Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (49 page)

Although European executioners built up speed by whirling their swords two or three times above the victim’s head before striking, it could be argued that the Chinese method is the more efficient, greater impetus being achieved by a downward swing, as when chopping wood. On the other hand, the Chinese executioner would have to start ‘putting the brakes on’ rather quicker than his European counterpart, for fear of striking the ground and, if not breaking the blade, jarring his hands and arms to a considerable and perhaps temporarily disabling extent.

The European travellers who bravely went forth to explore foreign parts in earlier centuries did us a great service in recounting their experiences, for without them our knowledge of how the rest of the world lived – and died – would be minimal indeed. I am grateful therefore to a Dutchman, Mynheer E. Kaempfer, who in 1691, with two companions, not only visited the almost isolated country of Japan but also witnessed an execution of two Japanese smugglers there.

‘Early in the morning of the execution the Governor of Nagasaki sent notice to our director to keep himself with the rest of the Dutchmen in readiness to see the criminals executed. About an hour later, numerous flocks of people arrived, our interpreters, landlords, cooks, with the sheriffs and other officers of justice, in all to the number of at least two hundred people.

Before the company was carried a pike with a tablet, whereon the crime for which the criminals were to suffer was specified in large characters. Then followed the two criminals surrounded by bailiffs. The first was the buyer of the stolen goods, a young man of twenty-three years of age, very meanly clad, upon whom the stolen property, camphor, was found. The second was a well-looking man, about forty years of age, who suffered only for having lent the other, formerly a servant of his, the money to buy it with.

One of the bailiffs carried an instrument upright, formed like a rake, but with iron hooks instead of teeth, proper to be made use of if any of the malefactors should attempt to make his escape, because it easily catches hold of one’s clothes. Another carried another instrument, proper to cut, to stab and to pin one fast to the wall. Then followed the two officers of the governor’s court with their retinues, to preside at this act, and at some distance came two clerks.

At the scene I saw the two criminals in the middle of the place, one behind the other, kneeling, their shoulders uncovered and their hands tied behind their backs. Each had his executioner standing by him, the one a tanner, for tanners in this country do the office of executioners, the other his best friend and comrade, whom he earnestly desired as is the custom in this country, by doing him this piece of service, to confirm the friendship he always had for him.

The spectators stood around as promiscuously as they pleased, but I, with my Japanese servant, crowded as near one of the malefactors as we could. The minute the Dutch were all assembled at the place of execution, a signal was given, and in that instant both executioners cut off each his criminal’s head with a short scymitar, in such a manner that their bodies fell forward to the ground.

The bodies were wrapped up, each in a coarse rush mat, and both their heads together in a third, and so carried away to a field not far from Nagasaki where, it was said, young people tried their strength and the sharpness of their scymitars upon the dead bodies, by hacking them into small pieces. Both heads were fixed on a pole, according to custom, and exposed to view for seven days.’

Lest it be thought that these barbaric practices were of a bygone age, visitors to that country of Japan in more recent years witnessed similar scenes. Less than a century and a half ago, in 1869, Messrs Jephson and Elmhirst watched a prisoner brought out for execution:

‘Never had it been our luck before, and we trust it may never be again, to behold a man who had been subjected to such treatment while in prison. With a skin blanched, parched and shrivelled, features worn and distorted, his cheekbones appearing to force themselves out and his withered arms hanging nervelessly at his sides, the wretched being strove to bear himself bravely, and to behave to the last as became one of his race.

As he passed, his eye lit on our party, and he called out, with a scornful laugh, for “the foreigners to come and see how a Nippon could die”. Pinioned, strapped on the back of a horse, and around his waist a rope, the end of which was held by a walking guard, he was escorted to the place of execution.

Leading the procession were two men carrying poles bearing placards giving the criminal’s name and particulars of his offence, and forming the rear were more guards, officials and attendants. On reaching the execution ground the prisoner was untied, removed from the horse and, a macabre touch, given breakfast.

He was then led to where a hole had been dug in the earth, and forced to kneel on the edge of the excavation. His hands were again secured behind his back and a cloth fixed over his eyes. The executioner, who had meanwhile been standing by his side and with the greatest sang-froid busying himself by pouring water on the keen blade of his sword, now stepped up and carefully adjusted the prisoner’s head a little to one side, and in such a position as to hang exactly over the hole prepared to receive it.

The word was given when, without raising his weapon more than a foot above the neck of the condemned, he brought down the heavy blade with a plainly audible thud, and the head dropped instantly into the place prepared for it. We had always fancied ourselves possessed of very fair nerves, but we must confess to a most sickening feeling as the dull splash of the sword meeting its victim – turning at the instant living flesh into senseless clay – struck our ears, and the cleaving of the neck showed for a moment a ghastly red circle, with the blood leaping out in streams from the headless trunk.

The ghastly performance was not quite over yet, though. The head, after being washed and cleaned, was put in a bag for subsequent erection upon a wooden platform on the high road, where it was exposed for six full days as a warning of the fate for travellers. Simultaneously with the ablutionary measures performed on the head, as much of the blood was squeezed out of the trunk, which was then tied up in a bundle and carried away.’

The point made earlier regarding the possible problem faced by a Chinese executioner having to ‘put the brakes on’ to prevent his blade striking the ground seems to have been neatly solved by his Japanese opposite number whose procedure, as just described, included a hole over which his victim bent. The head being taken away for display precludes the hole being dug for burial purposes, and it may therefore be concluded that the purpose of the hole was to give the necessary ground clearance in which to bring the sword to a halt.

Execution by the sword

(Hans Froschel by Franz Schmidt)

THOUSAND CUTS

‘[T]he executioner then took a razor-sharp knife and proceeded to make fine incisions in the victim’s flesh, starting at the man’s shoulders and continuing down to the ankles…’

Known in China as ‘Ling-chy’, in the west by such titles as ‘the slicing process’ and ‘cutting into ten thousand pieces’, death by a thousand cuts was without doubt one of the most horrendous methods of execution. Nor is it a relic of ancient and barbaric history, for even as recently as the Chinese Communist uprising of 1927-28 such atrocities took place, it being reported in
The Times
in December 1929 of opponents being dispatched ‘by the slicing process’.

On the scaffold, near the victim who was secured to a cross, stood a table upon which was a basket covered with a cloth. In the basket was a large collection of razor-sharp knives, each marked with the name of a part of the human anatomy. The procedure that followed was hideously simple, for the executioner then slipped his hand under the cloth covering and, withdrawing a knife, proceeded to sever the appropriate limb or portion of flesh, mutilating the victim until, either by luck or having been bribed by relatives, the knife denoting the heart was drawn out, to bring a merciful end to the suffering.

Later, possibly to prevent such early terminations of the victim’s agony, the method was modified, only one knife being used to amputate, one slice at a time in strict sequence, the various parts of the body. The fleshy parts – thighs, calves and breasts – were dealt with first, followed by appendages such as the nose, ears, fingers and toes. Skilfully wielding the knife, the executioner then methodically cut through the wrist and ankle joints, severing hands and feet, and likewise through the elbows, shoulders and hips. Finally, despite the victim’s life being all but extinguished, he ended the butchery by stabbing the man through the heart, and decapitating him. A detailed eye-witness account was given by the explorer Thomas Meadows in his book
The Chinese and Their Rebellions
, written in 1856:

‘The executioner proceeded, with a single dagger or knife, to cut up the man on the cross, whose sole clothing consisted of wide trousers, rolled down to his hips and up to his buttocks. He was a strongly made man, above the middle size, and apparently about forty years old. The authorities had captured him by seizing his parents and wife, when he surrendered, as well as to save them from torture as to secure for them the seven thousand dollars for his apprehension. As the man was at a distance of twenty-five yards with his side towards us, though we observed the two cuts across his forehead, the cutting off of his left breast and slicing of the flesh from the front of his thighs, we could not see all the horrible operation. From the first stroke of the knife till the moment the body was cut down from the cross and decapitated, about four or five minutes elapsed.’

The ‘thousand cuts’ of the title is of course an exaggeration, none the less horrific for all that, for another author, James Gray, wrote in 1878 that those guilty of minor offences received a mere eight cuts before being beheaded, whereas others who had committed more serious crimes endured as many as 120 slices of their limbs and flesh. Visiting the scene shortly after the execution of a rebel, Tai Chee-Kwei, Gray inspected the pieces of the dismembered body lying around, of which ‘the hands and feet were among the most conspicuous portions’. Nor were the remains given a decent burial, but were thrown into a nearby hole and unceremoniously buried.

As to be expected in a country as large as China, many variations of Ling-chy existed, not all of them resulting in the virtual dismantling of the victim’s body.

One such method, practised in the last century in a remote village near Canton, was witnessed by Eugene Victor, a visitor to the nearby British mission. He described how the thief had been tied to an upright cross so that his arms extended beyond the extremities of the cross-piece. The executioner then approached and, with a single powerful blow of his sword, dextrously amputated each of the felon’s hands at the wrist. Immediately, his assistant came forward and quickly cauterised the gaping wounds with a flaming torch so that his superior could commence the next phase. The witness admitted that he watched this with horrified fascination, for the executioner then took a razor-sharp knife and proceeded to make fine incisions in the victim’s flesh, starting at the man’s shoulders and continuing down to the ankles. ‘So keen the blade,’ Victor wrote, ‘that the myriad of cuts bled very little, and the screaming criminal was soon covered with fine red lines as if his skin had been painted in that fashion. And the executioner continued his task with such deliberate and deft strokes, that it was many hours before the victim, writhing in agony, finally succumbed.’