Decapitation

“ Disenchantment by decapitation is a common phenomenon in folk-lore and romance;49 but though the blow on the head, which the hero gives the old man in our tale, surely stands for beheading, it is hard to see where any unspelling process comes in. ”

“ Fig. 346.--Beheading.--Fac-simile of a Miniature on Wood in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.
Originally, decapitation was indiscriminately inflicted on all criminals condemned to death; at a later period, however, it became the particular privilege of the nobility, who submitted to it without any feeling of degradation. The victim--unless the sentence prescribed that he should be blindfolded as an ignominious aggravation of the penalty--was allowed to choose whether he would have his eyes covered or not. ”

“ Murder, in all cases, is punished by decapitation. When committed with the design of afterwards mangling the body and distributing the limbs of the deceased for magical purposes, not only is the offender executed, but all the inmates of his house, although innocent of the crime, are perpetually banished. ”

“ Because, in the first place, self decapitation is an extremely difficult, not to say dangerous, thing to attempt; and, in the second, it's suicide, and suicide is a capital offence. ”

“ Thus in China decapitation is a more serious punishment than strangulation, because it is thought that the headless man may become a headless ghost. The danger of appearing in a mutilated condition in the next world is, however, lessened or averted if the severed members can be buried along with the body to which they belonged. A Chinese servant in Weihaiwei not long ago begged for an old biscuit-tin from his foreign master in order that he might give it to a friend who wished to use it as a coffin for his amputated foot. ”

“ Doctor examines body--finds no evidence of violence, except slight discoloured mark on one side of neck--opinion of inspector that something, chain probably, has been wrenched off by assassin--is also of opinion that death could not have been thus caused. Doctor says death is caused by blood-poisoning--evidence being, swollen condition of body, protruding tongue, discolouration of skin--thinks it must be poison--makes minute examination--finds on neck slight scratch just on jugular vein, greatly inflamed--is of opinion that assassin has wounded victim in neck with poisoned dagger or knife. ”

“ The amputated limbs and the dissevered body were united to the bloodless head of the murdered woman, and every injury by you inflicted after death has afforded the means of proving by comparison, beyond doubt, that the wound on the eye was inflicted by you while your victim was in life, and strength, and health. Horrible and revolting to humanity as was the spectacle presented by the mutilated trunk and mangled remains, fresh details and discoveries suggested both the means and manner by which you accomplished the destruction of the deceased. ”

“ We throw the earth aside and finally lay bare a coffin. A coffin? Something that must have been one in the remote past. A sickening odor greets us. We step back to draw a breath of pure air. At last we muster up sufficient courage to return to the grave. A touch of the spade causes the top-board of the box to fall to pieces, and there is revealed to the sight a spectacle that is horrible. The ground around the body has been moist and non-porous; what has remained of the corpse is only a mass of foul flesh in a state of putrefaction. ”

“ I was laid out in state, and all that day and the next friends poured in to gaze upon my corpse.
As the time grew nearer for my funeral the more despairing I got. At length the coffin arrived. I shuddered. Had my last moment actually come? What could I do? Nothing.
"Oh, Heaven!" I cried within myself, "for what fell crime am I doomed to bear this agony of soul?"
Two undertakers now lifted me from my bed, one of them seizing me by the shoulders, the other by the feet, and I felt myself placed within a leaden coffin supported upon trestles. ”

“ I struggled to rise in the coffin, gasping for the breath of life, and then the lid was pried off, and, summoning all my dying strength, I rose to my feet, waving my arms wildly back and forth and inhaling a great breath of life-giving night air.
The doctor let the shovel fall to the ground without a word, and staggered back and sank to his knees, while my wife gave a hideous scream of terror. Then she snatched a knife from his kit of dissecting instruments and drew the razor-sharp blade across her throat. She then threw herself upon the prostrate doctor, her blood drenching his body. ”

“ You may judge of my sorrow; to be interred alive seemed to me as deplorable an end as to be devoured by cannibals. But I must submit; the king and all his court would honour the funeral with their presence, and the most considerable people of the city would do the like. When all was ready for the ceremony, the corpse was put into a coffin, with all her jewels and magnificent apparel. The cavalcade began, and, as second actor in this doleful tragedy, I went next to the corpse, with my eyes full of tears, bewailing my deplorable fate. ”

“ So long as the corpse of a chief is rotting and stinking on the platform or the tree, the village is deserted by the inhabitants; only two men, relatives of the deceased, remain behind exposed to the stench of the decaying body and the blood of the pigs which were slaughtered at the funeral feast. When decomposition is complete, the people return to the village. Should the coffin fall to the ground through the decay of the platform or the tree on which it rests, the people throw away all the bones except the skull and the larger bones of the arms and legs ”

“ The mass upon the floor fetches a last agonizing shrug, and a low moan, and is dead. The murderer stands over him, exultant, as the blood streams from the deep fracture. In fine, the blood of his victim would seem rather to increase his satisfaction at the deed, than excite a regret. ”

“ In the earliest days of hanging it was the practice for the executioner to place his noose round the victim’s neck, and then to haul upon the other end of the rope, which was passed through a ring on the scaffold pole until the culprit was strangled, without any drop at all. After a while the drop system was introduced, but the length of drop given was never more than three feet, so that death was still generally caused by strangulation, and not by dislocation, as it is at present. ”

“ The odor of putrid flesh, the sight of the mutilated bodies repulsed him. When first his hand, warm in life, touched the clammy flesh of a corpse, he shuddered. Then when his fingers came in contact with the viscera of a cadaver, that of a little child, he cried out in horror. The demonstrator of anatomy urged him on; he finally was induced to dissect part of the infant. The reflex action on his sensitive mind first stunned, and then warped his senses. ”

“ At the appointed moment a screw is suddenly turned by the executioner, stationed behind the condemned, and instantaneous death follows. This would seem to be more merciful than hanging, whereby death is produced by the lingering process of suffocation, to say nothing of the many mishaps which so often occur upon the gallows. ”

“ The captives describe the usual mode of execution, by cutting-off the hands and feet, as being a refinement of cruelty. A slight gash is made round the member, and it is then wrenched-off by main force, the arteries being so much twisted that very little loss of blood takes place. The wretched beings are then left to die; and some of them linger for many days, and then expire of thirst more than of their wounds, it being death to administer either food or water to them. ”

“ It is difficult to simulate suicide; requires great skill and premeditation on the part of a murderer. “The attitude of the body, the condition of the dress, the means of strangulation, the presence of marks of violence or of blood on the person of the deceased, on his clothes or the furniture of the room, or both, rope or ligature, are circumstances from which, if observed at the time, important medical inferences may be [725] drawn.” The assassin either does too little or too much. ”

“ These graves resemble immense ditches, and the coffins are deposited one upon another, and side by side, as close as they can lay. They are wretchedly made, and soon drop to pieces; and therefore it is not uncommon, in burying a corpse, to see the exposed head and limbs of another! ”

“ The poor mother I have come with is very weak and very sad; it is I who lift up the thin lid of the coffin. A grey-haired corpse is lying within it, from the shoulders downwards nothing but a heap of torn flesh, and clothes, and congealed blood. We continue on. The second coffin also contains the body of an old man; no wounds are to be seen; he was probably killed by a ball. Still we advance. I observe that the old men are in far greater number than the young. ”

“ How can they do that dreadful, deliberate murder—for I can call it nothing else—when the defenceless man stands by his coffin on the brink of his open grave, and the hands of his comrades send to his bosom the deadly messengers! It is not right to take life away ”

“ To the surprise of the sexton the coffin-lid showed signs of displacement, and on its being removed the grave-digger was horrified to find the remains turned face downward, the hand filled with long tufts of hair torn from the head, and the face, neck, and bosom deeply scratched and scarred, while the lining of the coffin had been torn into fragments in the desperate efforts of the entombed victim to escape from her horrible fate. Since the discovery the young husband has been prostrated, and his life is despaired of. ”

“ Most of the instances on record, and particularly those from lay journals, are vivid exaggerations, drawn from possibly such a trivial sign as a corpse found with the fist tightly clenched or the face distorted, which are the inspiration of the horrible details of the dying struggles of the person in the coffin. ”

“ Just as the people were about to nail on the lid of the coffin, a kind of perspiration was observed to appear on the surface of her body. It grew greater every moment, and at last a kind of convulsive motion was observed in the hands and feet of the corpse. A few minutes after, during which time fresh signs of returning life appeared, she at once opened her eyes and uttered a most pitiable shriek. Physicians were quickly procured, and in the course of a few days she was considerably restored. ”

“ Neither the men who handle, or who “coffin,” the remains; nor the barbers who are called in to shave [8] the corpses of the adult males; nor the bearers of the coffins, although, when the remains are in an advanced state of decomposition, the liquid matter from the corpse frequently escapes from the coffin, and runs down over their clothes, are observed to catch any specific disease from it, either in their noviciate, or at any other time. When decomposition is very far advanced, and the smell is very offensive, the men engaged in putting the corpse into the coffin smoke tobacco ”

“ It is, of course, necessary that the drop should be of sufficient length to cause instantaneous death, that is to say, to cause death by dislocation rather than by strangulation; and on the other hand, the drop must not be so great as to outwardly mutilate the victim. If all murderers who have to be hanged were of precisely the same weight and build it would be very easy to find out the most suitable length of drop, and always to give the same, but as a matter of fact they vary enormously. ”

“ The doctor, as medical examiner, had filed some fictitious report of death from natural causes, and they had contrived to have a hasty funeral. How I had managed to breathe for so long in the coffin, while under the power of the drug, I did not know. Now that I was fully conscious again I felt myself stifling.
No power of imagination can picture the horror and torture of mind that my terrible predicament forced upon me. I must die a slow, terrible death, while [142] those who were responsible for the hellish crime enjoyed themselves and went unpunished. ”

“ In some cases the head is severed from the body in the same way, when the Amir’s orders are to that effect.
In other cases, when a man is ordered to be executed by having his throat cut, his grave is dug ready, and when the knife has done its work, he is thrown into it, and the earth is shovelled in at once, so that he is buried before death occurs. ”

“ Almost daily a captive was thrown upon the hooks, impaled or deprived of sight, and that without any other motive than to gratify the thirst of human blood natural to this monster, and which inspired even the executioners with horror. ”

“ In burying a corpse, it is natural, and, so far as we are acquainted, universally the custom, to bury them with the face upwards. We can look upon our dead friends with a melancholy complacency—we cast a long and lingering look after them until they are completely shut from our view in the grave ”

“ No sooner had they alighted above the grave than falling upon their captive they tore out his heart and entrails, and having drained out his blood as an offering to the slain, they left the body lying, and flew away. ”

“ Blood continued to be spilt as water, day after day, till the Epiphany; priests, lay-men, young men and old, noble and vile, daily found their end by the knife or the cord. Fifty-seven people died publicly by the hand of the executioner in the course of a very few days ”

“ Defilement by the Dead.—The statute of the water of purification stands closely related to one form of uncleanness, that occasioned by death. When death took place in a tent, every one who came into the tent and every one who was in the tent, every open vessel that had no covering bound upon it, and the tent itself (ver. 18) were defiled; and the taint could not be removed in less than seven days. Whoever in the open field touched one who had been slain with a sword, or had otherwise died, or touched the bone of a man, or a grave—contracted like defilement. ”