Elizabeth Proctor

Elizabeth Proctor was unlucky, she was considered a witch and arrested in 1692. Despite the testimony of her friends, she was sentenced to death. Elizabeth was pregnant at the time, and she gave birth to a child while in prison. When they put a rope around her neck and opened the hatch of the scaffold, she fell into the hatch, but did not die.

John Henry George Lee

John Henry George Lee was arrested as an accessory to the murder of a woman named Emma Casey. John was sentenced to hang, he was thrown into a hatch three times with a rope around his neck, but he survived all three times.

William Duell

William Duell, along with 4 other criminals, was hanged after being accused of raping and murdering a child in London. At that time, in the UK, the corpses of criminals were used for medical purposes. When William's body was on the surgical table, the student who was supposed to dissect the corpse noticed signs of breathing!

Zoleyhad Kadhoda

Zoleyhad Kadhoda, a married woman, was arrested on charges of treason and an affair with a man. As is customary in the East, such a woman was sentenced to death by stoning. It looks like this, a man is buried up to his waist in the ground, and stones are thrown at his head. Zoleyhad was quickly stoned, but after she was taken to the morgue, she was found to be alive.

Vincelao Miguel

Vincelao Miguel was arrested during the Mexican Revolution. He was sentenced to death by firing squad. After 9 shots, Miguel managed to survive. He escaped and lived a long life.

John Smith

John Smith was arrested after robbing several houses and banks. He was hanged by dropping with a rope through a hatch, but survived and lived a full life for some time.

Anna Green

Anna Green got pregnant by her employer, whom she is believed to have seduced. After the due date, she had a child, but the baby died immediately after birth. Anna tried to hide the body, and was charged with murder, for which she was sentenced to death. Anna Green was hanged from a ladder with a rope around her neck, but during the funeral, her coffin was opened and signs of breathing were found, after which she was sent to the hospital

Joseph Samuel

Joseph Samuel in 1801 committed several robberies and murders. He was part of a gang, all members of which were sentenced to death. On the day of execution, Joseph was hanged three times, and three times he managed to survive, first his rope broke, then the rope jumped off. Joseph Samuel was pardoned and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Maggie Dixon

Maggie Dixon cohabited with the innkeeper after her husband's death and gave birth to a child by him, who died shortly after giving birth. She threw the child's body into the river, but it was discovered and she was sentenced to death. After the execution, the coffin with her body was transferred to the cemetery, but there was a knock on the way. Maggie survived and lived for another 40 years!

Willie Francis

Willie Francis killed a pharmacy owner when he was 16 years old. He confessed and was sentenced to death in the electric chair. When he was executed in the electric chair, Willie Francis screamed and shuddered, but after the power outage, he remained alive. He was executed again exactly one year later.

1. Elizabeth Proctor was unlucky, she was considered a witch and arrested in 1692. Despite the testimony of her friends, she was sentenced to death. Elizabeth was pregnant at the time and she gave birth to a child in prison. When they put a rope around her neck and opened the hatch of the scaffold, she fell into the hatch, but did not die.

2. John Henry George Lee was arrested as an accessory to the murder of a woman named Emma Casey. John was sentenced to hang, he was thrown into a hatch three times with a rope around his neck, but he survived all three times.

3. William Duell, along with 4 other criminals, was hanged after being accused of raping and murdering a child in London. At that time, in the UK, the corpses of criminals were used for medical purposes. When William's body was on the surgical table, the student who was supposed to dissect the corpse noticed signs of breathing!

4. Zoleyhad Kadhoda, a married woman, was arrested on charges of treason and an affair with a man. As is customary in the East, such a woman was sentenced to death by stoning. It looks like this: a man is buried up to his waist in the ground and stones are thrown at his head. Zoleyhad was quickly stoned, but after she was taken to the morgue, she was found to be alive.

5. Vincelao Miguel was arrested during the revolution in Mexico. He was sentenced to death by firing squad. After 9 shots, Miguel managed to survive. He escaped and lived a long life.

6. John Smith was arrested after robbing several houses and banks. He was hanged by dropping with a rope through a hatch, but survived and lived a full life for some time.

7. Anna Green got pregnant by her employer, whom she is believed to have seduced. After the due date, she had a child, but the baby died immediately after birth. Anna tried to hide the body and was charged with murder, for which she was sentenced to death. Anna Green was hanged, thrown down the stairs with a rope around her neck, but during the funeral her coffin was opened and found to be breathing, after which she was sent to the hospital.

8. Joseph Samuel in 1801 committed several robberies and murders. He was part of a gang, all members of which were sentenced to death. On the day of execution, Joseph was hanged three times and three times he managed to survive, first his rope broke, then the rope jumped off. Joseph Samuel was pardoned and sentenced to life imprisonment.

9. Maggie Dixon cohabited with the innkeeper after the death of her husband and gave birth to a child by him, who died shortly after giving birth. She threw the child's body into the river, but it was discovered and she was sentenced to death. After the execution, the coffin with her body was transferred to the cemetery, but there was a knock on the way. Maggie survived and lived for another 40 years!

10. Willie Francis killed a pharmacy owner when he was 16 years old. He confessed and was sentenced to death in the electric chair. When he was executed in the electric chair, Willy Francis screamed and shuddered, however, after a power outage, he remained alive. He was executed again exactly one year later.

Usually, the criminal who survived after the execution is not subjected to a second procedure. It is not for nothing that the key word in the verdict is “death”, which means the inevitability of the onset of retribution and the inevitability of the execution of the sentence. In the past, the very fact that the criminal managed to stay alive after the execution of capital punishment was considered nothing more than God's providence, that is, it was considered a proof of innocence sent from above. Below are five real stories about people who were able to stay alive despite the law, even if only for a short time.

Man Franks

One of the Australian newspapers posted a note in 1872 about how the killer named "Man Franks" survived his own execution due to the monstrous incompetence of the performers. At first, the execution itself was delayed by several hours, as the sheriff found the scheduled time inconvenient. During the waiting time it rained and the wet rope prepared for the execution was taken to dry over the fire. Because of this, the rope stopped slipping. Before throwing the noose around the neck of the convict, the executioner had to stick his leg into the noose and pull with all his might to move the tightly stuck knot. Then the would-be executioner tried to fix the noose around Franks' neck, but, despite all his efforts, he did not manage to do it as tightly as required by the rules. In the end, a support was knocked out from under Frank, but after three minutes of unsuccessfully trying to suffocate, he began to twitch, asking to end the suffering and finish him off at last. And since his hands were as “tightly” tied as his neck, it was not difficult for him to pull himself up and, moving the rope from his throat, scold the organizers of the execution for their “hack-work”. Finally, one of the servants cut the rope, and the long-suffering victim of justice met the hard ground with a dull thud, since no one had thought to lay something soft on him. Needless to say, after all that had been seen, no one wanted to finish the job, and Franks had his sentence commuted, replaced by imprisonment, and the executive power of the new monarchical elite of Fiji became the subject of ridicule all over the world.

Anna Green

In 1650, twenty-two-year-old Anna Green was a servant in the household of Sir Thomas Reed. She became pregnant from his grandson, but did not know that she was carrying a child in her womb. After 18 weeks, when Anna was grinding malt, she suddenly became ill. She had a miscarriage in the toilet. Terrified, the girl hid the corpse.

At that time, there was a law that any unmarried woman who concealed a pregnancy or a newborn was considered a child killer. Despite the fact that the midwives recognized the fetus as stillborn, Greene was sentenced to death by hanging in the courtyard of Oxford Castle. During the last speech, she asked to condemn "the debauchery in the family in which she lived." She asked her friends to hang on her body to hasten her death, and they did not refuse. After the execution, the supposedly lifeless body was removed and taken to the anatomical theater for student training. But when the coffin was opened, the doctors discovered that the chest of the "corpse" makes barely noticeable respiratory movements. They forgot their original purpose and began resuscitation through bloodletting, stimulating respiratory reflexes, and applying warm heating pads. The public saw this as a sign from above, and Green was pardoned. Taking the coffin with her as a souvenir, she settled in another town, got married and had a child.

Inetta de Balsham

For harboring thieves, she was sentenced to death in August 1264. Sources say she was hanged at 9 am on Monday 16 August and left to hang out until the next morning. When the rope was cut, it turned out that ...

TOP 10 - People who survived the death penalty 1. Elizabeth Proctor, who was not lucky enough to pass for a witch. In 1692, a woman was arrested on charges of witchcraft. The court sentenced Elizabeth to death despite all the evidence of friends and relatives in defense of the accused. By the time the sentence was executed, the woman managed to give birth to a child in prison, as she got there already pregnant. The execution was appointed by hanging. They threw a noose around Elizabeth's neck and opened the hatch, but thanks to some miracle, the woman remained alive. 2. John Henry George Lee went to jail on charges of complicity in the murder of a woman - Emma Casey. For such a crime, criminals are hanged. So John was hanged ... More precisely, they tried to do this as many as three times, but the man survived after all three drops into the hatch with a noose around his neck. 3. William Duell and four of his accomplices were hanged for having raped and killed a child in London. According to the rules of that time, all the corpses of criminals were given for medical research. When the turn came to dissect the body of William Duell, the student who was supposed to do the operation noticed that the man was breathing! 4. Zoleikhad Kadkhoda - an Eastern married woman who took the risk of having a lover. According to the harsh laws of the East, a woman convicted of adultery is sentenced to death - she must be stoned to death. This happens as follows: a woman is buried up to her waist in the ground and stones are thrown at her head. Zoleykhad did not escape her fate - she was stoned, but when the crippled body was brought to the morgue, it turned out that the woman was alive. 5. Vinselao Miguel, a prisoner during the Mexican Revolution. The prisoner was sentenced to death by firing squad. 9 shots were fired at Miguel, they all reached the target, but the man survived, managed to escape and lived for many more years. 6. John Smith is a robber. He was captured by the police after he robbed several banks and private houses. The court sentence that he was given was hanging, by dropping him into a hatch with a noose around his neck. Smith turned out to be incredibly tenacious and survived this death penalty, he lived for more than one year the ordinary life of a full-fledged person. 7. Anna Green, conceived a child from her own employer. They say that it was she who seduced him. The child was born at the due date, but died shortly after birth. While trying to hide the little body, Anna was arrested and accused of killing a baby, and the court sentenced her to death by hanging. A woman with a noose around her neck was thrown down the stairs. At the funeral, when the coffin was opened, it turned out that the woman was still breathing, after which Anna was taken to the hospital. 8. Joseph Samuil, who committed a number of murders and robberies in 1801 as part of a whole gang. All participants in the crimes were sentenced to death. On the day when the execution began, Samuel managed to avoid death on the gallows three times - once the rope burst, and on the other it simply jumped off. This turn of events did not go unnoticed by the judges and Joseph Samuel was replaced by the death penalty with life imprisonment. 9. Maggie Dixon - a cohabitant of one innkeeper. From an illegal relationship a child was born, who died immediately after birth. Maggie Dixon couldn't think of anything better than dumping a baby's body into a river. But the body of the child was found and the woman was arrested on charges of murder. The verdict of the court was unequivocal - death. The woman was executed, they were going to bury, but on the way to the cemetery, there was a knock from the coffin - Maggie was alive! After the "resurrection" she lived for another forty years! 10. Willie Francis killed the pharmacy owner at the age of 16. The young man confessed to the crime, but nevertheless was sentenced to death in the electric chair. The execution took place traditionally, the criminal screamed and writhed, but after the voltage was turned off, it turned out that the young man survived. However, the incident did not bring Willy a long and happy life - he was executed again, exactly one year later.

The information below is drawn from many sources, including textbooks on pathology, the Journal of Forensic Medicine, accounts of hanging survivors, reports from the 17th and 19th centuries, photographs taken in a later era, and reports from an official in charge of overseeing execution of sentences and who, along with many impeccably executed executions, witnessed two cases of "marriage".

With the usual slow hanging, suffocation, as a rule, does not occur from pressure on the trachea, the windpipe. Rather, the pressure of the loop shifts the base of the tongue backwards - upwards and thereby causes the cessation of breathing.

Many pathologists believe that relatively little pressure is enough to completely cut off the air supply, which means that the hanged man is completely unable to breathe. This may again depend on the position of the loop. If the knot is in front, there may be slight pressure on the airways.

Another cause of death is the cessation of blood supply to the brain due to clamping of the carotid arteries. This alone would have been enough to cause death, a fact proven by several cases of people accidentally hanging themselves to death while the airway was left wide enough for breathing.

There is still a little blood flow to the brain - there are vertebral arteries that, in the place where the loop is usually located, pass inside the spine and are protected from compression - but this is not enough to maintain the viability of the brain for a long time.

HANGING PROCESS

● Initial stage (15-45 seconds)

The noose rises abruptly, causing the mouth to close (a common mistake in staging hanging scenes in films - the mouth is often shown open). The tongue rarely protrudes from the mouth, because the lower jaw is pressed with considerable force. There are exceptions when the loop has been placed low and moves upward, pressing on the tongue before it presses the jaw - in these cases the tongue is strongly bitten.

Survivors testify to a feeling of pressure in the head and clenched jaws. The feeling of weakness makes it difficult to grasp the rope. It is also said that the pain is mainly felt from the pressure of the rope, and not from suffocation. The feeling of suffocation, of course, increases with the passage of time.

Often, a newly hanged victim in a panic begins to kick or tries to reach the ground with his fingertips. These convulsive movements of the legs are different from the real agony, which begins later.

In other cases, the hanged man hangs almost motionless at first, perhaps because the body is numb with pain. If the hands are tied in front, they rise sharply to the middle of the chest, usually clenched into fists.

In most cases, the blood does not rush to the face. The noose cuts off the blood supply to the head, so that the face remains white and turns blue as it is strangled. In some cases, if the blood supply is partially preserved, the face turns red.

Sometimes there is bleeding from the mouth and nose. Most likely, this is actually a nosebleed in cases where blood pressure rises in the head.

Sometimes foam or bloody foam comes out of the mouth - apparently in cases where the airways are not completely closed and some air enters the lungs, despite the loop.

● Loss of consciousness

Generally speaking, the hanged man retains consciousness only for a short time, although it may seem like an eternity. Judging by the stories of survivors and pathological studies, loss of consciousness can occur after 8-10 seconds due to the cessation of blood circulation, and maybe after about a minute. Few survivors of hanging report being conscious and convulsing so that they feel suffocated and can feel convulsive movements of the legs and body, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

The position of the node is important here. If the loop does not compress both carotid arteries, the blood supply may continue. If the noose is in the front (intentionally placed in this way or slipped off when the victim fell), blood circulation and some breathing may be preserved, and then loss of consciousness and death may occur later.

Victims often lose bladder control. This, apparently, occurs in an unconscious state, or most often just before the loss of consciousness. Pathologists sometimes use this fact to determine if a victim is strangled in a standing position. A long trail of urine on a skirt or trousers indicates that the victim passed out in an upright position and was then lowered to the floor by the killer. A shorter track indicates that the victim was lying at that moment. The use of such forensic evidence again suggests that bladder control is lost immediately prior to loss of consciousness.

● Convulsive phase (usually after 45 seconds)

This phase begins approximately 45 seconds after hanging. The real agony begins when what we associate with the pain of suffocation becomes unbearable. A more scientific explanation is that convulsions start when the brain's carbon monoxide detection centers in the blood become overloaded and the brain starts sending out erratic signals.

At this stage, powerful chest movements usually begin - the victim unsuccessfully tries to inhale air, and the speed of these movements increases rapidly. Witnesses to the hanging of a female spy during the First World War say that her agony resembled a fit of hysterical laughter - her shoulders and chest shook so quickly. This stage is quickly replaced by convulsive movements of the whole body. They can take various forms, and one form can change into another.

One of the forms is a strong tremor, the muscles alternately quickly spasmodically contract and relax, as if vibrating.

In one "unsuccessful" execution by hanging, the victim was out of sight after the hatch opened, but witnesses heard the buzz of the rope due to spasmodic body movements. These movements must be very strong and occur with great frequency in order for the rope to make an audible sound.

Clonic spasm is also possible, when the muscles simply convulsively contract. In this case, the legs can be tucked under the chin and remain in this position for some time.

A more spectacular form is the well-known "dance of the gallows", when the legs quickly twitch in different directions, sometimes synchronously, sometimes separately (in a number of executions of the 17th century, the musicians really played a jig while the hanged twitched on the ropes)

These movements are sometimes compared to riding a bicycle, but they seem to be more abrupt. Another form (often the last stage, if there have been several) consists in prolonged tension, to an absolutely incredible degree, of all the muscles of the body.

Since the muscles on the back of the body are much stronger than the front, the victim bends back (my acquaintance at the execution of sentences testifies that in some cases the heels of the hanged man almost reach the back of the head.

There is also a photograph of a man strangled while lying down; the body is not so strongly bent, but bent almost in a semicircle.

If the hands are tied in front, they usually rise to the middle of the chest during convulsions and fall only when the convulsions cease.

Often, but not always, hanged people lose bladder control. Apparently, this occurs during these convulsive movements, after loss of consciousness, perhaps as a result of contraction of the abdominal muscles, despite the fact that control over the bladder has already been lost.

My friend, who saw the hanged, explained that the legs of the victim were tied so that the feces would not flow down the legs and scatter to the sides during convulsive movements.

The convulsions continue until death, or almost until death. Accounts of executions by hanging note that the duration of convulsions varies widely - in some cases as little as three minutes, in others as much as twenty.

A professional English executioner, who watched the American volunteers hang Nazi war criminals, lamented that they did it ineptly, so that some of the hanged agonized for 14 minutes (he probably watched by the clock).

The reasons for such a wide range are unknown. Most likely, we are talking about the duration of convulsions, and not about the time of death. Sometimes a hanged man dies without convulsions at all, or the whole agony is reduced to a few movements, so perhaps a short agony does not mean a quick death at all.

Death without a fight is sometimes associated with "excitation of the vagus nerve" - ​​a nerve that runs in the neck and controls the contractions of the heart. This is difficult to understand, because if the loop stops the blood supply to the brain, then it makes a big difference whether the heart beats or not.

● Death

Irreversible changes in the brain begin in about 3-5 minutes, and if they continue, convulsions continue. In the next five minutes or so, these irreversible changes intensify.

The convulsions slow down and gradually stop. Usually the last convulsive movement is the heaving of the chest after the rest of the body is motionless. Sometimes the convulsions return to an already seemingly calm victim. In the 18th century, a hanged man, who was already considered dead, hit a man who, on duty, took off his clothes from his body.

The heart continues to beat for some time after all functions cease, until the acidity of the blood due to the increase in carbon dioxide causes it to stop.

OTHER PHENOMENA

Sometimes two phenomena are reported that cannot be verified.

● Death sounds

First, in the old accounts of executions by hanging, there are reports that the victim at the time of death (that is, when convulsions stop, the only sign by which witnesses can judge) emits something like a groan (in Kipling's "Hanging of Danny Deaver" soldier , a witness to the execution, hears a groan over his head; they explain to him that this is the soul of the victim flying away). It seems incredible, since the airways are securely closed, but such reports exist.

● Ejaculation in men

This phenomenon is noted often, almost in all cases. Ejaculation, as well as the often noted erection, can be caused by the same reactions of the nervous system that cause convulsive movements. This happens at the end of the hanging.

There is a report by an American military policeman and a German warden who discovered a German prisoner who had hanged himself. The American watched in surprise as the German guard unzipped the fly of the hanged man and announced that it was too late to take him out of the noose: ejaculation had already occurred.