For JUNE 2002 issue

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-107

HANGING AS A FINE ART

‑Dr. Anil Aggrawal

This time I am going to tell you about a very unusual man – a man who raised the art of execution to that of a fine art. We all know that execution in most countries is done by hanging. The condemned person is made to stand on a trap door, with a noose round his neck. Then the hangman pulls a lever and the trap door immediately opens, and the person falls below. This causes the neck of the convicted man to undergo sudden stretching. In fact a great load is applied on his neck. Before 1875 a prisoner sentenced to death was hanged by being suspended on a rope and allowed to die slowly by strangulation. This barbaric procedure was changed by William Marwood, who worked out how to break the victim’s neck, causing instant death.

Execution Methods

But before going on to Marwood, let us look at some other common execution methods prevalent around the world. Execution has been a common punishment throughout the world since the Middle Ages, and was inflicted for a large number of crimes including petty offenses involving property. In England, during the 18th century, death was the punishment for several hundred specific offenses. Most death sentences also involved torture, such as burning at the stake, breaking on the wheel, and slow strangulation.

Such severe punishment and torture began to die out in the 18th century when a democratic political philosophy and humanitarian movement grew in strength. The number of offenses punishable by death was reduced in all leading countries. Also, penalties involving torture disappeared with the idea that punishment and death should be swift and humane, whether by guillotine, hanging, the garotte, or the headman’s axe.

A trend also began to develop in which life imprisonment was a suitable alternative punishment to death.

Burning at the Stake

Burning at the stake was a popular death sentence and means of torture, used mostly for heretics, witches, and suspicious women. Burning dates back to the Christian era, where, in 643, an edict declared it illegal to burn witches.

However, the increased persecution of witches throughout the centuries resulted in millions of women being burned at the stake. The first major witch-hunt occurred in Switzerland in 1427. Throughout the 1500 and 1600’s, witch trials became common throughout Germany, Austria, Switzerland, England, Scotland, and Spain during the Inquisition.

Soon after, witch trials began to decline in parts of Europe, and in England the death penalty for witches was abolished. The last legal execution by burning at the stake came with the end of the Spanish Inquisition in 1834.

The Wheel

The wheel as a method of torture and execution could be used in a number of ways. A person could be attached to the outer rim of the wheel and then rolled over sharp spikes, or down a hill, to their death.

Also, the wheel could be laid on its side, like a turntable, with the person tied to it. The wheel would turn, and people would take turns beating the victim with iron bars, breaking bones and eventually causing death. This method was used throughout Europe, especially during the Middle Ages.

Guillotine

The guillotine became a popular form of execution in France in 1789, when Dr. Joseph Guillotin proposed that all criminals be executed by the same method and that torture should be kept to a minimum. Decapitation was thought to be the least painful and most humane method of execution at the time.

Guillotin suggested that a decapitation machine be built, which was subsequently named after him. The machine was first tested on sheep and calves, and then on human corpses. Finally, after many improvements and trials, the blade was perfected, and the first execution by guillotine took place in 1792. It was widely used during the French Revolution, where many of the executions were held publicly outside the prison of Versailles.

The last public execution by guillotine was held in France, in June 1939. The last official use came in 1977 in France, and the device has not officially been used since.

Hanging and the Garotte

Hanging was a popular way of both executing and torturing a person, with many devices available to aid in the procedure. The prisoner could simply be hanged with a noose, fracturing the neck. However, if torture was to be inflicted, many methods were available. Often, a person would be drawn and quartered before being hanged. For extremely serious crimes such as high treason, hanging alone was not enough. Therefore, a prisoner would be carved into pieces while still alive before being hanged.

The Garotte was also a popular method of torture, and similar to hanging. A mechanical device such as a rack or a gag would be tightened around the person’s neck, causing slow strangulation, stretching, and obstruction of blood vessels. A device could also be placed in a prisoner’s mouth and kept in place by tying and locking a chain around his or her neck.

Headman’s Axe

This form of execution was quite popular in Germany and England during the 16th and 17th centuries, where decapitation was thought to be the most humane form of capital punishment. An executioner, usually hooded, would chop off the person’s head with an axe or sword. The last beheading took place in 1747, and the axe used is on display at the Tower of London.

Today, with a greater interest in humanitarianism, capital punishment has become less gruesome than the beheadings and torture that were commonplace centuries before. Lethal injection, electrocution, and lethal gas have become the preferred methods of execution in the United States, mostly because these methods appear to be less offensive to the public, and more humane for the prisoner.

William Marwood – The Hangman (of Horncastle Lincolnshire 1820 – 1883)

Coming back to the art of hanging, which Marwood developed into a fine art. He was a Lincolnshire cobbler, with premises at 6 Church Street, Horncastle. He was the official hangman from 1874 till 1883.

He had never hanged anyone or even assisted at an execution but at the age of 54 persuaded the authorities at Lincoln prison to let him carry out the hanging of William Frederick Harry (or Horry) on 1st April 1872 which went off without a hitch and impressed the governor of that prison.

Thereafter he repeatedly applied for permission to act as hangman, and was finally given his first commission in 1875, when on 21 December he hanged Henry Wainwright in Lincoln gaol.

He was duly appointed as official hangman by the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex and received a retainer of £20.00 per annum plus £10.00 for each execution but got no actual salary. He also was able to keep the condemned persons clothes and received traveling expenses. The rail system was so advanced by this time that he could travel anywhere in the Country with ease thus making it possible for him to carry out most of the executions within England and in Ireland.

Marwood did not hide this part-time profession. He used to go to fairs and show off his ropes for sixpence a time. He put up a big sign above his shop, and he charged high prices for his bootlaces; people came from miles around and bought them because they were the hangman’s laces. He became famous, and was frequently mentioned in music-hall songs and jokes, such as ‘If pa killed ma, who’d kill pa?’ Answer: ‘Marwood.’

Before Marwood, death was slow and painful: the pressure of the rope crushed the windpipe, cutting off the supply of air to the lungs. A typical victim lost consciousness after three or four agonizing minutes, and died after about ten. Marwood’s idea was to use a long rope and a trap-door high up on a scaffold, so that when the trap was opened, the victim fell 7 or 8 feet before reaching the end of the rope. Marwood tied the rope snugly tight, with the knot at the point of the jaw under the victim’s left ear. This ensured that when the rope tautened it snapped the head back, causing a fracture dislocation of the atlanto-axial junction. The top vertebra, the ‘atlas’, sits on the second one, the ‘axis’. A peg of bone sticks up from the axis into a socket in the atlas, and allows the head to swivel. Put your fingers to the back of your neck, and you can feel the atlas turn with your head, while the axis below does not move, When the head is snapped back by the long drop, the peg breaks, the neck kinks rapidly, the spinal cord is crushed, and the resulting spinal shock causes instant loss of consciousness, even before the heart stops beating. Because it caused immediate brain death. Marwood’s long drop was more humane than the previous method: he used to say of his predecessors. “They hanged ‘em: I execute ‘em.”

The long drop removed all the gruesome struggling and convulsing from the proceedings and was, undoubtedly far less cruel to the prisoner and far less trying to the governor and staff of the prison who, since the abolition of public hangings, had to witness the spectacle at close quarters.

In his nine years of service he hanged 176 people before dying of "inflammation of the lungs" in 1883.

Four of Marwood's notable cases were:

1. Charles Peace was a burglar and murderer whom Marwood hanged on the 25th of February 1879 at Armley Goal Leeds. Peace was the archetypal Victorian criminal who struck fear into the hearts of everyone at the time.

2. Kate Webster, an Irish servant girl who murdered her mistress with an axe was hanged on the 29th of July 1879 at Wandsworth Prison.

3. Percy Lefroy Mapleton murdered Isaac Fredrick Gold on a train on the Brighton Line so that he could steal Gold's watch and some coins. He was arrested almost immediately but managed to escape from custody before being arrested again, convicted and finally hanged on the 29th of November 1881.

4. Marwood traveled to Ireland from time to time and had the job of executing Joe Brady and four other members of The Invincibles gang for the murders in Phoenix Park Dublin of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Harry Burke the Permanent Under Secretary for Ireland. These hangings took place in 1883 at Kilmainham jail in Dublin.

Today Marwood’s shop is marked by a plaque at 6 Church Lane, Horncastle, Lincolnshire. It is now part of the house next door.

Captions to figures:

1. neck in hanging.jpg: Injuries produced by Judicial Hanging

2. Crippen execution.jpg: The execution of Dr. Crippen at Pentonville, 1910 (From "Written in Blood")

3. marwood.jpg: William Marwood (Public Hangman 1875-83)

4. marwood's business card.jpg: (Marwood's buisiness card)

5. 007.jpg: Joking with his executioners, Birger is shown only moments before being hanged, 1928

This article has (1447) words

Dr. Anil Aggrawal, M.D.

Professor of Forensic Medicine

Maulana Azad Medical College

New Delhi‑110002