GARROTTE.

A device that chokes a person to death. Used in Spain until 1978 when the death penalty was abolished. This type of execution on a special chair, a metal hoop was thrown around the neck. Behind the back of the criminal was the executioner, who actuated a large screw, located in the same place at the back. Although the device itself is not 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” consisted in the fact that a pointed bolt was mounted in this hoop, at the back, which pierced the convict’s neck, 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 conventional 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 "skafium", which means "trough". Skafism was popular in ancient Persia. The victim was placed in a shallow trough and wrapped in chains, watered with milk and honey to cause severe diarrhea, then the body of the victim was smeared 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 given this cocktail every day to prolong the torture by attracting more insects to eat and breed within his increasingly dead flesh. Death, eventually occurring, probably due to a combination of dehydration and septic shock, 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 Ludovic van Gruutuse. 1470s.

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

The sentenced were tied to a wooden sled, resembling a piece of wicker fence, and dragged by horses to the place of execution, where they were successively hanged (not letting them suffocate to death), castrated, gutted, quartered and beheaded. The remains of the executed were paraded in the most famous public places of the kingdom and the capital, including London Bridge. Women sentenced to death for high 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 endangered the authority of the monarch, was considered an act deserving of extreme punishment - and although during the entire time that it was practiced, several of the convicted were commuted and they were subjected to a less cruel and shameful execution, to most traitors to the English crown (including many Catholic priests who were executed during the Elizabethan era, and a group of regicides involved in the death of King Charles I in 1649), the highest sanction of medieval English law was applied.

Although the Act of Parliament defining treason is still an integral part of the current legislation of the United Kingdom, during the reform of the British legal system, which lasted most of the 19th century, execution by hanging, disembowelling and quartering was replaced by dragging by horses, hanging to death, by posthumous decapitation and quartering, then obsolete and abolished in 1870.

The above-mentioned execution process can be seen in more detail in the film "Braveheart". The participants in 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 off the scaffold and break his neck.

BREAKING IN TREES - Russian version of quartering.

They bent down two trees and tied the executed to the tops and released "to freedom." The trees unbent - tearing the executed.

LIFTING ON PIKE OR STAKE.

Spontaneous execution, carried out, as a rule, by a crowd of armed people. Usually practiced during all sorts of military riots and other revolutions and civil wars. The victim was surrounded from 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.

LANDING ON THE COUNT.

Impaling is a type of death penalty in which the condemned person was impaled on a vertical pointed stake. In most cases, the victim was impaled on the ground, in a horizontal position, and then the stake was set vertically. Sometimes the victim was impaled on an already staked stake.

Impaling 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 was 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 especially serious crimes. On the Assyrian reliefs, there are 2 options: with one of them, the condemned person was pierced with a stake in the chest, with 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 did not receive much distribution in Ancient Rome.

For much of medieval history, the execution by impalement was very common in the Middle East, where it was one of the main methods of painful death penalty.

Impaling was quite common in Byzantium, for example, Belisarius suppressed the rebellions of soldiers by impaling the instigators.

The Romanian ruler Vlad Tepes (Rom. Vlad Tepes - Vlad Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Kololyub, Vlad the Impaler) distinguished himself with particular cruelty. At his direction, 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 for 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 gravity of his body, slowly slid down the stake, and sometimes death 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 bar 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 critical organs. In this case, death from blood loss occurred very slowly. The usual version of the execution was also very painful, and the victims writhed on a stake for several hours.

PASSING UNDER THE KEEL (Keelhauling).

Special naval variant. 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 that, he was thrown into the water in front of the ship, and with the help of the indicated ropes, the colleagues pulled the patient along the sides under the bottom, taking it out of the water already from the stern. The keel and bottom of the ship were covered with shells and other marine life a little more than completely, 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, the execution was imposed for the murder of a father, but in reality this punishment was imposed for any murder by a younger elder. A monkey, a dog, a rooster or a snake were planted in a bag with a 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 scald 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-hows" of the Great French Revolution, which undoubtedly significantly advanced humanity in the direction of freedom, equality and fraternity:

1. The crowd is driven into the sea, where it sinks cheaply and angrily.

2. Execution in wine tanks. They loaded it - filled it with water - drained it - unloaded it - 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 drowned them. Experience with tanks has not taken root, but barges are used regularly in the world, up to the present.

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, they drowned the violating brewer in it. Or they were forced to drink a bucket (or as much as they like) of vodka at a time. However, sometimes the condemned himself wanted to say goodbye to the world, in that which he loved most of all. So George Plantagenet, the first Duke of Clarence, was drowned in a barrel of sweet wine - malvasia for treason.

FILLING INTO THE THROAT OF MELTED METAL OR BOILING OIL.

It was used in Russia in the era of Ivan the Terrible, medieval Europe and the Middle East, by some Indian tribes against the Spanish invaders. Death came from a burn of the esophagus and strangulation.

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

As a punishment for counterfeiting, the metal from which the criminal cast coins was often poured. By the way, the Roman commander Crassus, after being defeated by the Parthians, also knew all the delights of this execution, though with the difference that molten gold was poured into 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.

Also, Indians poured gold into the throats of the Spaniards.
- Are you thirsty for gold? We will quench your thirst.
Who is interested in the video - you are welcome to watch the 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 craves most of all.

HUNGER OR THIRST.

It was used by subtle connoisseurs of the process (sadists), or those who tried to persuade the stubborn to something.

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

For the Chinese, everything was exactly the opposite - the convict was fed, and very well. They just gave him exclusively boiled meat. And nothing more. The first week, the executed cannot get enough of such humane conditions of detention. The second week he starts to feel a little worse. For the third week, he already senses something was 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 form of capital punishment familiar to the ancient Jews and Greeks.

After the appropriate decision of the authorized legal body (the king or the court), a crowd of citizens gathered who killed the guilty person by throwing heavy stones at him.

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

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

BURYING.

As a method of the death penalty is known 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 being buried 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 Zaporozhian Sich, the murderer was buried alive in the same coffin as 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 - early 18th centuries, women who killed their husbands were buried alive in the ground up to the neck.

According to the Kharkiv Holocaust Museum, this 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 Russia buried themselves in the name of God and to save their souls. For this, special dugouts were dug with a hermetically sealed exit - mines, candles and a sawn pole in the center were placed in them. Death was either "light" or "hard". A hard death guaranteed good karma, but most people could not endure the torment and chose an easy one, for this it was enough to push the pole in the center of the mine and you were immediately covered with earth. In all documentary details, one such case was described 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”.

Immuring - 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 of starvation or dehydration. This distinguishes it from burial alive, where a person died from suffocation.

USING LIVING NATURE.

Since ancient times, man has been finding new ways to put our smaller brothers at the service of mankind, and execution is no exception. The application is both the largest and the smallest: the Indians specifically train elephants to crush to death, and the Indians launch ants at the enemies (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, escaping from the heat, eats its way out.

In Siberia, they liked to leave a scoundrel naked in the taiga to be eaten by a gnat that could drink all the blood from a person in two days (however, the end will come much earlier, from simuliotoxicosis. Well, as an option - launching snakes (or rats) into the insides or infecting some disgusting (microbes are also living creatures).

In ancient Rome, criminals or Christians were poisoned by wild predators. In addition, an extremely interesting method was used for the execution of the patricians (among others): they gave a knife and threw rose petals. The convict had a choice: 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, and large ones lead to death through fumes poisoning. By the way, fruits have a similar effect.

DEFENESTRATION.

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

For the first time such an execution was applied in ancient Rome. The subject was a young man who betrayed his teacher Cicero. The widow of Quintus (Cicero's brother), having received the right to reprisal against 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 Ling-Chi, or "death by a thousand cuts." This is a prolonged death by cutting out individual pieces of the body. This type of execution was mainly used in China until 1905. They were condemned for high treason and for the murder of their parents. The convict was usually tied to some kind of pole, usually in a crowded place, in the squares. And then slowly cut out fragments of the body. To prevent the prisoner from losing consciousness, he was given a portion of opium.

In his History of Torture of All Time, George Riley Scott quotes from the notes of two Europeans who had the rare opportunity to be present at such an execution: their names were Sir Henry Norman (he saw this execution in 1895) and T. T. Ma-Daws: "There is a basket covered with a piece of linen, in which lies a set of knives. Each of these knives is designed for a certain 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, in all likelihood, was supplanted by another, which left no room for chance and provided for cutting off parts of the body in a certain sequence with 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 limbs and ends the execution with one sharp blow to the heart.

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

An analogue of Ling 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 specifically about the death penalty in this way, as a rule, after peeling off the skin, they try to save it for demonstration in order to intimidate. Most often, the skin was torn off already from a person killed in another way - a criminal, an enemy, in some cases a blasphemer who denied the afterlife (in medieval Europe). Peeling off part of the skin can be part of a magical ritual, as is the case with scalping.

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

There are also references to the Assyrian practice of "indirect" punishment of a person by flaying his young child before his eyes. The Aztecs in Mexico skinned their victims during ritual human sacrifices, but usually after the victim's death. Flaying the body 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 have been found nailed to doors. In Chinese history, execution became more widespread than in European history: this is how corrupt officials and rebels were executed, and, in addition to execution, there was also a separate punishment - skinning from the face. The emperor Zhu Yuanzhang was especially “successful” in this execution, who massively used it to punish bribe-taking officials and rebels. In 1396, he ordered the execution of 5,000 women accused of treason in this way.
The practice of flaying disappeared from Europe in the early 18th century and was officially banned in China after the Xinhai Revolution and the establishment of the Republic. Nevertheless, in the 19th and 20th centuries, individual cases of flaying took place in different parts of the world, for example, executions in the Japanese-created puppet state of Manchukuo in the 1930s.

The Judgment 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 pulled off, pulling it down to the very waist so that it dangled around the hips with long red petals. If the victim did not die immediately from blood loss (but they were usually skinned skillfully, without hitting large vessels), then after a few hours, when the drug ended, she was in for a painful shock and eating insects.

BURNING IN THE LOG.

A type of execution that arose in the Russian state in the 16th century, was especially often applied to the Old Believers in the 17th century, and was 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 Russia in the 16th century during the time of Ivan the Terrible. Unlike Western Europe, in Russia those sentenced to be burned were executed not at the stake, but in log cabins, which made it possible to avoid turning such executions into mass spectacles.

The log cabin for burning was a small structure made of logs filled with tow and resin. It was erected specifically for the moment of execution. After reading the sentence, the suicide bomber was pushed into the log house through the door. Often a log house was made without a door and a roof - a structure like a wooden fence; in this case, the convict was lowered into it from above. After that, 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 cabins. Thus, the archpriest Avvakum with three of his associates were burned (April 1 (11), 1681, Pustozersk), the German mystic Quirin Kuhlman (1689, Moscow), and also, as stated in the Old Believer sources [what?], An active opponent of the reforms of the patriarch Nikon Bishop Pavel Kolomensky (1656).

In the XVIII century, a sect took shape, the followers of which considered death through self-immolation a spiritual feat and a necessity. Usually, self-immolation in log cabins was practiced in anticipation of repressive actions by the authorities. When the soldiers appeared, the sectarians locked themselves in the prayer house and set it on fire without entering into negotiations with the authorities.

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

HANGING BY THE RIB.

A type of death penalty in which an iron hook was thrust into the side of the victim and hung up. Death came from thirst and blood loss after a few days. The hands of the victim were tied so that he could not free himself. Execution was common among the Zaporizhian Cossacks. According to legend, Dmitry Vishnevetsky, the founder of the Zaporizhzhya Sich, the legendary "Baida Veshnivetsky", was executed in this way.

FRYING ON A FRYING PAN OR IRON GRID.

The boyar Shchenyatev was fried in a frying pan, and the king of the Aztecs Kuautemok was fried on a grill.
When Cuauhtemoca was roasted on coals with his secretary, asking where he hid the gold, the secretary, unable to withstand the heat, began to beg him to surrender and ask the Spaniards for indulgence. Cuauhtemoc mockingly replied that he was enjoying himself, as if he were lying in a bath.
The secretary didn't say another word.

SICILIAN BULL.

This death penalty 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 mounted on the side of this device. The condemned were closed inside the bull, and a fire was set underneath it, heating the metal until the man was roasted to death. The bull was designed so that the screams of the prisoner would be translated into the roar of an infuriated bull.

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

He was also known in the Republic, but came into regular use under the principate, was appointed for serious violation of guard duty, theft in the camp, perjury and escape, sometimes for desertion in battle. It was made by a tribune, who touched the convict with a stick, after which the legionnaires beat him with stones and sticks. If a whole unit was punished with a futuary, then rarely all the perpetrators were executed, as happened in 271 BC. e. with the legion in Rhegium in the war with Pyrrhus. However, taking into account factors such as the age of a soldier, length of service or rank, the futuary could be canceled.

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. The slaves of the pharaoh at dawn (specially so that Ra saw the criminal) made 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 whole families.

This type of execution was widely used by Genghis Khan. In medieval Japan, boiling water was applied mainly to ninja who failed an assassination and were captured. In France, this execution was applied to counterfeiters. Sometimes intruders were boiled in boiling oil. There remains evidence of how in 1410 in Paris a pickpocket was boiled alive in boiling oil.

PIT WITH SNAKE - a type of death penalty, when the executed is placed with poisonous snakes, which should have led to 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 that caused painful death. When a person was thrown into a pit filled with snakes, the disturbed reptiles began to bite him.

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

Often the interrogated person was brought to the snakes, pressing his legs to them. Women were subjected to the popular torture, when the interrogated person was brought a snake to her bare chest. They also loved to bring poisonous reptiles to the face of women. But in general, snakes dangerous and deadly to humans were rarely used during torture, since there was a risk of losing a captive 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 leader of the Huns, 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 Lothbrok. In 865, during a Danish Viking raid on the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, their king Ragnar was captured and, by order 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 sagas of Ragnar Leatherpants (and his sons)" and "The Strands of the Sons of Ragnar".

Wicker Man

A human-shaped cage made of wicker, which, according to Julius Caesar's Notes on the Gallic War and Strabo's Geography, was used by the Druids for human sacrifice, burning it along with people locked up there, condemned for crimes or intended as sacrifices to the gods.

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

EXECUTION BY ELEPHANTS.

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

The trained animals were versatile, capable of killing prey immediately or torturing them slowly over long periods of time. Serving rulers, elephants were used to show the absolute power of the ruler and his ability to control wild animals.

The view of the execution of prisoners of war by elephants usually aroused horror, but at the same time the interest of European travelers was described in many magazines and stories about the life of Asia at that time. This practice was eventually suppressed by the European empires that colonized the region where execution was common in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although execution by elephants was primarily characteristic of Asian countries, this practice was sometimes used by the Western powers of antiquity, in particular Rome and Carthage, mainly to massacre rebellious soldiers.

IRON MAID (eng. Iron maiden).

An instrument of death 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 closet was closed, and the sharp long nails with which the inner surface of the chest and arms of the “iron maiden” was seated pierced his body; then, after the death of the victim, the movable bottom of the cabinet fell, the body of the executed was thrown into the water and carried away by the current.

The “Iron Maiden” is attributed to the Middle Ages, but in fact the tool 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.
Crowding caused additional torment - 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 cries of the executed. The doors closed slowly. Subsequently, one of them could be opened so that the executioners checked the condition of the subject. The spikes pierced his arms, legs, stomach, eyes, shoulders and buttocks. At the same time, apparently, the nails inside the “iron maiden” were located in such a way that the victim did not die immediately, but after a rather long time, during which the judges had the opportunity to continue the interrogation.

DEVIL WIND (eng. Devil wind, there is also a variant of English. Blowing from guns - literally “Blow from guns”) in Russia is known as the “English execution” - the name of the type of death penalty, which consisted in tying the sentenced to the muzzle of a cannon and then firing 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 the rebels.
Vasily Vereshchagin, who studied the use of this execution before writing his painting “The Suppression of the Indian Rebellion 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 committing atrocities were too reminiscent of Tamerlane times: they chopped, cut their throats, like sheep.

The British have a different matter: firstly, they did the work of justice, the work of retribution for the violated rights of the victors, far away, in India; secondly, they did a grandiose job: hundreds of sepoys and non-sepoys who rebelled against their rule were tied to the muzzles of cannons and without a projectile, with gunpowder alone, they shot them - this is already a great success against cutting the throat or tearing open the stomach.<...>I repeat, everything is done methodically, in a good way: guns, how many there will be in number, line up in a row, slowly bring to each muzzle and tie one more or less criminal Indian citizen by the elbows, of different ages, professions and castes, and then command, all guns fire at once.

They are not afraid of death, as such, and they are not afraid of execution; but what they avoid, what they fear, is the need to appear before the supreme judge in an incomplete, tormented form, without a head, without arms, with a lack of limbs, and this is precisely not only likely, but even inevitable when shooting from cannons.

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

It is difficult for a European to understand the horror of an Indian of a high caste, if necessary, only to touch a brother of a lower one: he must, in order not to close his opportunity to be saved, wash himself and make sacrifices after that without end. It’s also terrible that under modern conditions, for example, on railways one has to sit elbow on 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 ! From this thought alone the soul of the hardest Hindu shudders!

I say this very seriously, in full confidence that no one who was in those countries or impartially familiarized himself with them from the descriptions will contradict me.
(Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 in the memoirs of V.V. Vereshchagin.)

Those who wish to further enjoy this topic can read the book - "Torture Stories of All Ages" by George Riley Scott.

Hanging

Palestinian terrorists hanged in a market square in Damascus. On the necks of the convicts hangs a sign "In the name of the Syrian people." D.R.

For centuries, people have hung their own kind. Along with beheading and bonfire, hanging was the most popular method of execution in almost all ancient civilizations. It is still used legally in more than eighty countries to this day.

It is impossible not to recognize the simplicity, cost savings and ease of execution inherent in hanging. It is for these reasons that every second suicide candidate uses a rope. It is very easy to make a tightening loop ... and you can use it anywhere!

Like shooting, hanging makes it possible to carry out mass executions.

Mass hanging in the Netherlands. Engraving by Hogenberg. National Library. Paris.

Just such an execution during the Thirty Years' War already in the 17th century was captured by Jacques Callot in his engraving: a huge oak tree, on which the corpses of sixty soldiers sway. Let us recall how, on the orders of Peter I, in the autumn of 1698, in just a few days, several hundred archers ended up on the gallows. Two and a half centuries later, in 1917, General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, commander-in-chief of German troops in East Africa, hung hundreds of aborigines in two days on long gallows that stretched in strings to the horizon. During World War II, hundreds of German troops hanged Soviet partisans. Such examples can be given ad infinitum.

Hanging is carried out with the help of the gallows. Usually it consists of a vertical pole and a horizontal beam of smaller length and diameter, which is attached to the top of the pole - a rope is fixed on it. Sometimes for collective hanging they use a gallows of two vertical poles connected at the top by a beam on which ropes are attached.

These two models - with minor differences depending on the country and people - represent an almost complete set of designs used for hanging. True, other options are also known, for example, the Turkish one, which was used as early as the beginning of the 20th century: the gallows "in Turkish" consists of three beams brought together to one point in the form of a pyramid.

Or the Chinese "hanging cage", but it serves more for strangulation than for hanging.

The principle of hanging is simple: the noose around the neck of the executed under the weight of his weight is tightened with a force sufficient to stop the work of a number of vital organs.

Compression of the carotid arteries disrupts circulation, causing brain death. Depending on the method used, cervical vertebrae are sometimes broken and the spinal cord is damaged.

The agony can last a long time...

There are three main hanging methods.

The first is as follows: a person is forced to rise to an elevation - a chair, table, cart, horse, ladder, put a noose around his neck from a rope tied to a gallows or a tree branch, and knock out a support from under his feet, sometimes pushing the victim forward.

This is the most ordinary, but the most common way. The victim dies slowly and painfully. Previously, it often happened that the executioner, in order to speed up the execution, hung with his whole body on the legs of the condemned.

Execution by hanging. Woodcut published by de Souvigny in Praxis Criminis Persequende. Private count

That is how in 1961, the former chairman of the Turkish Council, Menderes, was executed at hard labor in Imsala. He was forced to climb onto an ordinary table that stood under the gallows, which the executioner knocked out with a kick. More recently, in 1987, in Libya, six people sentenced to public hanging - the execution was broadcast on television - climbed onto stools that the executioner knocked over.

The second way: a noose is put around the neck of the condemned, the rope is attached to a roller or a movable support, and the condemned is lifted from the ground for it. He is being dragged up instead of being thrown down.

This is how they usually lynched in the USA. Public hangings were carried out in the same way in Iraq, Iran and Syria in the 1970s and 1980s. In fact, we are talking about suffocation, the agony in this case lasts up to half an hour or more.

Hanging of deserters. Engraving by Jacques Callot. Private count

Finally, in the third method of hanging, suffocation and anemia of the brain are accompanied by a fracture of the cervical vertebrae.

This method, developed by the British, has a reputation for being painless and guaranteeing instant death (what it actually is, we will describe later). This method is certainly more effective than the previous two, but it requires some adaptations: a scaffold of a certain height with a sliding floor - the body falls, the rope is pulled sharply, breaking, in theory, the convict's vertebrae.

This method will be brought to perfection in the second half of the 19th century. It is now used in the United States and some African and Asian states, which were inspired by the conclusions of a special study of the British Royal Commission, conducted in 1953. The Commission, having considered all types of execution on the criteria of "humanity, reliability and decency", came to the conclusion that the hanging, then in force in the UK, should be retained.

Throughout Europe, commoners were hanged for centuries, while nobles were usually beheaded. An old French proverb said: "The ax is for the nobles, the rope is for the commoners." If they wanted to humiliate a nobleman, his corpse was hung after being executed in the way that was due to his title and rank. So, on the Montfaucon gallows, five financial quartermasters and one minister were hung up: Gerard de la Gete, Pierre Remy, Jean de Montague, Olivier Ledem, Jacques de la Baume and Enguerrand de Marigny. Their headless bodies were hung by the armpits.

The corpses were removed from the gallows only after they began to decompose, in order to frighten the townsfolk as long as possible. The remains were dumped into the ossuary.

Hanging was considered a shameful execution in ancient times. The Old Testament says that Joshua ordered the killing of five Amorite kings who were besieging Gibeon, hanging their corpses on five gallows and leaving them there until sunset.

At one time the gallows were low. To make the execution more humiliating, they were raised, and in the verdict they began to specify that they should be hung "high and short." The higher, the more humiliating the execution. The highest beam, facing north, began to be called "Jewish".

The humiliating nature of hanging has survived in the modern mind. A relatively recent example is Germany. The civil penal code of 1871 provided for beheading, and the military regulations for execution (however, the gallows were still used for the execution of "natives" in the protectorates), but Hitler in 1933 ordered the return of the gallows to the country in order to execute by hanging "particularly immoral criminals." Since then, those convicted of civil crimes were punished with a guillotine and an ax, and everyone who was found "guilty of causing damage to the German people" was sent to the gallows.

"Hang them like cattle!" - said the Fuhrer. In July 1944, he ordered the officers involved in the plot against him to be hung on carcass hooks.

Offensive "head down" ...

Historian John W. Wheeler Bennett describes this collective execution as follows: “Erwin von Witzleben, in his sixties, entered first, dressed in a prisoner’s uniform and wooden shoes… He was put under one of the hooks, the handcuffs were removed from him, and he was stripped to the waist. They threw a noose of thin short rope around the neck. The executioners lifted the convict, put the other end of the rope on a hook and tied it tightly, after which they released him, and he collapsed down. While he writhed furiously, suffering unspeakably, he was stripped naked ... He fought to the point of exhaustion. Death came in five minutes.

The bodies remained hanging until complete decomposition. Engraving. Private count

The Soviet criminal code provided for execution by firing squad, while retaining hanging for "war criminals".

As for hanging upside down, it has always been used for the highest humiliation. That is how on April 28, 1945, the corpses of the executed Benito Mussolini and Clara Petacci were hung in Piazza Loreto.

Many engravings of the 14th and 15th centuries show that two gallows rise on the Place Greve in Paris. The hanging ritual in the 16th and 17th centuries is described in detail in a text by an unknown author, quoted by many 19th-century historians.

The execution of criminals usually took place on a large scale on a Sunday or a holiday. “The victim was taken to the execution, seated on a cart with his back to the horse. Nearby was a priest. Behind the executioner. Three ropes hung around the convict's neck: two as thick as a little finger, called "tortuzy", with a sliding loop at the end. The third, nicknamed "Jet", served to pull the victim off the stairs or, following the expression of that time, "send to eternity." When the cart arrived at the foot of the gallows, where monks or penitents were already standing singing Salve Regina, the executioner was the first to back up the ladder leaning against the gallows, using ropes to drag the condemned man to him, forced to climb after him. Climbing up, the executioner quickly tied both “tortuzas” to the gallows beam and, holding the “Jet” wound around his hand, threw the victim off the steps with a knee blow, he swayed in the air, and he was strangled by a sliding noose.

One knot solves everything!

Then the executioner stood with his feet on the tied hands of the hanged man and, holding on to the gallows, made several strong pushes, finishing off the convict and making sure that the strangulation was successful. Recall that often the executioners did not bother using three ropes, limiting themselves to one.

In Paris and many other cities in France, there was a custom: if the condemned passed by the monastery, the nuns had to bring him a glass of wine and a piece of bread.

A huge crowd always gathered for the sad treat ceremony - for superstitious people it was a rare opportunity to touch the condemned. After the execution, the confessor and the officers of the judicial police went to the castle, where a table set at the expense of the city awaited them.

The hanging, which very quickly became a real folk performance, prompted the executioners not only to demonstrate their skills in front of a demanding audience, but also to “stage” the execution, especially in cases of collective hangings. So they sought to "aestheticize" the executions. In 1562, when Angers was taken by the Catholics, the Protestants were hanged symmetrically. Subsequently, there were cases of distribution of victims among the gallows, depending on weight and height. The executioners, who alternated between tall and short, fat and thin, deserved rave reviews.

On account of his hundreds of executions

Albert Pierrepoint took over from his father and uncle and served as His Majesty's official executioner until the abolition of the death penalty for criminal offenses in 1966. In November 1950, he was called to testify before the Royal Commission, which was studying the methods of execution used in the world, in order to give an opinion on whether hanging in the UK should be retained. Here are some excerpts from his testimony:

How long have you been working as an executioner?

P: About twenty years.

How many executions did you carry out?

P: Several hundred.

Did you have any difficulties?

P: Once in my entire career.

What exactly happened?

P: He was a boor. We were not lucky with him. It was not an Englishman. He made a real scandal.

Is this the only case?

P: There were maybe two or three more, like a faint at the last moment, but nothing worth mentioning.

Can you confirm that the majority of convicts calmly and dignifiedly stand on the hatch?

P .: From my own experience I can say that in 99% of cases this is exactly what happens. Not a bad number, right?

Do you always operate the sunroof yourself?

P: Yes. The executioner must do it himself. Its' his job.

Does your job seem too exhausting to you?

P: I'm used to it.

Do you ever worry?

P: No!

I guess people ask you questions about your profession?

P: Yes, but I refuse to talk about it. For me, this is sacred.

History reference

France: Until 1449, women were not hanged for reasons of decency, but were buried alive. In 1448, during a trial, a gypsy woman demanded that she be hanged. And they hung her, tying the skirts to her knees. England: A special "pardon regime" provision provided for the pardon of certain convicts due to physical features of their physique, such as an overly thick neck. Between 1940 and 1955, five convicts benefited from this article.

South Africa: This country holds the record for civilian death sentences by hanging: 1,861 between 1978 and 1988.

Bangladesh: Ban on hanging teenagers who were under 16 at the time of the crime.

Burma: Children over the age of seven can be sentenced to death unless they are said to be "lack of maturity".

Sudan: The oldest person hanged in the 20th century, in 1985, Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, was seventy-two years old.

Iran: Since 1979, thousands of convicts have been hanged under the law of Hodud (for crimes against the will of Allah).

USA: In 1900, 27 states voted in favor of the electric chair instead of hanging, which was considered more cruel and inhumane. Now it has been preserved only in four - in Washington, Montana, Delaware, Kansas. In the first three, the right to choose a lethal injection is given.

Libya: The hanging in April 1984 of ten students from the University of Tripoli, as well as the execution of nine other convicts in 1987, was televised.

Nigeria: Twelve public hangings took place in 1988: according to the official version, in this way the authorities wanted to "reduce the workload", which became one of the causes of unrest in prisons.

Japan: This country is known for having the longest waiting period between conviction and execution. Sadami Hirasawa, sentenced to hang in 1950, died of old age in 1987, although he could end up in a noose every day. Anonymity: The names of the executed Japanese are never disclosed by the administration and are not published in the press, so as not to dishonor the families.

The price of blood: The Islamic code stipulates that anyone convicted of murder can be executed only with the consent of the closest relative of the victim, who is free to collect compensation from the guilty person - the "price of blood" instead of execution.

Television: Cameroon, Zaire, Ethiopia, Iran, Kuwait, Mozambique, Sudan, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Uganda. All of these countries carried out public hangings between 1970 and 1985, and at least half of the executions were filmed for television or broadcast live.

Body price: Swaziland is the only country in the world that provides for hanging for trafficking in the human body. In 1983, seven men and women were hanged for such a crime. In 1985, a man was sentenced to death for selling his nephew for ritual murder. In 1986, two people were hanged for killing a child during a ritual murder.

Pregnant women: in principle, pregnant women are not hanged in any country in the world. Some peoples change the measure of restraint, others await childbirth and immediately carry out the sentence or wait from two months to two years.

Hanging in Croatia. According to tradition, the condemned were hung in sewn bags. Private count

Criminal verdicts often specified: "Must hang until death occurs."

This wording was not accidental.

Sometimes the executioner failed to hang the convict the first time. Then he took him off, pricked his heels, bringing him to consciousness, and hung him up again. Such "blunders" happened much more often than you might think, examples of this were noted even in the middle of the 19th century.

Previously, the hanging technique depended on the performer and the city where the execution took place.

Thus, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, until the revolution, the Parisian executioner placed a sliding noose under the jaw and occipital bone of the condemned, which in most cases led to a neck fracture.

The executioner stood on the victim's bound hands, and on this makeshift stirrup he jumped with all his might. This method of execution was called "brittle withers".

Other executioners, such as those in Lyon and Marseille, preferred to place the slipknot over the back of the head. There was a second deaf knot on the rope, which did not allow her to slip under the chin. With this method of hanging, the executioner stood not on his hands, but on the head of the convict, pushing it forward so that the deaf knot fell on the larynx or trachea, which often led to their rupture.

Today, in accordance with the "English method", the rope is placed under the left side of the lower jaw. The advantage of this method is the high probability 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 tearing off the head.

Execution in Cairo in 1907. Engraving by Clement Auguste Andrieu. 19th century Private count

Recall 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. By the hands they hung 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 the 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 if they were alive, then after this terrible torture they did not live long. Adult defendants were sentenced to such a "slow hanging", forcing them to confess to a crime or complicity. Children and teenagers were often hanged for capital crimes as well. For example, in 1722, the younger brother of the robber Kartush, who was not even fifteen years old, was executed in this way.

Some countries have sought to extend the execution procedure. So, in the 19th century in Turkey, the hands of the hanged 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 the hanged were not removed until they began to decompose. Hence the gallows, nicknamed "gangster", which should not be confused with ordinary gallows. On them hung not only the bodies of the hanged, but also the corpses of convicts who were killed in other ways.

"Gangster 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 a hillock.

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

The royal "bandit gallows" of Paris, introduced by Philip the Handsome, were the most famous in France: they usually "flaunted" fifty to sixty hanged. They towered in the north of the capital approximately where Buttes-Chaumont is now located - at that time this place was called the "Hills of Montfaucon". Soon the gallows itself began to be called that.

Hanging children

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

France. If it was about children under 13-14 years old, they were hung by the armpits, death by suffocation usually occurred in two to three hours.

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

When many countries in Europe had already abolished the death penalty, the English penal code stated that children could be hanged from the age of seven if there was "obvious evidence of sabotage".

In 1800, a child of ten was hanged in London for fraud. He forged the ledger of a haberdashery store. Andrew Brenning was executed the following year. He stole the spoon. In 1808, a child of seven was hanged at Chelmsford on charges of arson. In the same year, a 13-year-old boy was hanged in Maidstone on the same charge. 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 to Tyburn to be hanged. Greville, who followed the process of several very young boys sentenced to hanging, who burst into tears after the announcement of the verdict, writes: “It became clear that they were absolutely not ready for this. I've never seen boys cry like that."

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

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

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

Long strong ladders, standing at the supports, allowed the executioners to hang the living, as well as the corpses of the hanged, wheeled and decapitated 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 the rotting remains when it was necessary 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 adding 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 will cease in the reign of Louis XIII, and the building itself will 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, and until then it will be very popular.

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

It would seem that in such conditions people had to live in constant fear. Nothing like this. They have learned to ignore the decomposed bodies swinging on the gallows. In an effort to frighten the people, he was taught to be indifferent. In France, several centuries before the revolution that gave rise to the "guillotine for all", hanging became "entertainment", "fun".

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

A terrible stench, rotten or withered bodies swaying in the wind, did not prevent taverns and innkeepers from trading in the immediate vicinity of the gallows. People led happy lives.

Hanged men and superstitions

It has always been believed that the one who touches the hanged man will gain supernatural powers, good or evil. According to folk beliefs, nails, teeth, the body of a hanged man and the rope used for execution could relieve pain and treat certain diseases, help women in childbirth, bewitch, bring good luck in the game and lottery.

The famous painting by Goya depicts a Spaniard pulling a tooth from a corpse right on the gallows.

After public executions at night near the gallows, one could often see people looking for the mandrake, a magical plant supposedly growing from the sperm of a 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 pass 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 she had a healing gift.

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

The superstitions associated with the hanged also extended to the executioners: they were credited with healing abilities, which were supposedly inherited, like their craft. In fact, their dark activities gave them some anatomical knowledge, and the 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 “hanged bones”, 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 meet sick and disabled people who gathered around the scaffold in the hope of picking up a few drops of blood, which they heal.

Recall that during the last public execution in France in 1939, out of superstition, many "spectators" dipped their handkerchiefs in blood spatter on the pavement.

Pulling out the teeth of a hanged man. Goya engraving.

François Villon and his friends were one of those. Consider his verses:

And they went to Montfaucon,

Where the crowd has already gathered,

He was noisy full of girls,

And the body trade began.

The story told by Brantome shows that people were so used to hanging that they did not feel disgust at all. A certain young woman, whose husband had been hanged, went to the gallows guarded by soldiers. One of the guards decided to hit on her, and succeeded so much that “twice he enjoyed laying her on the coffin of her own husband, who served as a bed for them”

Three hundred reasons to be hanged!

Another example of the lack of edification of public hangings dates from 1820. According to the English report, out 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 sentenced to be hanged in Bristol Jail, only three never attended the 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 pain of hanging, it was ordered to shave the beard, as this distinguished the nobles and the military from people of other classes. Ordinary petty theft also led to the gallows. Pulled a turnip or caught a carp - and a rope is waiting for you. As early as 1762, a maid named Antoinette Toutan was hanged in the Place de Grève for stealing an embroidered napkin.

Judge Lynch's gallows

Judge Lynch, from whose name 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 cleansed the country of intruders through drastic measures. According to another version, Lynch was a farmer from Virginia or the founder of the city of Lynchleburg in this state.

At the dawn of American colonization in a huge country where numerous adventurers rushed, not so numerous representatives of justice were not able to apply existing laws, therefore, in all states, in particular in California, Colorado, Oregon and Nevada, committees of vigilant citizens began to form, which hung criminals caught at the scene of the crime, without any trial or investigation. Despite the gradual establishment of a legal system, lynchings were recorded every year until the middle of the 20th century. Most often, the 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 penal code listed two hundred and fifteen offenses 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 extenuating circumstances for any offense, regardless of the 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 in the codex. 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 gloomy Middle Ages, they were hanged for stealing a vegetable or for a tree cut down in a strange forest ...

The death sentence was imposed for the theft of more than 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, and at the dawn of the 19th century, the gallows still towered 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 to suffer this fate is considered to be a certain James Cook.

Arthur Koestler, in Reflections on Hanging, recalls that in the 19th century, execution was an elaborate ceremony and was considered by the gentry to be a first-class spectacle. 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. The public hanging of children lasted until 1833. The last death sentence of this kind was handed down on a nine-year-old boy who stole ink. But he was not executed: public opinion demanded and achieved a mitigation of punishment.

In the 19th century, there were often cases when those who were hanged in a hurry did not die immediately. The number of convicts who "blabbed" 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. 19th century Private count

During an autopsy, which has become a mandatory procedure since 1880, the hanged often returned to life right on the pathologist's table.

Arthur Koestler told us the most incredible story. The available evidence sweeps aside the slightest doubt about its veracity, moreover, a famous practitioner was the source of information. In Germany, a hanged man woke up in an anatomical room, got up and ran away with the help of a medical examiner.

In 1927, two English convicts were removed from the gallows after fifteen minutes, but they began to pant, which meant the return of the condemned to life, and they were hastily brought back for another half an hour.

Hanging was a "subtle 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 way of instant death can be considered a “long drop”, which involves 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 in the 19th century by the Irish, although many English executioners demanded that authorship be recognized for them. 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 "successfully converted the originally barbaric execution by hanging into a humane method." Such an "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 they are placed on the hatch exactly at the junction line 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 sashes swing open. The convict standing on the hatch is tied at the ankles, and his head is covered with a white, black or beige - depending on the country - hood. The loop is put on 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 you to shorten or lengthen it as needed.

Hanging of two convicts in Ethiopia in 1935. Photo "Keyston".

rope meaning

The material and quality of the rope, which are of great importance when hanging, were carefully determined by the executioner, this was his responsibility.

George Moledon, nicknamed the "Prince of Executioners", worked 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 with a mixture based on vegetable oil, so that the knot would slide better and the rope itself would not stretch. George Moledon set a kind of record that no one even came close to: one of his ropes was used for twenty-seven hangings.

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

When the loop is put on the neck, it must be tightened, in no case blocking the blood circulation.

The coils of the noose are located under the left jawbone, exactly under the ear. Having correctly positioned the noose, the executioner must release a certain length of the rope, which varies depending on the weight of the convict, age, build and his physiological characteristics. So, in 1905 in Chicago, the 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 convict, the shorter the rope should be.

There are many weight-to-rope tables designed to eliminate unpleasant surprises: if the rope is too short, the condemned will suffer from suffocation, and if it is too long, his head will be torn off.

Since the sentenced man was unconscious, he was tied to a chair and hung in a sitting position. England. 1932 Photography. Private count D.R.

Execution in Kentucky of the killer Raines Dicey. The sentence is carried out by a female executioner. 1936 Photo "Keyston".

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 convict. In most countries, these parameters are reflected in the correspondence tables that are available to the executioners. Before each hanging, a thorough check is carried out with a bag of sand, the weight of which is equal to the weight of the condemned.

The risks are very real. If the rope is not long enough and the vertebrae do not break, the convict will have to die slowly from suffocation, but if it is too long, then the head will come 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, fullness, physical data, especially the strength of the muscles.

In 1880, newspapers reported on the "resurrection" of a certain Hungarian Takács, who hung for ten minutes and came back to life in half an hour. 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, the protruding lymph glands and the fact that he was removed "ahead of schedule".

In preparation for the execution of Robert Goodale, the executioner Berry, who had over two hundred hangings behind him, calculated that, given the weight of the condemned, the required fall height should be 2.3 meters. After examining him, he found 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 nightmarish cases were observed in France, Canada, the USA and Austria. Warden Clinton Duffy, director of St. Quentin Prison, California, who witnessed or supervised more than 150 hanging and gas chamber executions, described one such execution where the rope was too long.

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

Public hanging in Iran. Photo. Archives "TF1".

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

Pierrepoint claimed that no more than ten or twelve seconds elapsed from the moment he took the condemned from the cell to the lowering of the hatch lever. If in other prisons where he worked, the cell was farther from the gallows, then, as he said, everything about everything took about twenty-five seconds.

But is speed of execution indisputable proof of effectiveness?

hanging in the world

Here is a list of seventy-seven countries that used hanging as a legal form of execution under civil or military law in the 1990s: Albania*, Anguila, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bangladesh* Barbados, Bermuda, Burma, Botswana, Brunei, Burundi, UK, 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 Kitt 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, the North London coroner, findings from fifty-eight executions proved that the real cause of death by hanging was a separation of the cervical vertebrae, accompanied by a tear or crushing of the spinal cord. All damage of this kind leads to instant loss of consciousness and death of the brain. The heart can still beat for fifteen to thirty minutes, but, according to the pathologist, "we are talking about purely reflex movements."

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

The heart was still beating!

Taking into account all these cases, in 1942 the British issued a directive stating that the doctor would declare death after the body hung 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, an archivist of the Royal Society of Surgery stated that out of thirty-six cases of autopsy of the corpses of hanged men, in ten cases the heart beat seven hours after the execution, and in the other two - five hours later.

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

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

In Brazil, in 1991, a proposal was submitted to Congress to amend the constitution to reintroduce the death penalty for certain crimes.

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

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

A famous criminologist once declared: "He who has not learned the art of hanging will do his work contrary to common sense and subject unfortunate sinners to torment both long and useless." 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 by the legs, finishing them off.

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

In Africa, they often prefer hanging "in English" - with a scaffold and a hatch. However, this method requires some skill. The description of the public hanging of four former ministers in Kinshasa in June 1966, presented by the weekly Paris Match, is more like a story of torture. The convicts were stripped to their underwear, hoods were put on their heads, their hands were tied behind their backs. “The rope is stretched, the chest of the convict is at the level of the floor of the scaffold. Legs and hips are visible from below. Short convulsion. Its end". Evariste Kinba died quickly. Emmanuel Bamba was a man of extremely strong build, his cervical vertebrae did not break. He choked slowly, his body resisted to the last. The ribs protruded, all the veins on the body appeared, the diaphragm contracted and unclenched, the convulsions stopped only at the seventh minute.

Correspondence table

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

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 badly: the rope either slipped at the last second, or was initially poorly fixed, in any case, it ended up over the convict’s left ear. For fourteen minutes he twisted in all directions, convulsively twitching, thrashing, his legs shaking, bending and unbending, 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 calmed down.

Last meal

The recent publication both angered 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 taken to execution, said, pointing to the dessert: "I will finish when I return."

Lynching of two black assassins in the USA. Photo. Private count

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

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 aristocracies cut off their heads, and the common people were hanged?

Decapitation is the lot of 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". They cut off the head mainly of aristocrats. When a representative of a noble family laid his head on the chopping block, he showed humility.

Decapitation 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, thirsty for spectacles, should not have seen low death manifestations.

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

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 did his job with one blow.

Decapitation leads to instant death, which means it saves from violent torment. The sentence was carried out quickly. The condemned lay his head on a log, which was 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 devoted to the Middle Ages, thus perpetuating its selectivity. In the book “History of the Master” (author Kirill Sinelnikov) there is a quote: “... a noble execution is cutting off the head. This is not hanging for you, the execution of the mob. Decapitation is the lot of kings and nobles."

Hanging

If noblemen were sentenced to beheading, then commoner criminals fell 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 "mortgages".

Secondly, dying on the gallows was excruciating and painful. Death does not come instantly, a person experiences physical suffering and remains conscious for several seconds, perfectly aware of the approach of the end. All his torments and manifestations of agony are watched by hundreds of onlookers. In 90% of cases, at the moment of strangulation, all the muscles of the body relax, which leads to complete emptying of the intestines and bladder.

In many nations, hanging was considered an unclean death. No one wanted his body to hang out in front of everyone after the execution. Swearing by exposure is an obligatory 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.

A person sentenced to the gallows had to have three ropes: the first two, the thickness of the little finger (tortuzas), were equipped with a loop and were intended for direct strangulation. The third was called a "token" or "throw" - it served to drop the condemned to the gallows. The execution was completed by the executioner, holding on to the crossbar of the gallows, he beat the sentenced man in the stomach with his knee.

Exceptions to the rules

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

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

Types and variations of the death penalty. Decapitation. December 8th, 2014

Hello dear!
I propose to continue our not the most fun topic of executions, started here: and here:
Today we will talk about almost the most common execution until the 20th century - beheading.
Medically speaking, death by decapitation occurs either due to pain shock, or due to brain death as a result of rapidly progressive ischemia. Brain death occurs within a few minutes after the separation of the head from the body, although formally the execution was carried out - the person is already dead, and all the stories that the separated head tried to blink, let alone speak, are from the realm of fantasy. Although in many countries of the world there was a tradition: after the executioner did his job, raise the severed head high above the outstretched hand. For it was believed that the executed should see how the crowd laughs at him.
It would not be a mistake to say that this type of execution was the most difficult. And only a professional and knowledgeable executioner could let the victim die quickly and relatively painlessly. For which, by the way, he was often paid extra by the relatives of the one who was executed.


medieval entertainment

If the executioner was inexperienced and the weapon was not the sharpest, then the execution turned into torture - several blows were inflicted and the victim was extremely tormented. There were cases when a person died only after 10 blows of the sword and the neck and head were literally chopped up.
By the way, it should be noted that since the Middle Ages, decapitation occurred in 2 ways most often - with an ax or a sword. The sword was considered a noble weapon, the aristocrats prepared themselves for death by the sword, and there was nothing shameful in this execution. Accordingly, most often the sword was intended for noble people, and the commoners got an ax. In Russia, it was traditionally executed with an ax, until Peter I introduced the sword into law as the main instrument of execution.

Execution Sword

There was also Asia, but here, of course, the pindyk is complete. We do not take a head cut off when conducting seppuku, this is somewhat different. But in general, execution with a sword was not very honorable (such a paradox), and in China they were very much afraid of it, like any destruction of the body of the deceased. And even more so when cruelty colluded with ingenuity. The unfortunate Ishida Matsunari, who dared to challenge Tokugawa Ieyasu for power after the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He lost in the key Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, fled, but was caught and executed horribly - his head was slowly sawed off with a wooden saw (!)

Ishida Matsunari

During the great terror, after the Great French Revolution, the number of executed was so huge that the executioners could not cope, and there were not enough swords. Therefore, a member of the constituent assembly and Danton's best friend, anatomy professor Joseph Ignace Guillotin, proposed creating a device that would humanely and effectively take life. The deputies supported this idea and turned to the surgeon Antoine Louis and the famous executioner, whose family has been involved in this business for 5 generations, Charles Louis Sanson with an order to create such a mechanism. They attracted the piano master and famous master Tobias Schmidt (he was from Germany), and this trinity is considered to have created a death machine, which was called the Guillotine. In honor of the person who proposed the idea, but did not participate in the process itself more than once. And so it happens. Glorified, so to speak, for centuries.

Doctor Guillotin

The mechanism itself was a large oblique knife (from 60 to 150 kilograms), which freely moves up and down along vertical guides. The knife (otherwise it was called "lamb") was raised to a height of 2-3 meters with a rope, where it was held by a special latch. The convict was placed on a horizontal bench and the neck was fixed with two boards with a notch, the lower of which was fixed, and the upper was rigidly fastened. After that, the lever was pressed - the latch holding the knife opened, and it fell at high speed onto the victim's neck. Reliable and relatively humane.

Chevalier Charles Louis Sanson at work

It is clear that the simplicity and efficiency of this execution mechanism allowed it to be used widely and for a long time. In France, formally, guillotining remained until October 9, 1981, that is, until the abolition of the death penalty in the country. It was very often used in Nazi Germany, and then in the GDR, until the 60s, when guillotining was replaced by execution.

Guillotine of the era of the Napoleonic wars

There are memories of I. Turgenev, who in 1870 observed the guillotining of the criminal Tropman. Here is how the classic of Russian literature describes his impressions: “ Vaguely and more strangely than terribly, its (guillotine) was drawn on the dark sky, two pillars spaced 3/4 yards apart from each other with an oblique line of the blade connecting them. For some reason I imagined that these pillars should be much further apart; this closeness of theirs gave the whole car a kind of ominous slenderness - the slenderness of a long, attentively stretched neck, like that of a swan. The feeling of disgust was aroused by a large wicker body, like a suitcase, of dark red color. I knew that the executioners would throw a warm, still shuddering corpse and a severed head into this body ... ”Turgenev says about the very moment of execution:“ I saw how he (Tropman) appeared at the top, how two people rushed to him from the right and left, like spiders on a fly, when he suddenly fell head first and how his soles kicked ... But then I turned away - and began to wait - and the earth quietly swam under my feet ... And it seemed to me that I had been waiting for an terribly long time. (In fact, twenty seconds elapsed from the moment when Tropman stepped on the first step of the guillotine to the moment when his corpse was thrown into the prepared box). I managed to notice that when Troppman appeared, the human din suddenly seemed to curl up into a club - and there was a breathless silence ... Finally, a slight knock was heard, as if wood against wood - this was the upper semicircle of the collar with a longitudinal slit for the passage of the blade, which covers the neck of the criminal and holds him motionless head... Then something suddenly roared dully and rolled - and hooted... It was as if a huge animal coughed up... Everything went haywire...».

Now the death penalty by separation of the head is present in the legislation of only 2 states - Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In fact, execution by decapitation is used by almost all religious fanatics of the East. What we now often see, alas.

Marie Antoinette

It remains only to list only some famous people who lost their heads as a result of the execution. English kings Richard II and Charles I, Scottish Queen Mary Stuart, French King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette., Earl of Surrey, Lord Seymour, Earl Thomas Cromwell, Countess of Salisbury, King Henry VIII's wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, Lord Protector Somerset, Thomas More, Earl of Essex, Duke of Norfolk, Sir Walter Raleigh; Count of La Mole, Count de Chalet, Marshal Louis de Marillac, Robespierre, Danton, Saint-Just, Lavoisier, Julius Fuchek, Musa Jalil

With the development of civilization, human life has gained value regardless of social status and wealth. It is all the more terrible to read about the black pages of history, when the law did not just deprive a person of life, but turned the execution into a spectacle for the amusement of ordinary people. In other cases, the execution could be of a ritual or instructive nature. Unfortunately, there are similar episodes in modern history. We have compiled a list of the most brutal executions ever practiced by humans.

Executions of the Ancient World

Skafism

The word "skafism" is derived from the ancient Greek word "trough", "boat", and the method itself went down in history thanks to Plutarch, who described the execution of the Greek ruler Mithridates at the behest of Artaxerxes, the king of the ancient Persians.

First, a person was stripped naked and tied inside two dugout boats in such a way that the head, arms and legs remained outside, which were thickly smeared with honey. The victim was then forcibly fed a mixture of milk and honey to induce diarrhea. After that, the boat was lowered into stagnant water - a pond or lake. Lured by the smell of honey and sewage, the insects clung to the human body, slowly devoured the flesh and laid their larvae in the formed gangrenous ulcers. The victim remained alive for up to two weeks. Death came from three factors: infection, exhaustion and dehydration.

Execution by impalement was invented in Assyria (modern Iraq). In this way, residents of rebellious cities and women who had an abortion were punished - then this procedure was considered infanticide.

The execution was carried out in two ways. In one version, the convict was pierced in the chest with a stake, in the other, the tip of the stake passed through the body through the anus. Tormented people were often depicted in bas-reliefs as an edification. Later, this execution began to be used by the peoples of the Middle East and the Mediterranean, as well as by the Slavic peoples and some European ones.

Execution by elephants

This method was used mainly in India and Sri Lanka. Indian elephants lend themselves well to training, which was used by the rulers of Southeast Asia.

There were many ways to kill a person with an elephant. For example, armor with sharp spears was put on the tusks, with which the elephant pierced the criminal and then, still alive, tore it apart. But most often, elephants were trained to press down the convict with their foot and alternately tear off the limbs with their trunk. In India, a guilty person was often simply thrown at the feet of an angry animal. For reference, an Indian elephant weighs about 5 tons.

Tradition to the beasts

Behind the beautiful phrase "Damnatio ad bestias" lies the painful death of thousands of ancient Romans, especially among the early Christians. Although, of course, this method was invented long before the Romans. Usually lions were used for execution, less popular were bears, panthers, leopards and buffaloes.

There were two types of punishment. Often a person sentenced to death was tied to a post in the middle of a gladiatorial arena and wild animals were lowered onto it. There were also variations: they threw it to a cage to a hungry animal or tied it to its back. In another case, the unfortunate was forced to fight against the beast. From the weapons they had a simple spear, and from the "armor" - a tunic. In both cases, many spectators gathered for the execution.

death on the cross

The crucifixion was invented by the Phoenicians, an ancient people of seafarers who lived in the Mediterranean. Later, this method was adopted by the Carthaginians, and then by the Romans. The Israelites and Romans considered death on the cross to be the most shameful, because this was how hardened criminals, slaves and traitors were executed.

Before crucifixion, a person was undressed, leaving only a loincloth. He was beaten with leather whips or freshly cut rods, after which he was forced to carry a cross weighing about 50 kilograms to the place of crucifixion. Having dug a cross into the ground near the road outside the city or on a hill, a person was lifted with ropes and nailed to a horizontal bar. Sometimes the convict's legs were crushed with an iron rod beforehand. Death came from exhaustion, dehydration or pain shock.

After the prohibition of Christianity in feudal Japan in the 17th century. crucifixion was used against visiting missionaries and Japanese Christians. The scene of execution on the cross is present in Martin Scorsese's drama Silence, which tells about this period.

Bamboo execution

The ancient Chinese were champions of sophisticated torture and execution. One of the most exotic methods of killing is the stretching of the culprit over the growing shoots of young bamboo. The sprouts made their way through the human body for several days, causing incredible suffering to the executed.

ling chi

"Ling-chi" is translated into Russian as "bites of the sea pike." There was another name - "death by a thousand cuts." This method was used during the reign of the Qing Dynasty, and high-ranking officials convicted of corruption were executed in this way. Every year, 15-20 people were recruited.

The essence of "ling-chi" is the gradual cutting off of small parts from the body. For example, after cutting off one phalanx of the finger, the executioner cauterized the wound and then proceeded to the next one. How many pieces to cut off from the body, the court determined. The most popular verdict was cutting into 24 parts, and the most notorious criminals were sentenced to 3,000 cuts. In such cases, the victim was given opium to drink: so she did not lose consciousness, but the pain made its way even through the veil of drug intoxication.

Sometimes, as a sign of special mercy, the ruler could order the executioner to first kill the condemned with one blow and torture the corpse already. This method of execution was practiced for 900 years and was banned in 1905.

Executions of the Middle Ages

blood eagle

Historians question the existence of the Blood Eagle execution, but it is mentioned in Scandinavian folklore. This method was used by the inhabitants of the Scandinavian countries in the early Middle Ages.

The harsh Vikings killed their enemies as painfully and symbolically as possible. The man's hands were tied and laid on his stomach on a stump. The skin on the back was carefully cut with a sharp blade, then the ribs were pryed with an ax, breaking them out in a shape resembling eagle wings. After that, the lungs were removed from the still living victim and hung on the ribs.

This execution is shown twice in the Vikings series with Travis Fimmel (in episode 7 of season 2 and episode 18 of season 4), although the audience noted the contradictions between the serial execution and the one described in the Elder Edda folklore.

"Bloody Eagle" in the series "Vikings"

Tearing by trees

Such an execution was widespread in many regions of the world, including in Russia in the pre-Christian period. The victim was tied by the legs to two inclined trees, which were then abruptly released. One of the legends says that Prince Igor was killed by the Drevlyans in 945 - because he wanted to collect tribute from them twice.

Quartering

The method was used as in medieval Europe. Each limb was tied to horses - the animals tore the sentenced into 4 parts. In Russia, quartering was also practiced, but this word meant a completely different execution - the executioner alternately chopped off his legs with an ax, then his hands, and then his head.

wheeling

Wheeling as a form of the death penalty was widely used in France and Germany during the Middle Ages. In Russia, this type of execution is also known at a later time - from the 17th to the 19th centuries. The essence of the punishment was that at first the guilty person was tied to the wheel, facing the sky, fixing his arms and legs on the knitting needles. After that, his limbs were broken and in this form they were left to die in the sun.

Flaying

Flaying, or skinning, was invented in Assyria, then passed to Persia and spread throughout the ancient world. In the Middle Ages, the Inquisition improved this type of execution - with the help of a device called the "Spanish tickler", a person's skin was torn into small pieces, which were not difficult to tear off.

Welded alive

This execution was also invented in antiquity and received a second wind in the Middle Ages. So they executed mostly counterfeiters. A person convicted of counterfeiting money was thrown into a cauldron of boiling water, tar or oil. This variety was quite humane - the offender quickly died from pain shock. More sophisticated executioners put the condemned man in a cauldron of cold water, which was heated gradually, or slowly lowered him into boiling water, starting with his feet. The welded muscles of the legs were moving away from the bones, and the man was still alive.
This execution is also practiced by the extremists of the East. According to Saddam Hussein's former bodyguard, he witnessed an acid execution: first, the victim's legs were lowered into a pool filled with caustic substance, and then they were thrown entirely. And in 2016, ISIS militants dissolved 25 people in a cauldron of acid.

cement boots

This method is well known to many of our gangster movie readers. Indeed, they killed their enemies and traitors with such a cruel method during the mafia wars in Chicago. The victim was tied to a chair, then a basin filled with liquid cement was placed under his feet. And when it froze, the person was taken to the nearest reservoir and thrown off the boat. Cement boots instantly dragged him to the bottom to feed the fish.

Flights of death

In 1976, General Jorge Videla came to power in Argentina. He led the country for only 5 years, but remained in history as one of the most terrible dictators of our time. Among other atrocities of Videla are the so-called "death flights".

A person who opposed the tyrant's regime was drugged with barbiturates and unconsciously carried on board the aircraft, then thrown down - certainly into the water.

We also invite you to read about the most mysterious deaths in history.
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