Executioner

“ No man can express the surprise of the physician, when he heard the sentence of death pronounced against him. Sir, says he, why would your majesty take away my life? What crime have I committed? I am informed by good hands, replies the king, that you come to my court only to attempt my life; but, to prevent you, I will be sure of yours. Give the blow, says he to the executioner, who was present, and deliver me from a perfidious wretch, who came hither on purpose to assassinate me. ”

“ In order to direct the fatal blow aright, the executioner must look upon his victim, and I shall have, in yielding up my life under your fair, cruel hand, the supreme delight of being for one blissful moment the object of your regard. ”

“ For after that the executioner hath tied them to a post, he cuts off the skin all round their forehead which he tears by force till it hangs over their eyes, that they may not see the torments they are to endure. ”

“ Then he called for the executioner, who came and taking the prisoner’s hand, set the knife to it and was about to cut it off, when, behold, a damsel, clad in tattered clothes, pressed through the crowd of women and cried out and threw herself on the young man. ”

“ Apart from the fact that beheading under the best conditions is revolting, we must further consider that from the very nature of the office, the executioner who has to hack off his victim’s head must be a brutal and degraded man, and the chances are that he will not be so skilful or so careful as he ought to be for the performance of such a task. ”

“ THE executioner is one of the most curious, interesting, and important figures in the history of France in general and of Paris in particular. Going back to the thirteenth century, we find that there already existed an individual whose duty it was to whip, hang, behead, break on the wheel, and burn in the name of the law. He was then called the Executioner of High Justice, and every bailiwick possessed such a functionary. An ordinance of 1264 against blasphemers provides that “anyone who has offended by word or deed shall be beaten, naked, with rods ”

“ Now, let us consider that the act of execution, supported by the eager looks of the people, does not correct them or instruct them but only hardens their hearts; let us suppose that the execution takes place in the prison, with priest and executioner as sole witnesses ”

“ Never mind what I do for you, man—it is little enough, God knows—only behave well—dost hear?”
The executioner’s man drew from his pocket a long and strong cord, with a slip knot at the end, and tightly tied the hands of the convict, who calmly looked at him, and said not a word. ”

“ In order that the execution may be performed according to the intention of law [simple privation of life] , it is necessary that, even without any obstacle on the part of the criminal, the executioner himself should be very expert, and the criminal very firm, without which one could never get through an execution by the sword without the certainty of dangerous accidents. ”

“ Public executions are very simply carried out. The criminal is taken to the spot on a horse, and when he arrives, is bound, and made to kneel on the ground over a hole which is to receive his head. The executioner, who uses the “ken” above named, arranges the culprit’s head in the proper position, and, apparently without any effort, decapitates the man with a blow. The old traveller Purchas very neatly expresses the mode of execution by a single word. ”

“ I knew that I was a man of no extraordinary ability, so that my chances of rising were few, and I looked upon the vacancy of the executioner’s post as being probably my one chance in life, my “tide in the affairs of men.” ”

“ Even the executioner, when laying down his fasces to go a-wooing, even he bends his knee, although he is willing to offer himself up, within a short time, to domestic executions which he finds so natural that he is far from seeking any excuse for them in the fact that public executions have grown so few. ”

“ She asked her confessor to place the executioner so that she need not gaze on Degrais, who, you will remember, tracked her to England, and ultimately arrested her at Liège. After she had mounted the ladder to the scaffold she was exposed to the public for a quarter of an hour, while the executioner arranged her for execution. ”

“ For this crime he too was tried and sentenced, after having been in prison a whole year. When he was doomed to death, and came away from his trial with the edge of the executioner's axe turned towards him—as was always done in those times when a state prisoner came to that hopeless pass—he bore it quite serenely, and gave his blessing to his son, who pressed through the crowd in Westminster Hall and kneeled down to receive it. ”

“ The management, and, if possible, the regeneration of the criminal classes, is one of the most serious tasks that civilisation has to face; and those who undertake such a task require all the light that can possibly be thrown upon the subject. The public [Pg 8] executioner has many and special opportunities of studying the criminal classes, and of knowing their attitude and feelings with regard to that capital punishment which civilisation regards as its strongest weapon in the war against crime. ”

“ Now the purveyor's speech had been made in a loud voice, and was heard by all the crowd, and even if he had wished it, the chief of police could not have escaped setting the merchant free.
"Loose the cords from the Christian's neck," he commanded, turning to the executioner, "and hang this man in his place, seeing that by his own confession he is the murderer." ”

“ They were at Carlisle, condemned to be executed for the Netherby Hall burglary, and I carried out the sentence of the law. Their names were Rudge, Martin, and Baker.
I always try to remain unknown while travelling, but there is a certain class of people who will always crowd round as if an executioner were a peep-show. ”

“ So that, notwithstanding his protestations, his oaths, and supplications, the executioner first cut off his hair, and afterward his head. Is this anecdote true, Citizen Registrar! You ought to know better than any one else. ”

“ In expiation of which crime it has been ordered by the Court that the said women shall be presently conducted, with halters about their necks, to the usual place of punishment, and shall there be fastened by the Executioner to a gallows, and be hanged, strangled, killed, and burnt, until their flesh and bones are reduced to ashes, and the ashes shall be scattered ”

“ The representation of the Département is to the same effect, and, making no allusion whatever to mechanism, implies that death was to be by the sword:—
"3rd March, 1792. "The executioner represents to us that he fears he cannot fulfil the intentions of the law, which is, that the criminal shall suffer nothing beyond the simple privation of life. The executioner fears that from want of experience he may make decollation a frightful torture, and we entertain the same apprehensions." ”

“ Oh, when I heard the old gentleman, Calcraft, was breaking down, and I saw the accounts of his bungling work, I thought if I could carry out the sentence of the law more mercifully it would be a service to the public.
“I always had a love of anatomy, and even when a boy was greatly interested in executions, but it is a most singular fact that I never saw an execution until I myself became an executioner. I do my duty with a kind hand, and with firmness, and believe I really render a benefit to society. I have been successful in every engagement, and I am respected wherever I go. ”

“ And, secondly, if he be proved to have died of the injury within that time, we must duly weigh the previous circumstances and the provocation, to ascertain, if the act done be manslaughter or murder.
Those, who vociferate, most loudly, against the law, for its hesitancy, and demand the immediate descent of the executioner’s axe, upon the neck of the victim, will be the very first fervently to supplicate, for the law’s most merciful carefulness of life, should a father, a brother, or a son be charged with crime, and involved in the complicated meshes of presumptive evidence. ”

“ It's not the least use, on the eve of an execution, to attempt to convince the gentry of the police or of the law that a man condemned to death is innocent. No. From henceforth Jacques Aubrieux belongs to the executioner. ”

“ In visiting again the prisons under the ducal palace, several additional circumstances were told us. The condemned were compelled to become executioners. They were led from their cells into the dark passage where stood the secret guillotine, and without warning forced to put to death a fellow-creature either by this instrument, or the more horrible method of strangling against a grate. The guide said that the office of executioner was held in such horror that it was impossible to fill it, and hence this dreadful alternative. ”

“ We are appealed to for our sympathy with the misfortunes of an executioner’s son, who, after absenting himself from his country, and obtaining an education superior to his station, is compelled to accept the loathsome inheritance of his father, and wield axe and work rack in obedience to the law’s stern dictates. ”

“ The criminal sentenced to death is seated on a small board attached to the upright, his neck is placed in the brass collar, the front-piece is snapped to, and when all is ready, the executioner merely gives the handle of the screw a complete turn. ”

“ He showed that the Sheriff who shrank from executing the sentence of burning alive was liable to a prosecution, but he thanked Heaven that there was not a man in England who would carry such a sentence literally into execution. The executioner was allowed to strangle the woman condemned to the stake, before flames were applied ”

“ If such fearful criminals as you have described have been ever found in the court of a virtuous king, they would assuredly have been handed over to the executioner. Crimes not to be tolerated in mean men, would not go without punishment in those of loftier ranks. ”

“ In the mean time, when all things were ready for the execution, and the black baize which hung over the rails of the scaffold had, by direction of the colonel of the guard, or the sheriffs, been turned up, that the people might see all the circumstances of the execution, in about two minutes after he kneeled down, his lordship dropped his handkerchief, and the executioner at once severed his head from his body, except only a small part of the skin, which was immediately divided by a gentle stroke. ”

“ Which executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of you in the course of many years?" ”

“ LET us now inquire, whether it be advantageous to society, to set a price on the head of a criminal, and so to make of every citizen an executioner. If the offender hath taken refuge in another state, the sovereign encourages his subjects to commit a crime, and to expose themselves to a just punishment ”

“ All being ready at a signal the executioner enters and as soon as he gets immediately behind the prisoner gives his sword a whirl and bringing it down with full force severs the head from the body, except a small piece of skin which connects it with the torso. ”

“ Just as the common executioner, who is the lowest and most flagitious officer of the commonwealth, and who frequently deserves, as much as the criminal, the punishment he is chosen to inflict, is pitched upon to perform, as a mark of greater ignominy, sentences intended as examples to deter others from the commission of heinous crimes. ”

“ Suppose a man had been convicted of murder, and was about to be hanged—the governor acting as the executioner; and suppose that just as the doomed man was about to suffer death some one in the crowd should step forward and say, "I am willing to die in the place of that murderer. ”

“ Accordingly, they should not exhort the criminal to mount the scaffold, or present himself to the executioner, or advise the executioner to get ready and arrange his instruments of punishment, so that the death may take place more quickly, and the prisoner be prevented from lingering ”

“ The criminals, who have been unceremoniously pitched out of the dust baskets into the mud or gore or dust of the execution ground, kneel down in a row or rows, and the executioner with a scimitar strikes off head after head, each with a single stroke, an assistant attending to hand him a fresh sword as soon as the first becomes blunt. ”

“ Beheading is preferred; it is thus performed: the criminal sits down, and a person behind gives him a blow or push on the back or shoulder, which makes him turn his head, and while his attention is thus employed, the executioner strikes it off. ”

“ Perjury is the basest and meanest and most cowardly of crimes. What can it do? Perjury can change the common air that we breathe into the axe of an executioner. ”

“ But its attempts have done little, and cannot be expected to do much, because it is contrary to reason and experience to suppose that there can be any real check to brutality, consistent with leaving the victim still in the power of the executioner. ”

“ But I have sometimes thought that amongst those whom I have executed, for crimes which they have undoubtedly committed, there were men to whom their crime was a trouble more terrible than death; men who had not premeditated murder, who had taken no pleasure in it and expected no profit from it, and who, if they could by any means have been set at liberty, had within them the making of model citizens. ”

“ I advocate that the sentence of death, once passed, should be a sentence which the doomed man, as well as his friends and sympathisers who are still at liberty, should regard as quite irrevocable. At the same time I do not advocate an increase in the number of executions—just the reverse. As the best means to this end I think we ought to have a considerable alteration in our criminal law as it relates to murder cases. I think that the jury should have more power over the sentence, and for this purpose I think that they ought to have the choice of five classes of verdict, namely:—
Not guilty. ”