Death by Hanging.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 14, 16 February 1870, Page 7

Death by Hanging.

The Pall Mall Gazette has discussed with painful minuteness the whole physiology of hanging. As practised in England, it is undoubtedly a method of killing which causes great sufferings. There is no greater mistake than the general opinion of a community that a criminal who is hanged suffers little if any pain : that dislocation of the neck is insured, and that thereupon sensation is at an end almost immediately. On the contrary, we learn that of the hundreds of prisoners executed at Newgate and elsewhere daring the last twenty years, not more than two or three have had their necks dislocated. The others have been choked, or killed in a manner which would be forbidden in a slaughter house—a manner involving protracted agony and terrible suffering. It has been necessary to conceal this fact from the public. To their eyes, all executions seem alike. The culprit is “ launched into eternity*’ mute and motionless. This, it seems, is because (since one miserable wretch got his feet on the scaffold after the drop had fallen) an Ingenious and elaborate adjustment of leather straps was devised to prevent such ghastly accidents in future. If (says the Gazette) those whose duty has compelled them to stand near the gallows on the occasion of many executions told us truthfully what really happens, we believe they would give \;s the following account :—“ When the drop falls the culprit struggles violently for about threequarters of a minute, his head then drops on one side, he becomes insensible, and the reporters say he is “launched into eternity.” Reporters are, however (continues the Gazette), liable to error, and never more so than on these terrible occasions when the account of the closing scene is generally written beforehand. Though the man is motionless, the end is not come yet. The culprit, reviving from’his faint, returns again to time from eternity, and the violent heaving of his chest shews the fearful nature of a second struggle, which would be evident to all but for the happy thought of the straps. This second agony varies in duration very much, but its average duration is about two minutes, measured by our time.—Men have been hanged, have recovered, and have told of their sensations. Such a case is that of John Smith, who was hanged at Tyburn in 1706. The body had swung fifteen minutes, when a reprieve came. He was then cut down and bled, and shortly after revived. He thus described his feelings ; When turned off he was for some time sensible of very great pain occasioned by the weight of his body, and felt his spirits in a strange commotion, violently pressing upwards : that, having forced their way to his head, he, as it were, saw a great blaze or glaring light, which seemed to go out at once with a flash, and then he lost all sense of pain. Then, after he was cut down and began to come to himself, the blood and spirits, forcing themselves Into their former channels, put him, by a sort of pricking or shooting, to such intolerable pain that he could have wished those hanged who had cut him down.