Whether you’re for or against capital punishment, it’s an unavoidable part of human history.
It’s worth remembering that at some point or other, every country in the world has executed its criminals. Many countries have abolished the death penalty, or at least tried to make it as humane as possible; unfortunately for the criminals of the past, some of the methods of execution employed many centuries ago were truly barbaric.
These times were long before the concept of human rights had even been invented, and it showed: the punishers took an almost sadistic pleasure in inflicting the absolute maximum level of punishment possible. The executions were drawn out affairs, and often included a degree of humiliation.
What’s more, the executions became almost like a form of entertainment: despite the almost unimaginable acts of cruelty against another human, vast numbers wanted to attend, and most executions were held publicly.
In writing this book, I accepted that the subject matter wasn’t a particularly pleasant one, but I had literally no idea just how dark and twisted some of these methods would get.
I have included many of the details, making this quite a gruesome read. If that isn’t your thing, look away now; you probably won’t enjoy this. Some of the research took me to some very disturbing places, and, whilst I’ve tried to keep things as light hearted as the subject would allow (people did die, after all), it’s unavoidable to completely remove the gory details.
I appreciate that the content included in this book might not be for everyone, and for some might be quite upsetting.
These are all real methods of execution that have been used in the past, many of them designed to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible, before the inevitable death.
Some of the gory details have been included in this book. You have been warned.
The chapters begin with the least disturbing methods of execution, and count down to the worst; if you find one chapter particularly difficult to read, it might be best not to continue onto the next as this will be even more twisted.
But, for those of you this sort of thing doesn’t bother you, by all means, read on!
Good luck, and I hope reading this disturbs you as much as writing it did me!
I hope you, well, I’m not sure the right word is enjoy , but I hope you take something from it, whatever that might be.
25 – Beheading
We kick things off with a relatively tame execution technique.
I’m sure most of you will be familiar with this one; the act of beheading a person is one of the most common methods of execution; it’s been used for thousands of years and countries all over the world. This is probably the method that initially springs to mind in a discussion of execution, such was its popularity in the past.
In fact, many well-known historical figures have been executed by beheading, including Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Marie Antoinette, and two of the wives of Henry VIII: Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard.
Historically, it was the go-to methods of execution due to the perceived painlessness of the technique: chopping the head from the body caused instant death. The technique for achieving the beheading originally was beautifully simplistic: take a big brute of a man; give him a big axe; let him swing down onto the victim’s exposed neck (usually on a sort of chopping block). Job done.
In theory this worked well, and would result in the pain free death the beheading guidebook promised; however things didn’t always go to plan. Unfortunately, there were cases where the execution instrument wasn’t sharp enough, and, of course, there was an element of human error.
If the axe was blunt, or the executioner inaccurate, this would result in a violent, horrific death. In fact, it was relatively common for it to take several hacks at the victim’s neck before the
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