An executioner, also known as a hangman or headsman, is an official who effects a sentence of capital punishment on a condemned person.
An executioner, also known as a hangman or headsman, is an official who effects a sentence of capital punishment on a condemned person.
The executioner was usually presented with a warrant authorising or ordering him to execute the sentence. The warrant protects the executioner from the charge of murder. Common terms for executioners derived from forms of capital punishment—though they often also performed other physical punishments—include hangman (hanging) and headsman (beheading). In the military, the role of executioner was performed by a soldier, such as the provost. A common stereotype of an executioner is a hooded medieval or absolutist executioner. Symbolic or real, executioners were rarely hooded, and not robed in all black; hoods were only used if an executioner's identity and anonymity were to be preserved from the public. As Hilary Mantel noted in her 2018 Reith Lectures, "Why would an executioner wear a mask? Everybody knew who he was".
While this task can be occasional in nature, it can be carried out in the line of more general duty by an officer of the court, the police, prison staff, or even the military. A special case is the tradition of the Roman fustuarium, continued in forms of running the gauntlet, where the culprit receives their punishment from the hands of the comrades gravely harmed by their crime, e.g. for failing in vital sentinel duty or stealing from a ship's limited food supply.
Many executioners were professional specialists who traveled a circuit or region performing their duty, because executions were rarely very numerous. Within this region, a resident executioner would also administer non-lethal physical punishments, or apply torture. In medieval Europe, to the end of the early modern period, executioners were often knackers, [1] since pay from the rare executions was not enough to live off.
In medieval Europe executioners also taxed lepers and prostitutes, and controlled gaming houses. They were also in charge of the latrines and cesspools, and disposing of animal carcasses. [2]
The term is extended to administrators of severe physical punishment that is not prescribed to kill, but which may result in death.
Executions in France (using the guillotine since the French Revolution) persisted until 1977, and the French Republic had an official executioner; the last one, Marcel Chevalier, served until the formal abolition of capital punishment in 1981. [3]
In Western Europe and its colonies, executioners were often shunned by their neighbours, with their work as knackers also disreputable. [1] In France, executioners and their families were ostracized and lived in social isolation. [4] In Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers and in the film La veuve de Saint-Pierre (The Widow of Saint-Peter), minor character executioners are ostracized by the villagers.
In early modern German society, executioners and their families were considered "dishonourable people" (unehrliche Leute). [5]
The profession of executioner sometimes ran through a family, especially in France, where the Sanson family provided six executioners between 1688 and 1847 and the Deibler dynasty provided five between 1879 and its 1981 abolition. The latter's members included Louis Deibler, his son Anatole, Anatole's nephew Jules-Henri Desfourneaux, his other nephew André Obrecht, and André's nephew Marcel Chevalier. [6]
In Britain, the most notable dynasty was the Pierrepoints, who provided three executioners between 1902 and 1956 – Henry, his brother Thomas, and Henry's son Albert. Unlike in France and many other European countries, far from being shunned, British executioners such as William Marwood, James Berry, Albert Pierrepoint, and Harry Allen were widely known and respected by the public.
In Korea, the Baekjeong were an "untouchable" group who traditionally performed the jobs of executioner and butcher. [7] In Japan, executioners have been held in contempt as part of the Burakumin class (today executions in Japan are not carried out by professional executioners, but by prison guards). In Memories of Silk and Straw, by Junichi Saga, one of the families surveyed in the Japanese village of Tsuchiura is that of an executioner family ("The Last Executioner", p. 54). This family does suffer social isolation, even though the family is somewhat well-off financially. [8]
In the Ottoman Empire, the role of executioners was given to the Ottoman gardeners, bodyguards who guarded the sultan's palace. Members of the gardeners conducted executions of anyone whom the sultan wanted executed, but the most senior officials who were sentenced to death were dealt with by the head of the gardeners (Turkish : bostancıbaşı) in person. Bostancibaşi would give the person sentenced to death a cup of sherbet, and if the sherbet was white, they would avoid death, but if it was red, they would be executed on the spot by janissaries. Grand viziers could avoid execution by racing the bostancibaşi. If they reached the Fish Market Gate (on the southern side of the palace complex) from the Central Gate of the palace complex before the bostancibaşi, they would be banished instead of being executed. If they were slower than the bostancibaşi, they would be executed and their body would be thrown into the sea. This custom lasted until the nineteenth century. The last recorded person to participate in a race with the bostancibaşi was grand vizier Hacı Salih Pasha who, in November 1822, outran the bostancibaşi and saved his life. He was so widely esteemed for winning the race that he got appointed governor general of the Damascus province. [9] Executioners had their own graveyards, with uncarved and unpolished simple rough stones used as gravestones. The biggest of these graveyards is part of the Eyüp Cemetery in Istanbul. [10]
The town of Roscommon has the distinction of having had Ireland's most notorious hangwoman, Lady Betty, who was given the post in exchange for her life being spared when the hangman due to execute her death sentence took ill on the day that she and 25 others were due to be hanged. Lady Betty offered to carry out the task in exchange for her death sentence being commuted to a life sentence, and she acted as the county's hangwoman from then on. [11] An unidentified woman hanged two men for murder on 13 November 1782 at Kilmainham, near Dublin. The men were also quartered. The sheriff received abuse for making a hangman of a woman. [12]
Decapitation is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood by way of severing through the jugular vein and common carotid artery, while all other organs are deprived of the involuntary functions that are needed for the body to function. The term beheading refers to the act of deliberately decapitating a person, either as a means of murder or as an execution; it may be performed with an axe, sword, or knife, or by mechanical means such as a guillotine. An executioner who carries out executions by beheading is sometimes called a headsman. Accidental decapitation can be the result of an explosion, a car or industrial accident, improperly administered execution by hanging or other violent injury. The national laws of Saudi Arabia and Yemen permit beheading. Under Sharia, which exclusively applies to Muslims, beheading is also a legal punishment in Zamfara State, Nigeria. In practice, Saudi Arabia is the only country that continues to behead its offenders regularly as a punishment for capital crimes. Cases of decapitation by suicidal hanging, suicide by train decapitation and by guillotine are known.
Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature. Hanging has been a common method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerous countries and regions. The first known account of execution by hanging is in Homer's Odyssey. Hanging is also a method of suicide.
Albert Pierrepoint was an English hangman who executed between 435 and 600 people in a 25-year career that ended in 1956. His father Henry and uncle Thomas were official hangmen before him.
Harold Bernard Allen was one of Britain's last official executioners, officiating between 1941 and 1964. He was chief executioner at 41 executions and acted as assistant executioner at 53 others, at various prisons in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and Cyprus. He acted as assistant executioner for 14 years, mostly to Albert Pierrepoint from 1941 to 1955.
Hamida Djandoubi was a Tunisian convicted murderer sentenced to death in France. He moved to Marseille in 1968, and six years later he was convicted of the kidnapping, torture and murder of 21-year-old Élisabeth Bousquet. He was sentenced to death in February 1977 and executed by guillotine in September that year, and also the last person to be lawfully executed by beheading anywhere in the Western world, although he was not the last person sentenced to death in France. Marcel Chevalier served as chief executioner.
Marcel Chevalier worked as the last chief executioner in France.
Richard Brandon was the common executioner of London from 1639 to 1649, who inherited that role from his father Gregory Brandon and was sometimes known as Young Gregory. Richard Brandon is often named as the executioner of Charles I, though the executioner's identity is not definitively known.
Capital punishment in Canada dates to Canada's earliest history, including its period as first a French then a British colony. From 1867 to the elimination of the death penalty for murder on July 26, 1976, 1,481 people had been sentenced to death, and 710 had been executed. Of those executed, 697 were men and 13 women. The only method used in Canada for capital punishment of civilians after the end of the French regime was hanging. The last execution in Canada was the double hanging of Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin on December 11, 1962, at Toronto's Don Jail. The National Defence Act prescribed the death penalty for certain military offences until 1999, although no military executions had been carried out since 1946.
John Ellis was a British executioner for 23 years, from 1901 to 1924. His other occupations were as a Rochdale hairdresser and newsagent.
Thomas William Pierrepoint was an English executioner from 1906 until 1946. He was the brother of Henry Pierrepoint and uncle of Albert Pierrepoint.
Charles-Henri Sanson, full title Chevalier Charles-Henri Sanson de Longval, was the royal executioner of France during the reign of King Louis XVI, as well as high executioner of the First French Republic. He administered capital punishment in the city of Paris for over forty years. By his own hand he executed nearly 3,000 people, including Robert-François Damiens, who attempted to assassinate King Louis XV. Sanson would later execute King Louis XVI.
André Obrecht was the official executioner of France from 1951 until 1976.
Pierrepoint is a 2005 British film directed by Adrian Shergold about the life of British executioner Albert Pierrepoint.
Capital punishment in Sweden was last used in 1910, though it remained a legal sentence for at least some crimes until 1973. It is now outlawed by the Swedish Constitution, which states that capital punishment, corporal punishment, and torture are strictly prohibited. At the time of the abolition of the death penalty in Sweden, the legal method of execution was beheading. It was one of the last states in Europe to abolish the death penalty.
Johann Reichhart was a German state-appointed judicial executioner in Bavaria from 1924 to 1946. During the Nazi period, he executed numerous people who were sentenced to death for their resistance to the German government. After the war, he was employed as executioner by the US Military Government in Germany. In total, he executed 3,165 people.
HM Prison Swansea is a Category B/C men's prison, located in the Sandfields area of Swansea, Wales. The prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service, and is colloquially known as 'Cox's farm', after a former governor.
Jules-Henri Desfourneaux was the last French executioner to officiate in public. He came from a long line of executioners named Desfourneaux stretching back many hundreds of years. Like all French executioners since 1792 he carried out the death penalty by beheading with a guillotine.
John Clarence Woods was a United States Army master sergeant who, with Joseph Malta, carried out the Nuremberg executions of ten former top leaders of the Third Reich on October 16, 1946, after they were sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials. Time magazine credited him with 347 executions to that date during a 15-year career. According to later research, a number of 60 to 70 over a period of two years is more credible.
Anatole François Joseph Deibler was a French executioner who is considered one of the most famous executioners in French history. This is due to the fact that most of his executions, and the cases tied to them, were of great public interest due to widespread reporting by media. The advent of the camera made him somewhat of a celebrity. First beginning executioner training at age 22, he served as Monsieur de Paris from 1899 until his death in 1939. During his 54-year career, he participated in the execution of 395 criminals.
The job of executioner had become part-time. Henri Desfourneaux's two assistants also worked as a butcher and a hairdresser — fitting sidelines to their decapitating functions. The last guillotine operator, Marcel Chevalier, incumbent from ...
