Further Reading For Hangmen & Headsmen
The Book of Execution: An Encyclopedia of Methods of Judicial Execution by Geoffrey Abbot
Info
This episode sets its sights on Executioners through the ages, specifically settling on the roles of Hangmen and Headsmen, judicial executioners charged by authorities with the job of killing prisoners condemned to death by strangulation by hanging and beheading, respectively. It expands on concepts previously covered in the old episoide, The Worst Ways To Die.
Beheading, of course, refers to the act of separating a head from its body and as we see in the episode, the act carried out by Headsmen was not always a simple task when performed either with an axe or a sword.
We also learned that hanging was seriously messy business, as well, a process which took some figuring out over the years and in the time leading up to that time when Hangmen finally figured out how to make hanging a quick and effective means of execution, it sometimes meant grabbing on to the dangling body and physically jerking it downward to speed up the process of strangulation.
The lives of Hangmen & Headsmen were certainly not simple.
Episode: 345
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