Hanging (punishment)

“ There has been much confusion as to the punishment of “drawing,” forming down to times comparatively recent a portion of the punishment awarded to those found guilty of high treason. The correct order of the several punishments in such cases is drawing, hanging, and quartering. But to-day every one inverts the order, putting hanging first. Even the old chroniclers sometimes make this mistake. ”

“ The public modes of punishment established by law were four, viz.: executions by [Pg 52] hanging, whipping of men at the cart-tail, whipping of women in the jail-yard, and the elevation of counterfeiters and the like to a movable pillory, which turned on its base so as to front north, south, east and west in succession, remaining at each point a quarter of an hour. During this execution of the majesty of the law the neck of the culprit was bent to a most uncomfortable curve, presenting a facial mark for those salutations of stale eggs which seemed to have been preserved for the occasion. ”

“ Hanging—though as a punishment for thieves, ascribed to the reign of Henry I., occurs in a charter of Edgar. In hanging for public spectacle, an iron hoop with a strong chain was put round the body; but the chain was longer than the halter, so that when the latter was cut, the hoop slipped to the armpits, and left them suspended. When criminals escaped, an image of them was often hung up for several days; whence our hanging in effigy. ”

“ But when this purification took the form of laying the manslayer under restraint, banishing him from the country, or putting him to death in order to appease his victim’s ghost, it was for all practical purposes indistinguishable from punishment, and the fear of it would {152} act as a deterrent just as surely as if it had been designed to be a punishment and nothing else. When a man is about to be hanged, it is little consolation to him to be told that hanging is not a punishment but a purification. ”

“ No man will say that the punishment of hanging was commensurate with the offences committed, according to their own confessions alone, by Bishop and Williams; but whilst we would not subject even such creatures to bodily torture, we cannot regret that the mental agony of their last moments was increased by the unequivocal tokens of detestation that assailed their [Pg 221] ears on the scaffold. The great end of all punishment is example, to deter others ”

“ The man had no remedy. In a fit of passion he killed the woman, when waylaying him at midnight on his beat, and was hanged for the crime. (Case of Constable Cook, June, 1894.)
(d) Murder.
The rule of the Common Law which prescribes hanging as the punishment for murder is practically abolished for females who murder men. ”

“ Hanging was the common punishment for felony, but traitors and many other offenders were drawn, hanged, boweled, and quartered; nobles who were traitors usually escaped with having their heads chopped off only. Torture was not practiced; for, says Harrison, our people despise death, yet abhor to be tormented, being of frank and open minds. ”

“ As has already been shown the punishment of hanging has been practically abolished for women who murder mere men. If they murder some other woman or babies of some other woman it is quite a different thing. ”

“ For mutiny, desertion, or other military crime it is commonly by shooting; for murder not combined with mutiny, for treason, and piracy accompanied with wounding or attempt to murder, by hanging, as the sentence in England must accord with the law of the country in regard to the punishment of offenders. ”

“ If in the wisdom of the members of the legislature the crime calls for imprisonment in the penitentiary, then the ordinary sentences run one, two, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years, and life, according to the hazard of the legislature, the whim of the court, the gamble of the jury, or the feeling and means of expression of the unthinking and pitiless crowd who awe courts and juries with their cries for vengeance.
Neither does punishment affect any two alike; the sensitive and proud may suffer more from a day in jail or even from conviction than another would suffer from a year. ”

“ Pincers to pull out finger-nails, branding-irons, and stocks that kept a man or a woman standing on the toes for hours, were light punishments for petty thievery. A very popular form of punishment was to hang the prisoner by his feet, head down, and let the populace come in and enjoy the sight. ”

“ Finally, speaking for itself, this Court said:
'Punishments are cruel when they involve torture or a lingering death; but the punishment of death is not cruel within the meaning of that word as used in the constitution. ”

“ Sometimes the punishment awarded to a prisoner was mutilation instead of death. Cutting off the ears close to the head, blinding the eyes with burning-irons, cutting off the nose, and plucking out the tongue by the roots, have been in all ages favorite Oriental punishments. ”

“ If, however, you are in your heart persuaded of your guilt, and wish to spare the People the expense and labor of a trial before a jury, I will accept a plea of murder in the second degree, the punishment for which, I must beg you to recollect, is confinement at hard labor in the State Prison for the term of your natural life. ”

“ The circumstance of your being a person who, from habits and education, should have been above committing so base a crime, only aggravates your guilt. However, no matter who or what you have been, you must expiate your offence on the scaffold. The law has very properly, for the safety of society, decreed the punishment of death for such crimes: our only and plain duty is to execute that law."
The prisoner did not reply: he was leaning with his elbows on the front of the dock, his bowed face covered with his outspread hands; and the judge passed sentence of death in the accustomed form. ”

“ Imprisonment as practised in modern times has followed from the last-named class of punishments. Although affecting the individual, and in many of its phases with brutal and reckless disregard for human suffering, it can hardly be styled a purely personal punishment, upon which I propose now more particularly to treat, and the present chapter will deal only with penalties corporeal.
Taking first the punishments which fell short of death, those most common in this country until comparatively recent times, were branding, mutilation, dismemberment, whipping, and degrading public exposure. ”

“ III. The Court next turns to the most serious complaint of petitioners, namely, the infliction of corporal punishment. As administered at the Penitentiary, that punishment consists of blows with a leather strap five feet in length, four inches wide, and about one-fourth inch thick, attached to a wooden handle or shaft about six inches long. Ordinarily, the punishment is inflicted by the Assistant Warden having in his charge the inmate to be punished. A prisoner who is to be whipped is required to lie down on the ground fully clothed, and the blows are inflicted on his buttocks. ”

“ To be sure, imprisonment for ninety days is not, in the abstract, a punishment which is either cruel or unusual. But the question cannot be considered in the abstract. Even one day in prison would be a cruel and unusual punishment for the 'crime' of having a common cold. ”

“ If a culprit were sentenced to the penalty of death for murder, and the punishment of another man were accepted in his stead, every court in the civilized world would decide that two wrongs were committed,—the punishment of the innocent, and the pardon of the guilty. ”

“ THE useless profusion of punishments, which has never made men better, induces me to inquire, whether the punishment of death be really just or useful in a well governed state? What right, I ask, have men to cut the throats of their fellow-creatures? ”

“ It was customary, moreover, in sentencing a man to the pillory, to make the punishment fit the crime as much as possible, and to compel the culprit to advertise his guilt in some personally unpleasant fashion ”

“ Malice shall be implied when no considerable provocation appears, or when all the circumstances of the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.
[Pg 564] "Whoever is guilty of murder, shall suffer the punishment of death or imprisonment in the penitentiary for his natural life, or for a term of not less than fourteen years. ”

“ We hang only those found guilty of murder, to the regret of jurists like Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, who thought that the punishment of death ought to be inflicted in many other cases. [1] But in times not very remote there were on the Statute Book, as has been reckoned, no fewer than two hundred capital offences. No man is now hanged except after trial and conviction by a Court of Assize, or by the Central Criminal Court. ”

“ Men would knock out one another's brains in order to get hung, and escape it. Men would cry aloud to the judge to hang them out of the way! It was the most terrible punishment known, for it was hopeless. ”

“ In cases of desertion, the greatest of crimes, the offender was made to run this gauntlet two days in succession, and twelve times each day. Can we wonder that the terrible punishment often ended in death? ”

“ For certain, if your judges were sensible of the shocking treatment of the convicts here, they would hang every one of them, as infinitely less punishment; and transport only those, whose crimes deserve the severest death. ”

“ The proposition put forward by counsel, that, if the court has authority to inflict the punishment prescribed, its action is not void, though it pursues any form or mode which may commend itself to its discretion, is certainly not to be tolerated. Imprisonment might be accompanied with inconceivable misery and mental suffering, by its solitary character, or other attending circumstances. Death might be inflicted by torture or by starvation, or by drawing and quartering. ”

“ Another man named Flood, for the offence of coming nearer than ten feet to the guard-lines, was pinned down to the earth. As this punishment is doubtless not understood by a [Pg 211] majority of readers, I will describe it. The person subjected to it is thrown to the ground, either face or back down, according to the whim of the punisher, and while held in this position, a number of stakes or wooden pins are driven in the earth around him, in such a manner as to bind him immovably to the ground. A more terrible punishment can scarcely be conceived. ”

“ Many cruelties have been enacted in the past in the name of prison discipline—solitude, darkness, chains, floggings, tread wheels and cranks, even until a comparatively recent period, were regarded as the essential accessories of punishment. In studying the history of punishment, we cannot fail to be struck by the singular inventiveness of the human mind in designing forms of suffering for those who broke the law—crucifixion, mutilation, stoning, drowning, torture. ”

“ The doctrine that the loss of the servant would be a penalty adequate to the desert of the master, admits his guilt and his desert of some punishment, and it prescribes a kind of punishment, rejected by the law, in all cases where man took the life of man, whether with or without intent to kill. ”

“ Four several bailiffs took part in the execution of a man hanged on the gallows of the prior of Spalding. The bailiff of Spalding brought the man to the gallows, the bailiff of Weston brought the ladder to the gallows, the bailiff of Pyncebecke found the rope, the rest was done by the bailiff of Multon. [21]
But hanging was one only out of numerous methods of carrying out a capital sentence: ingenuity seems to have exhausted itself in devising ways of putting a man to death. ”

“ Until 1870 the full punishment for the crime was that the culprit be dragged on a hurdle to the place of execution; that he be hanged by the neck but not till he was dead; that he should be disembowelled or drawn and his entrails burned before his eyes ”

“ Men are not drafted for the death penalty; they volunteer. "Then it is not deterrent," mutters the gentleman whose rude forefather pelted the hangman. Well, as to that, the law which is to accomplish more than a part of its purpose must be awaited with great patience. Every murder proves that hanging is not altogether deterrent; every hanging that it is somewhat deterrent—it deters the person hanged. A man's first murder is his crime, his second is ours.
The voice of Theosophy has been heard in favor of downing the gallows. As usual the voice is a trifle vague and it babbles. ”

“ Rules made under section forty-seven of this Act may authorise the infliction of corporal punishment for mutiny, incitement to mutiny, or gross personal violence to an officer of a prison when committed by a male person serving a sentence of imprisonment, corrective training or preventive detention. ”

“ It is not the idea of pain that makes me abhor bodily punishment, but the deep humilation that the victim must feel. And also the harm it does to the one who punishes. Physical punishment embitters, but never cures. ”

“ XI THE GRASP OF THE TENTACLES I have spoken of punishments inside the prison. When a man has served his time and is set free (as it is called) another punishment begins, which may be worse and more disheartening than the suffering endured inside the walls.
As I listened, on Saturday afternoons, or at other times, to the stories hurriedly and guardedly told me by my fellow convicts who had served more terms than one, I said to myself, "The wrong of prison is bad enough; but this of what happens to a man after prison is worse, and monstrous." ”

“ To add to a sentence for a very venial offence for which a nominal punishment ought to suffice an extra fine or term of imprisonment by way of example or warning to others would be unreasonable and unjust. Vengeance, or the infliction of unnecessary pain, especially for the sake of others, should never form part of a criminal sentence. ”