Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (50 page)

THROAT SLITTING

Surprisingly, this method of execution was not as widespread as might have been expected: after all, why design and build guillotines, why purchase axes and blocks, or expensively made swords; indeed, why bother to remove the heads at all, when all one needed to do was to take a sharp knife and simply cut the victim’s throat?

Perhaps the reason was that that would have been too quick, depriving the crowd of the long-drawn-out traditional ceremony of an execution. Possibly, too, it lacked the glorious thrill of uncertainty which fills those watching any sort of performance: human nature being what it is, people relish, albeit inwardly, errors made by others. Those massed around the scaffold never failed to savour the moment when the guillotine blade jammed half-way down, the hangman’s rope snapped, or the executioner’s aim went badly awry and had to be repeated.

Whatever the reason, death by throat slitting occurred but rarely. In sixteenth-century Germany one Michaud was found guilty of the heinous crime of sodomy, an offence carrying the death sentence. Accordingly, clad in a black doublet and hose, wearing a black cape, and mounted on a horse draped with a black saddlecloth, he was taken to the scaffold which had been constructed in the village square.

Dismounting, he was led up the steps and, his hands being bound, was made to kneel at a small railing erected on the scaffold. His crime was read out to the watching multitude; then, without further ado, the executioner bent the man’s head back and drew his razor-sharp knife across the man’s throat.

As the victim slumped sideways, the executioner’s assistant lowered the body to the boards, which had been covered with black cloth for the occasion, and left it there to bleed to death.

This penalty was also on the Statute Books of the Court of Admiralty of the Humber, in England, this court being responsible for punishing those who committed offences of a maritime nature, such as stealing ships’ anchors, sails or nets, removing buoys, etc. In bygone days the chief officer of the court, the admiral of the Humber, was, from the year 1451, the mayor of Hull, the members of his court consisting of ‘masters, merchants and mariners, that do enjoy the King’s stream with hook, net or any engine’.

To remind them of the need for the strictest confidence in the affairs of the court, the admiral would address them as follows:

‘You, masters of the quest, if you, or any of you, discover or disclose anything of the King’s secret council, or of the council of your fellows – for your duty now is that of the King’s Councillors – you are to be, and shall be, had down to the low-water mark, where must be made three times, “O Yes, for the King!” Then and there this punishment, by the law prescribed, shall be executed upon them, namely, that is, their hands and feet bound, their throats cut, their tongue pulled out and their bodies thrown into the sea.’

THROWN FROM A GREAT HEIGHT

Why bother to train executioners or construct gallows when all one needed to do was to march condemned felons to the top of a hill and push them over? This was the method adopted in Roman times, Manlius Capitolinus being thrown from the Tarpeian Rock, as was Emperor Zeno and the mathematician Putuanius. The inventor of the brazen bull, described earlier, was given a taste of his own medicine in the device, he too then being hurled from the heights.

Aesop, of
Fables
fame, found guilty of stealing treasures from the Temple of Apollo, was thrown from cliffs in the year 561
bc
, while the rocky prominences of the island of Capri, overlooking the Mediterranean, were a favourite execution place employed by Tiberius; towering above the waves, their secluded inlets provided the necessary privacy, the sea then disposing of the corpses.

Sometimes refinements were added, such as that unappreciated by the Roman consul Marcus Attilius Regulus who, in 256
bc
, was tortured by the Carthaginians before being confined in a barrel, the interior of which was lined with spikes and nails, and then was rolled down a steep hill.

The practice continued into later centuries. In 1655 Pietro Simond of Angrogno, his neck and heels tied together, was hurled from a precipice, and doubtless praised the saints when a tree broke his fall. He had time for second and later thoughts about divine intervention, however, for there he stayed suspended, eventually starving to death.

Before it is said that such barbaric and primitive practices could not happen here, it should be remembered that only four centuries ago the Cinque Ports on the South Coast of England exercised their ancient rights and privileges, one of them being ‘infalistation’, meaning that an offender was thrown over a cliff
(falaise)
on to the beach below.

So Dover and Hastings dispatched rogues by throwing them off the chalk cliffs, Pevensey dropped its unwanted felons from a bridge into the sea, while Fordwich relieved the society of its undesirable members by tying them ‘knee bent’ and allowing them to plummet into the River Stour.

TIED IN A SACK WITH ANIMALS

Cicero said: ‘If any man, being a parricide, having killed his parents or beaten the same, and be condemned on that count, his head is to be wrapped up in a wolf’s skin, wooden shoes [fetters] to be put on his feet, and he is to be led to prison, there to tarry a little while the bag is making ready wherein he must be put, and so cast into the water.’

This was the way in which Lucius Hostius, who murdered his father, was executed, and Poblicius Malleolus, who likewise killed his mother. At a later date Pompey the Great, apparently coming to the conclusion that merely to be drowned was not in itself severe enough, amended the ancient law so that the leather sack contained not only the martyr or parricide, but also a live dog, a cock, a viper and an ape.

TORN APART BETWEEN TWO TREES

Needing little explanation, this method of execution consisted simply of bending two adjacent trees and binding them together, each ankle of the victim then being tied to each of the trees.

The rope holding the trees together, when slashed, ‘returned [the trees] with a bound to their natural position and, tearing the man’s body in two which was fastened to them, rent his limbs asunder and bore them back with them’.

This procedure was also used against the French during the guerrilla warfare in Spain. Earlier, it had been employed by Sinnis, a Corinthian warlord with whom it became so popular a method of dispatch as to earn him the nickname of ‘the pine bender’.

TORN APART BY BOATS

Most executions are harder on the victim than on the executioner, but that can hardly be said for this particular method! Perhaps that is the reason for its being the only instance ever recorded, taking place in 1582 when Spaniards captured a pirate and decided to make the punishment fit the crime. Accordingly, they tied ropes to his wrists and ankles, the other ends being secured to the sterns of small boats. The crews of the vessels then rowed in different directions, thereby dismembering him.

The impression given by the account was that such an execution was easily achieved, but realistically it is hard to accept that bearing in mind the stubborn resistance of human sinews and joints. The stamina of the rowers must have been strained to the maximum, pulling, as they were, against their colleagues rowing in the opposite direction. The four strong steeds harnessed to Ravaillac and Damiens (see the next chapter) took over an hour to dismember their victims, and then not before the sinews of the condemned men had been severed, so one doubts whether a method employing boats in the same manner could have been feasible without similar treatment first being administered.