The first mention of this type of death penalty, hanging, dates back to the era of antiquity. Thus, as a result of the conspiracy of Catiline (60s BC), five rebels were sentenced to death by hanging by the Roman Senate. This is how the Roman historian Sallust describes their execution:
“There is in the prison, to the left and slightly below the entrance, a room called Tullian’s dungeon; it extends into the ground about twelve feet and is fortified with walls everywhere, and covered with a stone vault on top; dirt, darkness and stench create a vile and terrible impression. It was there that Lentulus was lowered, and the executioners, executing the order, strangled him, throwing a noose around his neck... Cethegus, Statilius, Gabinius, Ceparius were executed in the same way.”
However, the era of Ancient Rome has long passed, and hanging, as statistics show, despite all its apparent cruelty, is the most popular method of death penalty at present. This type of execution provides for two possible types of death: death from spinal cord rupture and death from asphyxia. Let us consider how dying occurs in each of these cases.
Death from spinal injury
If the calculation was made correctly, the fall will result in severe damage to the cervical spine, as well as the upper parts of the spinal cord and brain stem. Hanging with a long fall in the vast majority of cases is accompanied by the instant death of the victim due to decapitation.
Death from mechanical asphyxia
If, during the fall of the convict's body, there is no displacement of the vertebrae sufficient to rupture the spinal cord, death occurs from slow suffocation (asphyxia) and can last from three to four to seven to eight minutes (for comparison, death from decapitation with a guillotine occurs usually seven to ten seconds after the head is separated from the body).
The process of dying by hanging can be divided into four stages:
- 1. The victim’s consciousness is preserved, deep and frequent breathing is noted with the direct participation of auxiliary muscles in breathing, and cyanosis of the skin quickly appears. The heart rate increases and blood pressure rises.
- 2. Consciousness is lost, convulsions appear, involuntary urination and defecation are possible, breathing becomes rare.
- 3. Terminal stage, which lasts from a few seconds to two to three minutes. Respiratory arrest and cardiac depression occur.
- 4. Agonal state. Following the cessation of breathing, cardiac arrest occurs.
It is worth noting that in the second case the dying process itself lasts longer and is much more painful. Thus, by setting the goal of humanizing the death penalty by hanging, we automatically set the goal of minimizing the number of situations when a convicted person dies from strangulation.
Here are three main ways of placing a noose around the neck: a) - typical (mainly used in the death penalty), b) and c) - atypical.
Practice shows that if the knot is located on the side of the left ear (a typical way of placing a loop), then during the fall the rope throws the head back. This produces enough energy to break the spine.
However, it is not only the danger of incorrect placement of the knot on the neck that awaits the convicted person. The most important and difficult problem when hanging is choosing the length of the rope. Moreover, its length depends more on the weight of the executed person than on his height.
It must be remembered that the hemp rope used in carrying out this type of death penalty is far from the most durable material and tends to break at the most inopportune moment. This is exactly the incident that happened, for example, on July 13 (25), 1826 on Senate Square. Here's how an eyewitness describes the event:
“When everything was ready, with the spring in the scaffold squeezing, the platform on which they stood on the benches fell, and at the same instant three fell - Ryleev, Pestel and Kakhovsky fell down. Ryleev’s cap fell off, and a bloody eyebrow and blood behind his right ear were visible, probably from a bruise. He sat crouched because he had fallen inside the scaffold. I approached him, he said: “What a misfortune!” The Governor-General, seeing that three had fallen, sent adjutant Bashutsky to take other ropes and hang them, which was immediately done. I was so busy with Ryleev that I didn’t pay attention to the others who fell from the gallows and didn’t hear if they said anything. When the board was raised again, Pestel’s rope was so long that he could reach the platform with his toes, which was supposed to prolong his torment, and it was noticeable for some time that he was still alive.”
In order to avoid such trouble during an execution (since it could spoil the image of the executioner by demonstrating his inability to handle the execution instrument), in England, and then in other countries that practiced hanging, it was customary to stretch the rope on the eve of the execution in order to make it more elastic.
In order to calculate the optimal length of the rope, we analyzed the so-called “official fall table” - a reference publication by the UK Home Office on the optimal height from which the body of a person sentenced to death should fall when hanging. In order to then calculate the most suitable length of rope, it was only necessary to add the “fall height” to the height of the bar or hook to which the rope was attached.
|
Fall height in meters |
Weight of the convicted person (with clothes) in kg |
Ratio |
The resulting table allows you to calculate the optimal rope length for a convicted person of any weight. In this case, it is only worth remembering that there is an inverse relationship between the weight of the executed person and the height of the fall (the greater the weight, the shorter the length of the rope).
The most popular types of execution in the Middle Ages were beheading and hanging. Moreover, they were applied to people of different classes. Beheading was used as a punishment for noble people, and the gallows was the lot of the rootless poor. So why did the aristocracy beheaded and the common people hanged?
Beheading is for kings and nobles
This type of death penalty has been used everywhere for many millennia. In medieval Europe, such punishment was considered “noble” or “honorable.” Mostly aristocrats were beheaded. When a representative of a noble family laid his head on the block, he showed humility.
Beheading with a sword, ax or ax was considered the least painful death. A quick death made it possible to avoid public agony, which was important for representatives of noble families. The crowd, hungry for spectacle, should not have seen the low dying manifestations.
It was also believed that aristocrats, being brave and selfless warriors, were prepared specifically for death from knives.
Much in this matter depended on the skills of the executioner. Therefore, often the convict himself or his relatives paid a lot of money so that he could do his job in one blow.
Decapitation leads to instant death, which means it saves you from frantic torment. The sentence was carried out quickly. The condemned man laid his head on a log, which was supposed to be no more than six inches thick. This greatly simplified the execution.
The aristocratic connotation of this type of punishment was also reflected in books dedicated to the Middle Ages, thereby perpetuating its selectivity. In the book “The History of a Master” (author Kirill Sinelnikov) there is a quote: “... a noble execution - cutting off the head. This is not a hanging, an execution of the mob. Beheading is for kings and nobles."
Hanging
While nobles were sentenced to beheadings, commoner criminals ended up on the gallows.
Hanging is the most common execution in the world. This type of punishment has been considered shameful since ancient times. And there are several explanations for this. Firstly, it was believed that when hanging, the soul cannot leave the body, as if remaining hostage to it. Such dead people were called “hostages.”
Secondly, dying on the gallows was painful and painful. Death does not occur instantly; a person experiences physical suffering and remains conscious for several seconds, fully aware of the approaching end. All his torment and manifestations of agony are observed by hundreds of onlookers. In 90% of cases, at the moment of suffocation, all the muscles of the body relax, which leads to complete emptying of the intestines and bladder.
For many peoples, hanging was considered an unclean death. No one wanted his body dangling in plain sight after the execution. Violation by public display is a mandatory part of this type of punishment. Many believed that such a death was the worst thing that could happen, and it was reserved only for traitors. People remembered Judas, who hanged himself on an aspen tree.
A person sentenced to the gallows had to have three ropes: the first two, pinkie-thick (tortuza), were equipped with a loop and were intended for direct strangulation. The third was called a “token” or “throw” - it served to throw a person sentenced to the gallows. The execution was completed by the executioner, holding onto the crossbars of the gallows and kneeling the condemned man in the stomach.
Exceptions to the rules
Despite the clear distinction between belonging to one class or another, there were exceptions to the established rules. For example, if a noble nobleman raped a girl whom he was entrusted with guardianship, then he was deprived of his nobility and all the privileges associated with the title. If during detention he resisted, then the gallows awaited him.
Among the military, deserters and traitors were sentenced to hanging. For officers, such a death was so humiliating that they often committed suicide without waiting for the execution of the sentence imposed by the court.
The exception was cases of high treason, in which the nobleman was deprived of all privileges and could be executed as a commoner.
From an article by Alexey Mokrousov.
American Nancy Shields Kollmann wanted to be a diplomat, but after a semester spent forty years ago at Leningrad University, the Harvard student decided to go into science. Today she is a professor of history at Cambridge, studying Russia's past.
In the book “Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia,” published by the Moscow publishing house “New Literary Review,” Kollmann tells how criminal law was applied in our country in the 17th and early 18th centuries.
The conclusions that the author comes to may seem unexpected to those who are accustomed to seeing exclusively Asian issues in our history. Of course, writes Nancy Kollmann, “executions for political crimes in Russia were especially cruel, not limited by legal norms that softened European inquisitorial practices.
But, unlike Europe, in Russia “executions were not theatrical, deliberately violent and exceptionally cruel. Rather, they were simple and quick.”
The practice of public executions, which turned into theatrical performances, appeared only under Peter I, who himself saw them during a trip to Holland. Moreover, from the end of the 17th century, “as the system of exile developed, the number of cases of the death penalty in Russia decreased,” so that the Russian judicial experience was in many ways more merciful than the European one.
“Executions for criminal offenses served as a model for executions for the most serious crimes (treason, heresy, witchcraft), but were carried out in a more simplified manner. Among them, one of the most common was hanging. Although the hanging itself may seem too straightforward, this action could also have a symbolic meaning.
In early modern Germany, for example, the gallows were to be built from start to finish from “pure oak, without knots or nails, and the body was to be left hanging until it decomposed, devoured by the elements and birds”; in Switzerland one judge ordered that a "new rope" be used.
We do not find such instructions on the construction of gallows in Muscovy, and in court cases there is no indication that such matters particularly bothered anyone. But judging by the fact that hangings were carried out in places with the largest concentration of people, the authorities apparently proceeded from the idea that such executions had an emotional impact on people.
In rare cases, when legal authorities and decrees stipulate the method of execution, they, as a rule, name hanging. Foreign travelers, starting from the early 16th century, talk about the same thing. Thus, Sigismund von Herberstein (a diplomat of the German Empire of the 16th century, historian) wrote: “They rarely apply other executions to criminals, unless they have done something too terrible.”
Law enforcement practice shows that hanging was common and was not limited to one or another social group. In the decrees, hanging is found in relation to “Russian people and foreigners”, to everyone who “is found guilty of theft”, to runaway slaves and to “military people of all ranks”.
Women, however, as a rule, were not hanged either in Europe or in Russia, although there is no explicit prohibition in Russian laws to do so. In cases where laws or sentences specify the type of execution for a woman, it turns out to be either beheading or other methods other than hanging.
Grigory Kotoshikhin (a Russian diplomat-turncoat of the 17th century), listing the methods of executing women for various crimes, does not mention hanging. A number of historians believe that this approach was developed for reasons of decency.
Sir William Blackstone (English politician, philosopher and legal historian of the 18th century) explained in relation to English laws: “The decency proper to the female sex prohibits the public nudity and mutilation of the female body.”
On the rare occasions when women were sent to the gallows, as in medieval France, attendants would tie a skirt around the executioner's legs to maintain decency.
But Esther Cohen argues that modesty played no role in the ban on hanging women; after all, in medieval Europe it was quite possible to lead a naked woman in procession through the city for scourging.
Rather, as the researcher argues, the population either perceived the crimes usually associated with women as so horrific (such as infanticide, witchcraft), or considered women so powerful and dangerous that a more final form of death was required to ensure that the evil spirits embodied in the criminals and their deeds , did not survive the execution and did not return from the dead.
It is difficult to say whether similar folk beliefs were widespread in Russia, but the law followed the same prohibitions. Therefore, in Russia in the early modern era, as in Europe, women were burned or buried - in these ways the complete destruction of the criminal, her body and her spiritual component was ensured.
Women (as well as men) found guilty of a crime against religion were doomed to be burned. A wife who killed her husband (and in some cases for witchcraft and infanticide) was subject to a particularly cruel burial alive.
She was placed in the ground standing up and buried up to her neck, so that she faced a slow death from hunger and exhaustion. On the other hand, a husband who killed his wife was simply hanged or had his head cut off as for murder.
In the practice of such law enforcement, there is a known case of the burial alive of the wife of a Kursk townsman, who in 1637 admitted under torture that she had persuaded two people to kill her husband.
In laws, such a measure was first found in the Council Code of 1649. Burial was confirmed in 1663 and in the New Decree Articles of 1669. Although a decree of 1689 abolished this measure, replacing it with cutting off the head, burial alive continued to be used in the 18th century.
As a judicial sanction, such a burial was truly gruesome. John Perry, an engineer in the Russian service who built canals from 1698 to 1712, described it this way: “The wife was buried alive upright in the ground, so that only one head remained on the surface of the earth. Guards were stationed here to ensure that no one released the unfortunate woman until she starved to death."
Jacob Reitenfels (writer, diplomat of the 17th century), writing in the early 1670s, witnessed the following execution of two women buried next to each other: “During the day, the priests read prayers and consolations, having lit wax candles around these living dead ones; at night another was waiting guard."
Later authors say that the guards did not allow passers-by to give food and drink to the women buried in the ground, but allowed them to throw coins, which were used to buy candles or for subsequent funerals.
Sometimes these women were pardoned, dug up and allowed to go to a monastery: this is what happened with the heroines of Reitenfels’ story. But usually they did die - especially quickly in winter, as Collins (a doctor who served at the Moscow court in the 1660s) reminds us, or, as often happened, over a longer period of time.
The extreme nature of this punishment can be explained by two reasons. Firstly, women were thus given over to death to the elements, in this case the earth.
Secondly, it corresponded to the gravity of the crime. This is where European analogies come to the rescue. In early modern times, English law equated manicide with treason:
“If a wife kills her husband, this is considered by law a much more serious crime, because she not only violates the establishment of human coexistence and marital love, but also rebels against the legitimate power of her husband over herself. And therefore the law defines her crime as a type of treason and sentences her to the same punishment as for the murder of the king."
The Englishman John Wing called such a woman in 1632 “a domestic rebel, a traitor to the family.” In England, such “domestic traitors” were burned and tied to a stake (while male traitors were quartered); in the Moscow state - they buried it in the ground. Where exactly this punishment was brought to Russia remains unclear.
There are no such precedents in the East Slavic legislative monuments, starting with the Russian Pravda, nor in the Byzantine secular laws, which had a strong influence on the law of the Muscovite kingdom in the 18th century.
But in general, burial alive to punish women has been used in one form or another since classical antiquity. In the era of Antiquity, this was done to vestals who violated their vow of chastity.
More relevant as a source of influence on the Russian state may be the mention of the corresponding execution in France of the 16th century and in “Carolina” of 1532. There, however, the procedure was somewhat different: women were buried in the ground in an open coffin, but their suffering was usually alleviated by killing them before completely filling the grave.
In addition to the case of 1637, such punishment occurs several more times in the 17th century. For example, in 1676, a woman buried for the murder of her husband was dug out of the ground and sent into exile to the Resurrection Convent subordinate to Kirillo-Belozersky.
The famous Old Believers ideologist Avvakum reports that his wife and children were buried alive (1670s). In 1677, a woman was buried for the murder of her husband, but a few days later, through the intercession of the abbess and the sisters of a nearby monastery, she was released and allowed to take monastic vows there.
In 1682, two women were convicted of a series of crimes: both for the murder of their husbands, and one for murder while escaping from prison. They were buried for three days, and then they were pardoned and allowed to take monastic vows in the Tikhvin Monastery.
Despite its abolition in 1689, the burial of women alive as a punishment continued: this is further evidence that knowledge of the laws in the country was not universal in the 18th century.
In one Arzamas case from 1720, a woman and her lover were found guilty of the deliberate murder of her husband. She was sentenced to be buried alive in Arzamas “in a decent place” “during bargaining”; her accomplice was also determined to die, but the manner of death was not specified.
There is not the slightest indication in the case that the judge was aware of the 1689 decree abolishing this method of execution. Perhaps he followed the Council Code, the norms of which, in accordance with the decree of 1714, had precedence in criminal law over later decrees.
The same burial was used in 1730 in Bryansk. There the peasant woman managed to stay in the ground from August 21 to September 22.
Back in 1752, one sentence stated that, although according to the Code of 1649, a husband killer must be buried in the ground, but by virtue of Elizabeth Petrovna’s decrees of 1744 and 1745, requiring a revision of death sentences, “she is not subject to the death penalty.” In this case, the criminal was punished with eternal exile to Siberia."
Such a death was considered humiliating
The most popular types of execution in the Middle Ages were beheading and hanging. Moreover, they were applied to people of different classes. Beheading was used as a punishment for noble people, and the gallows was the lot of the rootless poor. So why did the aristocracy beheaded and the common people hanged?
Beheading is for kings and nobles
This type of death penalty has been used everywhere for many millennia. In medieval Europe, such punishment was considered “noble” or “honorable.” Mostly aristocrats were beheaded. When a representative of a noble family laid his head on the block, he showed humility.
Beheading with a sword, ax or ax was considered the least painful death. A quick death made it possible to avoid public agony, which was important for representatives of noble families. The crowd, hungry for spectacle, should not have seen the low dying manifestations.
It was also believed that aristocrats, being brave and selfless warriors, were prepared specifically for death from knives.
Much in this matter depended on the skills of the executioner. Therefore, often the convict himself or his relatives paid a lot of money so that he could do his job in one blow.
Decapitation leads to instant death, which means it saves you from frantic torment. The sentence was carried out quickly. The condemned man laid his head on a log, which was supposed to be no more than six inches thick. This greatly simplified the execution.
The aristocratic connotation of this type of punishment was also reflected in books dedicated to the Middle Ages, thereby perpetuating its selectivity. In the book “The History of a Master” (author Kirill Sinelnikov) there is a quote: “... a noble execution - cutting off the head. This is not a hanging, an execution of the mob. Beheading is for kings and nobles.”
Hanging
While nobles were sentenced to beheadings, commoner criminals ended up on the gallows.
Hanging is the most common execution in the world. This type of punishment has been considered shameful since ancient times. And there are several explanations for this. Firstly, it was believed that when hanging, the soul cannot leave the body, as if remaining hostage to it. Such dead people were called “hostages.”
Secondly, dying on the gallows was painful and painful. Death does not occur instantly; a person experiences physical suffering and remains conscious for several seconds, fully aware of the approaching end. All his torment and manifestations of agony are observed by hundreds of onlookers. In 90% of cases, at the moment of suffocation, all the muscles of the body relax, which leads to complete emptying of the intestines and bladder.
For many peoples, hanging was considered an unclean death. No one wanted his body dangling in plain sight after the execution. Violation by public display is a mandatory part of this type of punishment. Many believed that such a death was the worst thing that could happen, and it was reserved only for traitors. People remembered Judas, who hanged himself on an aspen tree.
A person sentenced to the gallows had to have three ropes: the first two, pinkie-thick (tortuza), were equipped with a loop and were intended for direct strangulation. The third was called a “token” or “throw” - it served to throw the condemned to the gallows. The execution was completed by the executioner, holding onto the crossbars of the gallows and kneeling the condemned man in the stomach.
Exceptions to the rules
Despite the clear distinction between belonging to one class or another, there were exceptions to the established rules. For example, if a noble nobleman raped a girl whom he was entrusted with guardianship, then he was deprived of his nobility and all the privileges associated with the title. If during detention he resisted, then the gallows awaited him.
Among the military, deserters and traitors were sentenced to hanging. For officers, such a death was so humiliating that they often committed suicide without waiting for the execution of the sentence imposed by the court.
The exception was cases of high treason, in which the nobleman was deprived of all privileges and could be executed as a commoner.