tearing apart the executed man.

LIFTING ON PEAKS OR STAKES.

A spontaneous execution, usually carried out by a crowd of armed people. Usually practiced during all kinds of military riots and other revolutions and civil wars. The victim was surrounded on all sides, spears, pikes or bayonets were stuck into her carcass from all sides, and then synchronously, on command, they were lifted up until she stopped showing signs of life.

PICTURE PLANTING

Impalement is a type of death penalty in which the condemned person is impaled on a vertical, sharpened stake. In most cases, the victim was impaled on the ground, in a horizontal position, and then the stake was installed vertically. Sometimes the victim was impaled on an already placed stake.

Impalement was widely used in ancient Egypt and the Middle East. The first mentions date back to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Execution became especially widespread in Assyria, where impalement was a common punishment for residents of rebellious cities, therefore, for instructive purposes, scenes of this execution were often depicted on bas-reliefs. This execution was used according to Assyrian law and as a punishment for women for abortion (considered as a variant of infanticide), as well as for a number of particularly serious crimes. On Assyrian reliefs there are 2 options: in one of them, the condemned person was pierced with a stake through the chest, in the other, the tip of the stake entered the body from below, through the anus. Execution was widely used in the Mediterranean and the Middle East at least from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. It was also known to the Romans, although it was not particularly widespread in Ancient Rome.

For much of medieval history, impalement was very common in the Middle East, where it was one of the main methods of painful capital punishment.

Impalement was quite common in Byzantium, for example Belisarius suppressed soldier revolts by impaling the instigators.

The Romanian ruler Vlad the Impaler (Romanian: Vlad Tepes - Vlad Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Kololyub, Vlad the Piercer) distinguished himself with particular cruelty. According to his instructions, the victims were impaled on a thick stake, the top of which was rounded and oiled. The stake was inserted into the vagina (the victim died almost within a few minutes from heavy uterine bleeding) or anus (death occurred from a rupture of the rectum and developed peritonitis, the person died within several days in terrible agony) to a depth of several tens of centimeters, then the stake was installed vertically . The victim, under the influence of the weight of his body, slowly slid down the stake, and death sometimes occurred only after a few days, since the rounded stake did not pierce the vital organs, but only went deeper into the body. In some cases, a horizontal crossbar was installed on the stake, which prevented the body from sliding too low and ensured that the stake did not reach the heart and other important organs. In this case, death from loss of blood did not occur very soon. The usual version of execution was also very painful, and the victims writhed on the stake for several hours.

PASSING UNDER THE KEEL (Keelhauling).

Special naval version. It was used both as a means of punishment and as a means of execution. The offender was tied with a rope to both hands. After which he was thrown into the water in front of the ship, and with the help of the specified ropes, his colleagues pulled the patient along the sides under the bottom, taking him out of the water from the stern. The keel and bottom of the ship were slightly more than completely covered with shells and other sea life, so the victim received numerous bruises, cuts and some water in the lungs. After one iteration, as a rule, they survived. Therefore, for execution this had to be repeated 2 or more times.

DROWNING.

The victim is sewn into a bag alone or with different animals and thrown into the water. It was widespread in the Roman Empire. According to Roman criminal law, execution was imposed for the murder of the father, but in reality this punishment was imposed for any murder by a younger person of an elder. A monkey, a dog, a rooster or a snake was placed in the bag with the parricide. It was also used in the Middle Ages. An interesting option is to add quicklime to the bag, so that the executed person will also be scalded before choking.

The main positive brand of France is the revolutionaries of the 1780-1790s. approached the matter responsibly, significantly improving and diversifying the process. Three main "know-how" of the Great French Revolution that undoubtedly significantly advanced humanity in the direction of freedom, equality and fraternity:

1. The crowd is driven into the sea, where they drown cheaply and cheerfully.

2. Execution in wine tanks. Loaded - filled with water - drained - unloaded - loaded the next portion - and so on until the bourgeois issue was completely resolved.

3. In the provinces they didn’t think of such engineering - they simply drove them into barges and sank them. The experience with tanks has not caught on, but barges are used regularly around the world, right up to the present day.

A rare subspecies of the above is drowning in alcohol.

For example, under Ivan the Terrible, those who violated the state monopoly were forced to brew a whole barrel of beer, and to improve the taste, the violating brewer himself was drowned in it. Or they forced me to drink a bucket (or as much as I could) of vodka at a time. However, sometimes the condemned himself wanted to say goodbye to the world, in what he loved most. So George Plantagenet, the first Duke of Clarence, was drowned in a barrel of sweet wine - malvasia for treason.

POURING MOLTEN METAL OR BOILING OIL INTO THE THROAT.

It was used in Rus' during the era of Ivan the Terrible, medieval Europe and the Middle East, by some Indian tribes against the Spanish occupiers. Death occurred from burns to the esophagus and suffocation.

During the Thirty Years' War, captured Protestant Swedes were baptized into Catholicism by pouring molten lead.

As a punishment for counterfeiting, the metal from which the offender cast the coins was often poured in. By the way, the Roman commander Crassus, after his defeat from the Parthians, also learned all the delights of this execution, although with the difference that molten gold was poured down his throat: Crassus was one of the richest Roman citizens. Probably Spartak, in the next world, looked with pleasure at the unappetizing execution of his winner.

The Indians also poured gold down the throats of the Spaniards.
-Are you hungry for gold? We will quench your thirst.
Anyone interested in the video is welcome to watch Game of Thrones: the prince was given the promised crown on his head. In liquid form.
In general, this execution (with gold) is deeply symbolic: the executed person dies from what he most desires.

TO STARVE OR THIRST.

It was used by subtle connoisseurs of the process (sadists), or those trying to persuade a stubborn person to do something.

The Japanese version was last used in the Far East in the 1930s: the person being executed (tortured) with his hands tied is seated at a table, tied to a chair, and every day fresh food and drink are placed in front of him, which is taken away after a while. Many went crazy before they died of hunger or thirst.

With the Chinese, everything was exactly the opposite - the convict was fed, and very well. But they only gave him boiled meat. And nothing more. During the first week, the executed person cannot get enough of such humane conditions of detention. During the second week he begins to feel slightly worse. By the third week he already senses something is wrong and, if he is weak in spirit, falls into hysterics, and after the fourth it usually ends. Of course, there is an alternative - not to eat this very meat. Then you will die of hunger in about the same time.

Stoning is a type of death penalty familiar to the ancient Jews and Greeks.

After the corresponding decision of the authorized legal body (the king or the court), a crowd of citizens gathered and killed the culprit by throwing heavy stones at him.

In Jewish law, stoning was sentenced only for those 18 types of crimes for which the Bible directly prescribes such execution. However, in the Talmud, stoning was replaced by throwing the condemned person onto the stones. According to the Talmud, the condemned person should be thrown from such a height that death occurs instantly, but his body is not disfigured.

Stoning happened like this: the person sentenced by the court was given an extract of narcotic herbs as a painkiller, after which he was thrown from a cliff, and if he did not die from this, one large stone was thrown on top of him.

BURNING.

It was known as a method of capital punishment in Ancient Rome. For example, a Vestal virgin who broke her vow of virginity was buried alive with a supply of food and water for one day (which did not make much sense, since death usually occurs from suffocation within a few hours).

Many Christian martyrs were executed by burial alive. In 945, Princess Olga ordered the Drevlyan ambassadors to be buried alive along with their boat. In medieval Italy, unrepentant murderers were buried alive. In the Zaporozhye Sich, the murderer was buried alive in the same coffin with his victim.

A variant of execution is burying a person in the ground up to his neck, dooming him to a slow death from hunger and thirst. In Russia in the 17th and early 18th centuries, women who killed their husbands were buried alive in the ground up to their necks.

According to the Kharkov Holocaust Museum, a similar type of execution was used by the Nazis against the Jewish population of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

And the Old Believers in Rus' buried themselves in the name of God and for the salvation of the soul. To do this, they dug special dugouts with a hermetically sealed exit - mines; candles were placed in them and a sawn pole in the center. Death was either “easy” or “hard”. A hard death guaranteed good karma, but most people could not bear the torment and chose an easy one, for this it was enough to push a pole in the center of a mine and you would immediately be covered with earth. One such case was described in full documentary detail by V.V. Rozanov in the book “Dark Face. Metaphysics of Christianity" or Borya Chkhartishvili (Akunin) in the story "Before the End of the World".

EMBUTION - a type of death penalty in which a person was placed in a wall under construction or surrounded by blank walls on all sides, after which he died from starvation or dehydration. This distinguishes it from burial alive, where a person died of suffocation.

USING LIVING NATURE.

Since ancient times, man has been finding new ways to put our little brothers in the service of humanity, and execution is no exception. The application is both the largest and the smallest: Indians specially train elephants to crush to death, and Indians launch ants at enemies below their backs (or simply put a person in an anthill).

You can put a rat in a pot, tie it to the victim’s stomach, pour burning coals on top and wait until it eats its way out to escape the heat.

In Siberia, they liked to leave a scoundrel naked in the taiga to be devoured by a midge, capable of drinking all a person’s blood in two days (however, the end will come much earlier, from simuliotoxicosis. Well, as an option - releasing snakes (or rats) into the insides or infecting some disgusting (germs are also living creatures).

In ancient Rome, criminals or Christians were poisoned by wild predators. In addition, for the execution of patricians they used (among others) an extremely interesting method: they were given a knife and thrown with rose petals. The convict had a choice: to kill himself or suffocate from the suffocating smell. The thing is that the flowers emit methanol with some volatile compounds, which in small quantities gives us pleasant aromas, but in large quantities leads to death through poisoning by fumes. By the way, fruits also have a similar effect.

DEFENESTRATION.

Also a type of death penalty, unauthorized, occurring spontaneously, without reading the verdict, but in the presence of a crowd. And, yes, the crowd was waiting for it. Literally - throwing out of a window (Latin fenestra). The victims were thrown out of window openings - onto the pavements, into ditches, into the crowd, or onto spears and pikes raised with their points up. The most famous example is the second Prague defenestration, during which, however, no one died.

This type of execution was first used in Ancient Rome. The subject was a certain young man who betrayed his teacher Cicero. The widow of Quintus (Cicero's brother), having received the right to deal with the Philologist, forced him to cut pieces of meat from his own body, fry and eat them!

However, the real masters in this matter were, of course, the Chinese. There the execution was called Lin-Chi or “death by a thousand cuts.” This is a protracted death by cutting out individual pieces of the body. This type of execution was mainly used in China until 1905. They were convicted of high treason and the murder of their parents. The convicted person was usually tied to some kind of pole, usually in a crowded place, in the squares. And then they slowly cut out pieces of the body. To prevent the prisoner from losing consciousness, he was given a dose of opium.

In his All-Time History of Torture, George Riley Scott quotes from the accounts of two Europeans who had the rare opportunity to witness such an execution: their names were Sir Henry Norman (who witnessed the execution in 1895) and T. T. May-Dows: “There is a basket there, covered with a piece of linen, in which there is a set of knives. Each of these knives is designed for a specific part of the body, as evidenced by the inscriptions engraved on the blade. The executioner takes one of the knives at random from the basket and, based on the inscription, cuts off the corresponding part of the body. However, at the end of the last century, this practice was, in all likelihood, supplanted by another, which left no room for chance and involved cutting off body parts in a certain sequence using a single knife. According to Sir Henry Norman, the condemned man is tied to the likeness of a cross, and the executioner slowly and methodically cuts off first the fleshy parts of the body, then cuts the joints, cuts off individual members of the limbs and ends the execution with one sharp blow to the heart.

Read more about the Chinese punitive system before the 1948 revolution here.
http://ttolk.ru/?p=16004

An analogue of Lin-Chi, skinning a living person has long been practiced in the Middle East. For example, the fourteenth-century Azerbaijani poet Nasimi was executed. Contemporaries are more familiar with Afghan developments in this area.

In the event that we are talking about the death penalty in this way, as a rule, after skinning, they try to save the skin for display for the purpose of intimidation. Most often, the skin was torn off from a person killed in another way - a criminal, an enemy, in some cases - a blasphemer who denied the afterlife (in medieval Europe). Ripping off part of the skin can be part of a magical ritual, as is the case with scalping.

Skin flaying is an ancient, but, nevertheless, still not widely used practice, considered one of the most terrible and painful types of execution. In the chronicles of the ancient Assyrians there are references to the flaying of captured enemies or rebellious rulers, whose entire skins were nailed to the walls of their cities as a warning to all who challenged their authority.

There are also references to the Assyrian practice of "indirectly" punishing a person by flaying his small child before his eyes. The Aztecs in Mexico flayed victims during ritual human sacrifices, but usually after the victim had died. Skinning was sometimes used as part of the public execution of traitors in medieval Europe. A similar method of execution was still used at the beginning of the 18th century in France.

In some chapels in France and England large pieces of human skin were found nailed to the doors. In Chinese history, execution became more widespread than in European history: corrupt officials and rebels were executed this way, and, in addition to execution, there was a separate punishment - ripping off the skin from the face. Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang was especially “successful” in this execution, who massively used it to punish bribe-taking officials and rebels. In 1396, he ordered 5,000 women accused of treason to be executed in this manner.
The practice of skinning disappeared in Europe at the beginning of the 18th century, and was officially banned in China after the Xinhai Revolution and the establishment of the republic. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, isolated cases of flaying occurred in different parts of the world, such as executions in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in the 1930s.

"The Court of Cambyses", David Gerard, 1498.

Red tulip is another option. The executed person was intoxicated with opium, and then the skin near the neck was cut and torn off, pulling it down to the waist so that it dangled around the hips in long red petals. If the victim did not die immediately from blood loss (and they usually skinned them skillfully, without touching large vessels), then after a few hours, when the effect of the drug ended, they would experience a painful shock and be eaten by insects.

BURNING IN A LOOT.

A type of execution that arose in the Russian state in the 16th century, especially often applied to Old Believers in the 17th century, and used by them as a method of suicide in the 17th-18th centuries.

Burning as a method of execution began to be used quite often in Rus' in the 16th century during the time of Ivan the Terrible. Unlike Western Europe, in Russia those sentenced to burning were executed not at the stake, but in log houses, which made it possible to avoid turning such executions into mass spectacles.

The burning house was a small structure made of logs filled with tow and resin. It was erected specifically for the moment of execution. After reading the verdict, the condemned man was pushed into the log house through the door. Often a log house was made without a door or roof - a structure like a plank fence; in this case, the convict was lowered into it from above. After this, the log house was set on fire. Sometimes a bound suicide bomber was thrown inside an already burning log house.

In the 17th century, Old Believers were often executed in log houses. In this way, Archpriest Avvakum and three of his companions were burned (April 1 (11), 1681, Pustozersk), the German mystic Quirin Kulman (1689, Moscow), and also, as stated in Old Believer sources[which?], an active opponent of the patriarch’s reforms Nikon Bishop Pavel Kolomensky (1656).

In the 18th century, a sect took shape, whose followers considered death through self-immolation a spiritual feat and necessity. Self-immolation in log cabins was usually practiced in anticipation of repressive actions by the authorities. When soldiers appeared, the sectarians locked themselves in the house of worship and set it on fire, without entering into negotiations with government officials.

The last known burning in Russian history took place in the 1770s in Kamchatka: a Kamchatka witch was burned in a wooden frame on the orders of the captain of the Tengin fortress Shmalev.

HANGING BY THE RIB.

A form of capital punishment in which an iron hook was driven into the victim's side and suspended. Death occurred from thirst and loss of blood within a few days. The victim's hands were tied so that he could not free himself. Execution was common among the Zaporozhye Cossacks. According to legend, Dmitry Vishnevetsky, the founder of the Zaporozhye Sich, the legendary “Baida Veshnevetsky”, was executed in this way.

FRYING ON A FRYING PAN OR IRON GRATE.

The boyar Shchenyatev was fried in a frying pan, and the Aztec king Cuauhtemoc was fried on a grill.
When Cuauhtemoc was roasted on coals along with his secretary, trying to find out where he had hidden the gold, the secretary, unable to withstand the heat, began to beg him to surrender and ask the Spaniards for leniency. Cuauhtémoc mockingly replied that he enjoyed it as if he were lying in a bath.
The secretary didn't say another word.

SICILIAN BULL.

This capital punishment device was developed in ancient Greece for the execution of criminals. Perillos, a coppersmith, invented the bull in such a way that the inside of the bull was hollow. A door was built into this device on the side. The condemned were locked inside the bull, and a fire was set underneath, heating the metal until the man was roasted to death. The bull was designed so that the screams of the prisoner would be converted into the roar of an enraged bull.

FUSTUARY (from Latin fustuarium - beating with sticks; from fustis - stick) - one of the types of executions in the Roman army.

It was also known in the Republic, but came into regular use under the Principate; it was appointed for serious violation of guard duty, theft in the camp, perjury and escape, sometimes for desertion in battle. It was carried out by a tribune who touched the condemned person with a stick, after which the legionnaires beat him to death with stones and sticks. If a whole unit was punished with a fustuary, then all the guilty were rarely executed, as happened in 271 BC. e. with the legion in Rhegium during the war with Pyrrhus. However, taking into account factors such as the soldier’s age, length of service or rank, the fustuary could be cancelled.

WELDING IN LIQUID.

It was a common type of death penalty in different countries of the world. In ancient Egypt, this type of punishment was applied mainly to persons who disobeyed the pharaoh. At dawn, the pharaoh’s slaves (especially so that Ra could see the criminal) lit a huge fire, over which there was a cauldron of water (and not just water, but the dirtiest water, where waste was poured, etc.) Sometimes entire people were executed in this way. families.

This type of execution was widely used by Genghis Khan. In medieval Japan, boiling was used primarily on ninjas who failed to kill and were captured. In France, this penalty was applied to counterfeiters. Sometimes the attackers were boiled in boiling oil. There is evidence of how in 1410 a pickpocket was boiled alive in boiling oil in Paris.

A PIT WITH SNAKES is a type of death penalty in which the executed person is placed with poisonous snakes, which should have resulted in his quick or painful death. Also one of the methods of torture.

It arose a very long time ago. Executioners quickly found practical use for poisonous snakes, which caused painful death. When a person was thrown into a pit filled with snakes, the disturbed reptiles began to bite him.

Sometimes prisoners were tied up and slowly lowered into a hole on a rope; This method was often used as torture. Moreover, they tortured this way not only in the Middle Ages; during the Second World War, Japanese militarists tortured prisoners during battles in South Asia.

Often the interrogated person was brought to the snakes, his legs pressed against them. A popular torture used on women was when the interrogated woman was brought a snake to her bare chest. They also loved to bring poisonous reptiles to women’s faces. But in general, snakes that were dangerous and lethal to humans were rarely used during torture, since there was a risk of losing a prisoner who did not testify.

The plot of execution through a pit with snakes has long been known in German folklore. Thus, the Elder Edda tells how King Gunnar was thrown into a snake pit on the orders of the Hun leader Attila.

This type of execution continued to be used in subsequent centuries. One of the most famous cases is the death of the Danish king Ragnar Lodbrok. In 865, during a Danish Viking raid on the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, their king Ragnar was captured and, on the orders of King Aella, was thrown into a pit with poisonous snakes, dying a painful death.

This event is often mentioned in folklore in both Scandinavia and Britain. The plot of Ragnar's death in the snake pit is one of the central events of two Icelandic legends: “The Saga of Ragnar Leatherpants (and his Sons)” and “The Strands of the Sons of Ragnar.”

WICKER MAN

A human-shaped cage made of willow twigs, which, according to Julius Caesar's Notes on the Gallic War and Strabo's Geography, the Druids used for human sacrifices, burning it along with the people locked there, convicted of crimes or destined for sacrifice to the gods.

At the end of the 20th century, the ritual of burning the “wicker man” was revived in Celtic neo-paganism (in particular, the teachings of Wicca), but without the accompanying sacrifice.

EXECUTION BY ELEPHANTS.

For thousands of years, it was a common method of killing prisoners sentenced to death in the countries of South and Southeast Asia and especially in India. Asian elephants were used to crush, dismember, or torture prisoners in public executions.

Trained animals were versatile, capable of killing victims outright or torturing them slowly over long periods of time. In service to rulers, elephants were used to show the ruler's absolute power and his ability to control wild animals.

The sight of prisoners of war being executed by elephants usually aroused horror, but at the same time also the interest of European travelers and was described in many contemporary magazines and stories about the life of Asia. The practice was eventually suppressed by the European empires that colonized the region where executions were common in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although execution by elephants was primarily an Asian practice, the practice was sometimes used by ancient Western powers, particularly Rome and Carthage, primarily to deal with rebellious soldiers.

IRON MAIDEN (eng. Iron maiden).

An instrument of capital punishment or torture, which was a cabinet made of iron in the form of a woman dressed in the costume of a 16th-century townswoman. It is assumed that having placed the convict there, the cabinet was closed, and the sharp long nails with which the inner surface of the chest and arms of the “iron maiden” were seated were pierced into his body; then, after the death of the victim, the movable bottom of the cabinet was lowered, the body of the executed person was thrown into the water and carried away by the current.

The “Iron Maiden” dates back to the Middle Ages, but in fact the weapon was not invented until the end of the 18th century.

There is no reliable information about the use of the iron maiden for torture and execution. There is an opinion that it was fabricated during the Enlightenment.
Additional torment was caused by the cramped conditions - death did not occur for hours, so the victim could suffer from claustrophobia.

For the comfort of the executioners, the thick walls of the device muffled the screams of those being executed. The doors closed slowly. Subsequently, one of them could be opened so that the executioners could check the condition of the subject. The spikes pierced the arms, legs, stomach, eyes, shoulders and buttocks. Moreover, apparently, the nails inside the “iron maiden” were located in such a way that the victim did not die immediately, but after quite a long time, during which the judges had the opportunity to continue the interrogation.

DEVIL'S WIND (English Devil wind, also a variant of the English Blowing from guns - literally "Blowing from guns") is known in Russia as the "English execution" - the name of a type of death penalty that involved tying a condemned person to the muzzle of a cannon and then shooting from it. through the victim's body with a blank charge.

This type of execution was developed by the British during the Sepoy Rebellion (1857-1858) and was actively used by them to kill rebels.
Vasily Vereshchagin, who studied the use of this execution before painting his painting “The Suppression of the Indian Uprising by the British” (1884), wrote the following in his memoirs: “Modern civilization was scandalized mainly by the fact that the Turkish massacre was carried out close, in Europe, and then the means of execution the atrocities were too reminiscent of Tamerlane’s times: they chopped, cut the throats, like sheep.

The case with the British is different: firstly, they did the work of justice, the work of retribution for the trampled rights of the victors, far away, in India; secondly, they did the job on a grand scale: they tied hundreds of sepoys and non-sepoys who rebelled against their rule to the muzzles of cannons and, without a shell, with only gunpowder, they shot them - this is already a great success against cutting their throats or ripping open their stomachs.<...>I repeat, everything is done methodically, in a good way: the guns, however many there are, are lined up in a row, one more or less criminal Indian citizen, of different ages, professions and castes, is slowly brought to each barrel and tied by the elbows, and then team, all guns fire at once.

They are not afraid of death as such, and execution does not frighten them; but what they are avoiding, what they are afraid of, is the need to appear before the highest judge in an incomplete, tormented form, without a head, without arms, with a lack of limbs, and this is not only probable, but even inevitable when shot from cannons.

A remarkable detail: while the body is shattered into pieces, all the heads, detached from the body, spiral upward. Naturally, they are then buried together, without a strict analysis of which of the yellow gentlemen belongs to this or that part of the body. This circumstance, I repeat, greatly frightens the natives, and it was the main motive for introducing execution by shooting from cannons in especially important cases, such as during uprisings.

It is difficult for a European to understand the horror of an Indian of a high caste when he only needs to touch a fellow low caste: he must, in order not to close off the possibility of salvation, wash himself and make sacrifices after that endlessly. It’s also terrible that under modern conditions, for example, on the railways you have to sit elbow to elbow with everyone - and here it can happen, no more, no less, that the head of a Brahmin with three cords will lie in eternal rest near the spine of a pariah - brrr ! This thought alone makes the soul of the most determined Hindu tremble!

I say this very seriously, in full confidence that no one who has been in those countries or who has impartially familiarized themselves with their descriptions will contradict me.”
(Russian-Turkish War of 1877-1878 in the memoirs of V.V. Vereshchagin.)

Anyone who still wants to enjoy this topic can read the book “Torture Stories of All Time” by George Riley Scott.