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The Infographics Show, Hanging - Worst Punishments in the History of Mankind

Hanging - Worst Punishments in the History of Mankind

A rebellious gang of teenagers feel like causing some trouble. They go out at night, blackening

their faces so no one will spot them. For no reason at all, these unruly kids just start

cutting down trees, and after that they find a rabbit warren and take a rabbit or two just

because... well, because they feel like it. They take things a step further when they

get into the town, and there they pickpocket a man and take a watch which in today's

money is worth about 40 bucks. The last thing they do on this crime spree is mindlessly

wreck a fish pond. The teens then hang up their gloves and call it a night, only to

be arrested the next morning as they chow down on their porridge. Can you guess how

many capital crimes they committed that night? Answer: A lot.

In the late 17th century there were around 50 crimes in England that were punishable

by death, but by the end of the 18th century that number was more like 220. One of the

crimes those kids committed that could have seen them hanged was blackening their faces

at night with the intent to commit a crime. Shoe polish was for shoes, not faces. They

could have also been hanged for cutting down trees, stealing a rabbit, stealing something

worth about five shillings – 40 bucks today – and they could have also faced the gallows

for doing that destruction job on the fish pond.

Some of those offenses you will no doubt agree are not exactly major crimes, but the English

invented these strict measures because they thought they would prevent crimes from happening

in the first place. Some people at the time said there was no other country on the planet

where so many crimes were punishable by death. Being a teen back then was risky to say the

least, at least if you were the kind who broke a few rules now and again.

As you will find out, things improved, but in the era of what's been called the time

of the “Bloody Code” things were pretty crazy. In the 60 years between 1770 and 1830,

around 7,000 people were executed in England and Wales.

When we say “kids” could get in serious trouble in England we are not only talking

about people in their late teens. A lot of actual children went to the gallows too. There

is a recording at a church in England that tells us a girl by the name of Alice Glaston

was hanged in 1546, and she was only 11 at the time. The information about that event

doesn't tell us what crime she had committed, but we are hoping she did more than steal

someone's prized vegetable. Kids had no protections from hanging, and at one point

in time you could read in the law that “strong evidence of malice in a child of 7 to 14 years

of age” could result in them going to the gallows.

During the hanging frenzy of the late 18th and early 19th centuries quite a few kids

were hanged for crimes such as breaking into a house, stealing from a shop or even forgery,

while other teens were executed for worse crimes such as murder.

Let's now have a look at when hanging started, when it went disastrously wrong, and how it

ended… well mostly ended. You might be surprised to hear that this kind of punishment is still

around in some places. Hanging as an execution wasn't exactly a

science when it first came about. There's evidence of hanging in Roman Law and you can

see that it happened in ancient Greece as well. You can also read that it was often

the go-to form of capital punishment as early as the fifth century in England. There is

a history of hanging as a form of capital punishment all over the world, so it's better

if we concentrate on one place. England seems to be the place to start, because those guys

perfected the procedure. By the time the 12th century came about in

England, hanging was the number one form of execution. Sure, they had burning at the stake

as an option and the very worst of criminals might find themselves being sentenced to being

drawn and quartered, but hanging-to-death was by far the most popular way to kill a

criminal. In the beginning, hanging was a simple affair.

The person to be hanged would be tied in a noose which was often fixed to a crossbeam

that was attached to two vertical beams. That's the way it stayed in the early centuries

and throughout the medieval period, but things called human rights started to change that

process. At the end of the 18th century people started questioning whether small crimes should

result in hanging. It seemed rather unfair to some progressives that someone should go

to the gallows for a petty theft from a store or impersonating someone else.

Times were changing, but we should say England wasn't exactly modernizing at high speed.

In 1776, a newspaper in England called the Hereford Journal reported about the hanging

of a 15-year old girl named Susanna Underwood. She was sent to the gallows for the crime

of burning down a barn, but rather than the newspaper writing about how terrible it was

to execute someone so young for a crime that wasn't that bad, it criticized her for her

bad manners. The stubborn girl had refused to shake the hand of her master before she

was hanged, wrote the newspaper. Tut, tut. Young folks would still get hanged for years

to come, but in the 19th century the government started commuting more capital crimes and

lessening the ridiculous number of offenses for which someone could go to the gallows.

It wouldn't be until 1908 that laws were passed saying that anyone under the age of

16 couldn't get the death penalty, and on the run up to that date the crimes for a death

sentence were limited to what would be considered major ones today, such as murder, treason

or spying. In 1839, the English did their last beheading

and quartering spectacle, and so the way forward from there was mostly death by hanging.

While all this was going on, some people wanted to improve the way people were hanged. In

the past there was the goal post structure and also the structure that looks a bit like

the way you play that game called “hangman.” This was called gibbetting but as the 19th

century got under way it was seen as a somewhat old school method.

The people who were hanged this way might also have been fastened in chains, but the

British government abolished this around the same time people were wondering how to hang

a person with a little more humanity – if that is even possible.

The style of hanging that was used was called the short drop, and it was about as basic

as hanging can get. You've all heard the expression to kick the bucket, and that's

kind of what a short drop consisted of. A person stood on a small platform, his head

fastened in a noose, and that platform was then removed from under the feet of that person.

Ouch. It was painful and death wasn't fast, and thankfully some kind-hearted people came

up with better ways to hang a person. It was an Irish scientist named Samuel Haughton

that came up with a better way, and in 1866 his paper titled, "On hanging considered from

a Mechanical and Physiological point of view” was published to a lot of fanfare.

This guy would go on to serve on the “Capital Sentences Committee” and he devised a way

in which a person would die quickly from a broken neck, not strangulation. He worked

out that a standard drop between 4 and 6 feet (1.2 and 1.8 meters) should be enough to do

the trick and the person would die quickly. It didn't always work out right, though,

and so the British Home Office worked on a way to make the drop more measured and effective.The

condemned man or woman's weight would be compared to an official Table of Drops to

determine the exact height they should use. In 1888, if you were 182 pounds (82½ kg)

your drop from the scaffold would have been 6 feet 11 inches (211 cm). This was achieved

byway of a handy trap door, which the condemned was forced to stand over.

When it went right, the hanging would result in the dislocation of the vertebrae and often

the rupturing of the jugular vein. When it went wrong, such as when the drop was too

much the person's head would come off, and that wasn't what the people wanted to see.

Execution was a public spectacle after all and this actually happened lots of times,

such as in a famous case in 1901 involving U.S. outlaw Tom Edward Ketchum. His rope was

too long and off came his head. Sometimes the contraption just didn't work

at all, with the most famous case being that of the so-called “man they couldn't hang”.

They tried three times to hang John "Babbacombe" Lee and each time they failed. The trapdoor

just wouldn't open, so after three grueling attempts they just gave up. The guy had been

through enough. He was imprisoned after the hanging debacle and some years later released.

Around this time many countries were working on their hanging technique, because a headless

criminal just didn't look good. In 1930, a woman named Eva Dugan was hanged in Arizona

and that really turned out to be a dark day for all involved. The science didn't work

for Eva, and she was decapitated. Maybe even worse is the fact her head rolled in the direction

of nearby public spectators. At the sight of that, three men and two women fainted.

The science proved difficult and hangings went wrong time and again. In Canada in 1919

a man named Antonio Sprecage was hanged and it took one hour and eleven minutes before

he finally expired and the surgeons present declared the man dead.

The British hangman Albert Pierrepoint hanged hundreds of people in the first part of the

20th century and he was quite serious about his job. Sometimes the entire hanging process,

from the man leaving his cell to actually being hanged would be completed in a matter

of seconds. The faster it was the less distress was caused to the condemned. Or at least that

was the theory. For Pierrepoint, it was of the greatest importance to give the condemned

person some amount of dignity and certainly not botch the job and cause them to suffer.

After his retirement Pierrepoint stated that he wasn't sure the death penalty worked.

He said, “If hanging is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree. There have been murders since

the beginning of time, and we shall go on looking for deterrents until the end of time.”

He said that he was not sure he ever prevented anyone from murdering.

As you might expect, Pierrepoint took a lot of flak for this. His long-time assistant

wasn't too keen on what he said, stating, “I just could not believe it. When you have

hanged more than 680 people, it's a hell of a time to find out you do not believe capital

punishment achieves anything.” Maybe if hanging criminals is the order of

the day, and if you think you're the right man for the job and can cause the least amount

of distress and pain, then you should do the job.

The last two people to be hanged in the UK were a pair named Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen

in 1964. They had killed a man and got away with some cash, which amounted to the grand

total of about $13. Things went to the plan the day of the execution at least, with the

assistant hangman calling it a “run-of-the mill execution.”

Hanging then disappeared from most countries around the world. The last public hanging

in the U.S. happened in 1936, although some states still had hanging on their list of

possible methods of execution for quite some time to come. In 1996, Billy Bailey was the

last man ever to be hanged in the U.S. He was a big guy, weighing about 220 pounds (100kg).

With that in mind, officials estimated the correct drop to be 5 feet (1.5 meters).

Bailey had actually chosen hanging as the way to go, although as of 2019 it's in only

New Hampshire where this is still possible in the U.S. When the day came he had no final

words. He stood on the scaffold on a cold night at the Delaware Correctional Center

and had his ankles chained. A hood was put over his head and the noose was fastened under

his chin. The warden then took a step backwards and

pulled a lever. The trapdoor opened and the rope, with Billy on the end of it, became

taut about 10 feet from the ground. His prison jacket flapped in the cold wind as his body

rotated one way and then another. The execution was said to have gone “without

complication” although the man's pulse beat for around 11 minutes. The heart goes

on even when the person is assumed to have no thoughts or pain left, but then again,

no one will ever know what those last few moments dangling from a rope are like.

We think after that you might need a bit of cheering up, so we have two shows for you

that should make you laugh and bring some light back into your world. Have a look at

these two hilarious videos, “I Spent 7 Days In Bed and This Is What Happened” or for

a different kind of humor, “Why Flat Earthers Are Dead Wrong.”

Hanging - Worst Punishments in the History of Mankind Execution by hanging||||||| ||İdam Cezaları||||| Hängen - die schlimmsten Strafen in der Geschichte der Menschheit Απαγχονισμός - Οι χειρότερες τιμωρίες στην ιστορία της ανθρωπότητας La horca - Los peores castigos de la historia de la humanidad Pendaison - Les pires châtiments de l'histoire de l'humanité Impiccagione - La peggiore punizione nella storia dell'umanità 絞首刑 - 人類史上最悪の刑罰 Kabinimas - blogiausia bausmė žmonijos istorijoje Powieszenie - najgorsza kara w historii ludzkości Enforcamento - As piores penas da história da humanidade Повешение - худшее наказание в истории человечества İdam - İnsanlık Tarihindeki En Kötü Cezalar Повішення - найстрашніша міра покарання в історії людства 绞刑——人类历史上最严厉的惩罚 絞刑-人類史上最嚴厲的懲罰

A rebellious gang of teenagers feel like causing some trouble. They go out at night, blackening |反叛的|group of teens|||||||||head out||||vandalizing property |||||||||||||||karartma yapıyorlar |反抗的な||||||||||||||黒く塗る

their faces so no one will spot them. For no reason at all, these unruly kids just start ||||||notice||||||||disorderly||| ||||||||||||||yaramaz|||

cutting down trees, and after that they find a rabbit warren and take a rabbit or two just ||||||||||Rabbit burrow||||||| ||||||||||tavşan yuvası||||||| ||||||||||ウサギの巣穴|||||||

because... well, because they feel like it. They take things a step further when they

get into the town, and there they pickpocket a man and take a watch which in today's |||||||steal from||||||||| |||||||kapkaç yapmak|||||||||

money is worth about 40 bucks. The last thing they do on this crime spree is mindlessly |||||||||||||crime binge|| |||||||||||||||düşünmeden

wreck a fish pond. The teens then hang up their gloves and call it a night, only to damage||||||||||||||||| разрушить пруд с рыбой. Затем подростки вешают перчатки и уходят спать, только для того, чтобы

be arrested the next morning as they chow down on their porridge. Can you guess how |||||||eat enthusiastically|||||||| |||||||yemek yemek||||yulaf lapası|||| |||||||||||お粥||||

many capital crimes they committed that night? Answer: A lot.

In the late 17th century there were around 50 crimes in England that were punishable |||||||||||||cezalandırılabilir

by death, but by the end of the 18th century that number was more like 220. One of the

crimes those kids committed that could have seen them hanged was blackening their faces |||||||||executed by hanging||darkening their faces||

at night with the intent to commit a crime. Shoe polish was for shoes, not faces. They

could have also been hanged for cutting down trees, stealing a rabbit, stealing something

worth about five shillings – 40 bucks today – and they could have also faced the gallows |||Five shillings||||||||||execution by hanging |||||||||||||darağacı

for doing that destruction job on the fish pond. |||破坏工作|||||

Some of those offenses you will no doubt agree are not exactly major crimes, but the English

invented these strict measures because they thought they would prevent crimes from happening

in the first place. Some people at the time said there was no other country on the planet

where so many crimes were punishable by death. Being a teen back then was risky to say the ||||||||||genç olmak|||||||

least, at least if you were the kind who broke a few rules now and again.

As you will find out, things improved, but in the era of what's been called the time

of the “Bloody Code” things were pretty crazy. In the 60 years between 1770 and 1830,

around 7,000 people were executed in England and Wales.

When we say “kids” could get in serious trouble in England we are not only talking

about people in their late teens. A lot of actual children went to the gallows too. There ||||||||||||||execution scaffold|| ||||||||||||||絞首台||

is a recording at a church in England that tells us a girl by the name of Alice Glaston ||||||||||||||||||Alice Glaston

was hanged in 1546, and she was only 11 at the time. The information about that event

doesn't tell us what crime she had committed, but we are hoping she did more than steal

someone's prized vegetable. Kids had no protections from hanging, and at one point |değerli|||||||||||

in time you could read in the law that “strong evidence of malice in a child of 7 to 14 years ||||||||||||intent to harm|||||| ||||||||||||kötü niyet|||||| ||||||||||||悪意||||||

of age” could result in them going to the gallows.

During the hanging frenzy of the late 18th and early 19th centuries quite a few kids |||熱狂の中で||||||||||||

were hanged for crimes such as breaking into a house, stealing from a shop or even forgery, ||||||||||||||||sahtecilik ||||||||||||||||偽造罪

while other teens were executed for worse crimes such as murder.

Let's now have a look at when hanging started, when it went disastrously wrong, and how it ||||||||||||terribly wrong|||| ||||||||||||feci şekilde|||| ||||||||||||悲惨に||||

ended… well mostly ended. You might be surprised to hear that this kind of punishment is still

around in some places. Hanging as an execution wasn't exactly a

science when it first came about. There's evidence of hanging in Roman Law and you can

see that it happened in ancient Greece as well. You can also read that it was often

the go-to form of capital punishment as early as the fifth century in England. There is еще в пятом веке в Англии был основным видом смертной казни. Существует

a history of hanging as a form of capital punishment all over the world, so it's better

if we concentrate on one place. England seems to be the place to start, because those guys

perfected the procedure. By the time the 12th century came about in mükemmelleştirdi||||||||||| усовершенствовал эту процедуру. К XII веку в

England, hanging was the number one form of execution. Sure, they had burning at the stake

as an option and the very worst of criminals might find themselves being sentenced to being как вариант, и самые худшие преступники могут оказаться приговоренными к

drawn and quartered, but hanging-to-death was by far the most popular way to kill a ||Dörde bölmek|||||||||||||| Но самым популярным способом убийства была казнь через повешение.

criminal. In the beginning, hanging was a simple affair.

The person to be hanged would be tied in a noose which was often fixed to a crossbeam ||||||||||looped rope||||||| ||||||||||ilmik||||||| Повешенного привязывали к петле, которую часто прикрепляли к поперечной балке.

that was attached to two vertical beams. That's the way it stayed in the early centuries ||||||supporting posts|||||||||

and throughout the medieval period, but things called human rights started to change that

process. At the end of the 18th century people started questioning whether small crimes should

result in hanging. It seemed rather unfair to some progressives that someone should go

to the gallows for a petty theft from a store or impersonating someone else.

Times were changing, but we should say England wasn't exactly modernizing at high speed.

In 1776, a newspaper in England called the Hereford Journal reported about the hanging

of a 15-year old girl named Susanna Underwood. She was sent to the gallows for the crime

of burning down a barn, but rather than the newspaper writing about how terrible it was

to execute someone so young for a crime that wasn't that bad, it criticized her for her

bad manners. The stubborn girl had refused to shake the hand of her master before she

was hanged, wrote the newspaper. Tut, tut. Young folks would still get hanged for years

to come, but in the 19th century the government started commuting more capital crimes and но в XIX веке правительство стало заменять смертную казнь более тяжкими преступлениями и

lessening the ridiculous number of offenses for which someone could go to the gallows.

It wouldn't be until 1908 that laws were passed saying that anyone under the age of

16 couldn't get the death penalty, and on the run up to that date the crimes for a death 16 couldn't get the death penalty, and on the run up to that date the crimes for a death

sentence were limited to what would be considered major ones today, such as murder, treason

or spying. In 1839, the English did their last beheading

and quartering spectacle, and so the way forward from there was mostly death by hanging. ||public display|||||||||||| и четвертование, и поэтому дальнейший путь был в основном через смерть через повешение.

While all this was going on, some people wanted to improve the way people were hanged. In

the past there was the goal post structure and also the structure that looks a bit like

the way you play that game called “hangman.” This was called gibbetting but as the 19th

century got under way it was seen as a somewhat old school method.

The people who were hanged this way might also have been fastened in chains, but the

British government abolished this around the same time people were wondering how to hang

a person with a little more humanity – if that is even possible.

The style of hanging that was used was called the short drop, and it was about as basic Используемый стиль подвеса назывался "короткое падение", и он был примерно таким же простым.

as hanging can get. You've all heard the expression to kick the bucket, and that's как можно больше. Вы все слышали выражение kick the bucket, и это

kind of what a short drop consisted of. A person stood on a small platform, his head

fastened in a noose, and that platform was then removed from under the feet of that person. |||looped rope|||||||||||||

Ouch. It was painful and death wasn't fast, and thankfully some kind-hearted people came

up with better ways to hang a person. It was an Irish scientist named Samuel Haughton

that came up with a better way, and in 1866 his paper titled, "On hanging considered from

a Mechanical and Physiological point of view” was published to a lot of fanfare.

This guy would go on to serve on the “Capital Sentences Committee” and he devised a way

in which a person would die quickly from a broken neck, not strangulation. He worked

out that a standard drop between 4 and 6 feet (1.2 and 1.8 meters) should be enough to do

the trick and the person would die quickly. It didn't always work out right, though,

and so the British Home Office worked on a way to make the drop more measured and effective.The

condemned man or woman's weight would be compared to an official Table of Drops to

determine the exact height they should use. In 1888, if you were 182 pounds (82½ kg) |||exact height used|||||||||

your drop from the scaffold would have been 6 feet 11 inches (211 cm). This was achieved

byway of a handy trap door, which the condemned was forced to stand over.

When it went right, the hanging would result in the dislocation of the vertebrae and often |||||||||||||spinal bones||

the rupturing of the jugular vein. When it went wrong, such as when the drop was too

much the person's head would come off, and that wasn't what the people wanted to see.

Execution was a public spectacle after all and this actually happened lots of times,

such as in a famous case in 1901 involving U.S. outlaw Tom Edward Ketchum. His rope was

too long and off came his head. Sometimes the contraption just didn't work

at all, with the most famous case being that of the so-called “man they couldn't hang”.

They tried three times to hang John "Babbacombe" Lee and each time they failed. The trapdoor

just wouldn't open, so after three grueling attempts they just gave up. The guy had been не открывался, и после трех изнурительных попыток они сдались. Парень был

through enough. He was imprisoned after the hanging debacle and some years later released. ||||||||disastrous failure||||| достаточно. После неудачного повешения его посадили в тюрьму, а через несколько лет выпустили.

Around this time many countries were working on their hanging technique, because a headless

criminal just didn't look good. In 1930, a woman named Eva Dugan was hanged in Arizona

and that really turned out to be a dark day for all involved. The science didn't work

for Eva, and she was decapitated. Maybe even worse is the fact her head rolled in the direction |||||beheaded||||||||||||

of nearby public spectators. At the sight of that, three men and two women fainted. |||onlookers|||||||||||

The science proved difficult and hangings went wrong time and again. In Canada in 1919

a man named Antonio Sprecage was hanged and it took one hour and eleven minutes before

he finally expired and the surgeons present declared the man dead.

The British hangman Albert Pierrepoint hanged hundreds of people in the first part of the

20th century and he was quite serious about his job. Sometimes the entire hanging process,

from the man leaving his cell to actually being hanged would be completed in a matter

of seconds. The faster it was the less distress was caused to the condemned. Or at least that

was the theory. For Pierrepoint, it was of the greatest importance to give the condemned

person some amount of dignity and certainly not botch the job and cause them to suffer.

After his retirement Pierrepoint stated that he wasn't sure the death penalty worked.

He said, “If hanging is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree. There have been murders since |||||||||crime prevention measure||||||||

the beginning of time, and we shall go on looking for deterrents until the end of time.”

He said that he was not sure he ever prevented anyone from murdering.

As you might expect, Pierrepoint took a lot of flak for this. His long-time assistant Как и следовало ожидать, Пьерпойнт получил за это много неприятностей. Его давний помощник

wasn't too keen on what he said, stating, “I just could not believe it. When you have

hanged more than 680 people, it's a hell of a time to find out you do not believe capital

punishment achieves anything.” Maybe if hanging criminals is the order of

the day, and if you think you're the right man for the job and can cause the least amount

of distress and pain, then you should do the job.

The last two people to be hanged in the UK were a pair named Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen

in 1964. They had killed a man and got away with some cash, which amounted to the grand

total of about $13. Things went to the plan the day of the execution at least, with the

assistant hangman calling it a “run-of-the mill execution.” Помощник палача назвал это "обычной казнью".

Hanging then disappeared from most countries around the world. The last public hanging

in the U.S. happened in 1936, although some states still had hanging on their list of

possible methods of execution for quite some time to come. In 1996, Billy Bailey was the

last man ever to be hanged in the U.S. He was a big guy, weighing about 220 pounds (100kg).

With that in mind, officials estimated the correct drop to be 5 feet (1.5 meters).

Bailey had actually chosen hanging as the way to go, although as of 2019 it's in only

New Hampshire where this is still possible in the U.S. When the day came he had no final |New Hampshire|||||||||||||||||

words. He stood on the scaffold on a cold night at the Delaware Correctional Center

and had his ankles chained. A hood was put over his head and the noose was fastened under

his chin. The warden then took a step backwards and

pulled a lever. The trapdoor opened and the rope, with Billy on the end of it, became

taut about 10 feet from the ground. His prison jacket flapped in the cold wind as his body

rotated one way and then another. The execution was said to have gone “without

complication” although the man's pulse beat for around 11 minutes. The heart goes

on even when the person is assumed to have no thoughts or pain left, but then again,

no one will ever know what those last few moments dangling from a rope are like.

We think after that you might need a bit of cheering up, so we have two shows for you

that should make you laugh and bring some light back into your world. Have a look at

these two hilarious videos, “I Spent 7 Days In Bed and This Is What Happened” or for

a different kind of humor, “Why Flat Earthers Are Dead Wrong.”