TOP 10 - People who survived the death penalty 1. Elizabeth Proctor, who was not lucky enough to pass for a witch. In 1692, a woman was arrested on charges of witchcraft. The court sentenced Elizabeth to death despite all the evidence of friends and relatives in defense of the accused. By the time the sentence was executed, the woman managed to give birth to a child in prison, as she got there already pregnant. The execution was appointed by hanging. They threw a noose around Elizabeth's neck and opened the hatch, but thanks to some miracle, the woman remained alive. 2. John Henry George Lee went to jail on charges of complicity in the murder of a woman - Emma Casey. For such a crime, criminals are hanged. So they hanged John ... More precisely, they tried to do it three times, but the man survived after all three drops into the hatch with a noose around his neck. 3. William Duell and four of his accomplices were hanged for having raped and killed a child in London. According to the rules of that time, all the corpses of criminals were given for medical research. When the turn came to dissect the body of William Duell, the student who was supposed to do the operation noticed that the man was breathing! 4. Zoleikhad Kadkhoda - an Eastern married woman who took the risk of having a lover. According to the harsh laws of the East, a woman convicted of adultery is sentenced to death - she must be stoned to death. This happens as follows: a woman is buried up to her waist in the ground and stones are thrown at her head. Zoleykhad did not escape her fate - she was stoned, but when the crippled body was brought to the morgue, it turned out that the woman was alive. 5. Vinselao Miguel, a prisoner during the Mexican Revolution. The prisoner was sentenced to death by firing squad. 9 shots were fired at Miguel, they all reached the target, but the man survived, managed to escape and lived for many more years. 6. John Smith is a robber. He was captured by the police after he robbed several banks and private houses. The court sentence that he was given was hanging, by dropping him into a hatch with a noose around his neck. Smith turned out to be incredibly tenacious and survived this death penalty, he lived for more than one year. ordinary life complete person. 7. Anna Green, conceived a child from her own employer. They say that it was she who seduced him. The child was born at the due date, but died shortly after birth. While trying to hide the little body, Anna was arrested and accused of killing a baby, and the court sentenced her to death by hanging. A woman with a noose around her neck was thrown down the stairs. At the funeral, when the coffin was opened, it turned out that the woman was still breathing, after which Anna was taken to the hospital. 8. Joseph Samuil, who committed a number of murders and robberies in 1801 as part of a whole gang. All participants in the crimes were sentenced to death. On the day when the execution began, Samuel managed to avoid death on the gallows three times - once the rope burst, and on the other it simply jumped off. This turn of events did not go unnoticed by the judges and Joseph Samuel was replaced by the death penalty with life imprisonment. 9. Maggie Dixon - a cohabitant of one innkeeper. From an illegal relationship a child was born, who died immediately after birth. Maggie Dixon couldn't think of anything better than dumping a baby's body into a river. But the body of the child was found and the woman was arrested on charges of murder. The verdict of the court was unequivocal - death. The woman was executed, they were going to bury, but on the way to the cemetery, there was a knock from the coffin - Maggie was alive! After the "resurrection" she lived for another forty years! 10. Willie Francis killed the pharmacy owner at the age of 16. The young man confessed to the crime, but nevertheless was sentenced to death in the electric chair. The execution took place traditionally, the criminal screamed and writhed, but after the voltage was turned off, it turned out that the young man survived. However, the incident did not bring Willy a long and happy life - he was executed again, exactly one year later.

The information below is drawn from many sources, including pathology textbooks, Journal forensic medicine, stories of hanging survivors, reports from the 17th to 19th centuries, photographs taken in a later era, as well as reports from an official whose duty it is to supervise the execution of sentences and who, along with many impeccably executed executions, witnessed two cases of "marriage" .

With the usual slow hanging, suffocation, as a rule, does not occur from pressure on the trachea, the windpipe. Rather, the pressure of the loop shifts the base of the tongue backwards - upwards and thereby causes the cessation of breathing.

Many pathologists believe that relatively little pressure is enough to completely cut off the air supply, which means that the hanged man is completely unable to breathe. This may again depend on the position of the loop. If the knot is in front, there may be slight pressure on the airways.

Another cause of death is the cessation of blood supply to the brain due to clamping of the carotid arteries. This alone would have been enough to cause death, a fact proven by several cases of people accidentally hanging themselves to death while the airway was left wide enough for breathing.

There is still a little blood flow to the brain - there are vertebral arteries that, in the place where the loop is usually located, pass inside the spine and are protected from compression - but this is not enough to maintain the viability of the brain for a long time.

HANGING PROCESS

● Initial stage (15-45 seconds)

The noose rises abruptly, causing the mouth to close (a common mistake in staging hanging scenes in films - the mouth is often shown open). The tongue rarely protrudes from the mouth because lower jaw pressed with great force. There are exceptions when the loop has been placed low and moves upward, pressing on the tongue before it presses the jaw - in these cases the tongue is strongly bitten.

Survivors testify to a feeling of pressure in the head and clenched jaws. The feeling of weakness makes it difficult to grasp the rope. It is also said that the pain is mainly felt from the pressure of the rope, and not from suffocation. The feeling of suffocation, of course, increases with the passage of time.

Often, a newly hanged victim in a panic begins to kick or tries to reach the ground with his fingertips. These convulsive movements of the legs are different from the real agony, which begins later.

In other cases, the hanged man hangs almost motionless at first, perhaps because the body is numb with pain. If the hands are tied in front, they rise sharply to the middle of the chest, usually clenched into fists.

In most cases, the blood does not rush to the face. The noose cuts off the blood supply to the head, so that the face remains white and turns blue as it is strangled. In some cases, if the blood supply is partially preserved, the face turns red.

Sometimes there is bleeding from the mouth and nose. Most likely, this is actually a nosebleed in cases where blood pressure rises in the head.

Sometimes foam or bloody foam comes out of the mouth - apparently in cases where the airways are not completely closed and some air enters the lungs, despite the loop.

● Loss of consciousness

Generally speaking, the hanged man retains consciousness only for a short time, although it may seem like an eternity. Judging by the stories of survivors and pathological studies, loss of consciousness can occur after 8-10 seconds due to the cessation of blood circulation, and maybe after about a minute. Few survivors of hanging report being conscious and convulsing so that they feel suffocated and can feel convulsive movements of the legs and body, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

The position of the node is important here. If the loop does not compress both carotid arteries, the blood supply may continue. If the noose is in front (intentionally placed that way or slipped off when the victim fell), blood circulation and some breathing may be preserved, and then loss of consciousness and death may occur later.

Victims often lose bladder control. This, apparently, occurs in an unconscious state, or most often just before the loss of consciousness. Pathologists sometimes use this fact to determine if a victim is strangled in a standing position. A long trail of urine on a skirt or trousers indicates that the victim passed out in an upright position and was then lowered to the floor by the killer. A shorter track indicates that the victim was lying at that moment. The use of such forensic evidence again suggests that bladder control is lost immediately prior to loss of consciousness.

● Convulsive phase (usually after 45 seconds)

This phase begins approximately 45 seconds after hanging. The real agony begins when what we associate with the pain of suffocation becomes unbearable. More scientific explanation is that convulsions begin when the brain's centers for detecting carbon monoxide in the blood are overloaded, and the brain begins to send erratic signals.

At this stage, powerful movements of the chest usually begin - the victim unsuccessfully tries to inhale air, and the speed of these movements increases rapidly. Witnesses to the hanging of a female spy during the First World War say that her agony resembled a fit of hysterical laughter - her shoulders and chest shook so quickly. This stage is quickly replaced by convulsive movements of the whole body. They can take various forms, and one form can change into another.

One of the forms is a strong tremor, the muscles alternately quickly spasmodically contract and relax, as if vibrating.

In one "unsuccessful" execution by hanging, the victim was out of sight after the hatch opened, but witnesses heard the buzz of the rope due to spasmodic body movements. These movements must be very strong and occur with great frequency in order for the rope to make an audible sound.

Clonic spasm is also possible, when the muscles simply convulsively contract. In this case, the legs can be tucked under the chin and remain in this position for some time.

A more spectacular form is the well-known "dance of the gallows", when the legs quickly twitch in different sides, sometimes synchronously, sometimes separately (in a number of executions of the 17th century, the musicians really played a jig while the hanged twitched on the ropes)

These movements are sometimes compared to riding a bicycle, but they seem to be more abrupt. Another form (often the last stage, if there have been several) consists in prolonged tension, to an absolutely incredible degree, of all the muscles of the body.

Since the muscles on the back of the body are much stronger than the front, the victim bends back (my acquaintance at the execution of sentences testifies that in some cases the heels of the hanged man almost reach the back of the head.

There is also a photograph of a man strangled while lying down; the body is not so strongly bent, but bent almost in a semicircle.

If the hands are tied in front, they usually rise to the middle of the chest during convulsions and fall only when the convulsions cease.

Often, but not always, hanged people lose bladder control. Apparently, this occurs during these convulsive movements, after loss of consciousness, perhaps as a result of contraction of the abdominal muscles, despite the fact that control over the bladder has already been lost.

My friend, who saw the hanged, explained that the legs of the victim were tied so that the feces would not flow down the legs and scatter to the sides during convulsive movements.

The convulsions continue until death, or almost until death. Accounts of executions by hanging note that the duration of convulsions varies widely - in some cases as little as three minutes, in others as much as twenty.

A professional English executioner, who watched the American volunteers hang Nazi war criminals, lamented that they did it ineptly, so that some of the hanged agonized for 14 minutes (he probably watched by the clock).

The reasons for such a wide range are unknown. More likely, we are talking about the duration of convulsions, and not about the time of death. Sometimes a hanged man dies without convulsions at all, or the whole agony is reduced to a few movements, so perhaps a short agony does not mean a quick death at all.

Death without a fight is sometimes associated with "excitation of the vagus nerve" - ​​a nerve that runs in the neck and controls the contractions of the heart. This is difficult to understand, because if the loop stops the blood supply to the brain, then it makes a big difference whether the heart beats or not.

● Death

Irreversible changes in the brain begin in about 3-5 minutes, and if they continue, convulsions continue. In the next five minutes or so, these irreversible changes intensify.

The convulsions slow down and gradually stop. Usually the last convulsive movement is the heaving of the chest after the rest of the body is motionless. Sometimes the convulsions return to an already seemingly calm victim. In the 18th century, a hanged man, who was already considered dead, hit a man who, on duty, took off his clothes from his body.

The heart continues to beat for some time after all functions cease, until the acidity of the blood due to the increase in carbon dioxide causes it to stop.

OTHER PHENOMENA

Sometimes two phenomena are reported that cannot be verified.

● Death sounds

First, in the old accounts of executions by hanging, there are reports that the victim at the time of death (that is, when convulsions stop, the only sign by which witnesses can judge) emits something like a groan (in Kipling's "Hanging of Danny Deaver" soldier , a witness to the execution, hears a groan over his head; they explain to him that this is the soul of the victim flying away). It seems incredible, since the airways are securely closed, but such reports exist.

● Ejaculation in men

This phenomenon is noted often, almost in all cases. Ejaculation, like the often noted erection, can be caused by the same reactions. nervous system that cause convulsive movements. This happens at the end of the hanging.

There is a report by an American military policeman and a German warden who discovered a German prisoner who had hanged himself. The American watched in surprise as the German guard unzipped the fly of the hanged man and announced that it was too late to take him out of the noose: ejaculation had already occurred.

Elizabeth Proctor

Elizabeth Proctor was unlucky, she was considered a witch and arrested in 1692. Despite the testimony of her friends, she was sentenced to death. Elizabeth was pregnant at the time, and she gave birth to a child while in prison. When they put a rope around her neck and opened the hatch of the scaffold, she fell into the hatch, but did not die.

John Henry George Lee

John Henry George Lee was arrested as an accessory to the murder of a woman named Emma Casey. John was sentenced to hang, he was thrown into a hatch three times with a rope around his neck, but he survived all three times.

William Duell

William Duell, along with 4 other criminals, was hanged after being accused of raping and murdering a child in London. At that time, in the UK, the corpses of criminals were used for medical purposes. When William's body was on the surgical table, the student who was supposed to dissect the corpse noticed signs of breathing!

Zoleyhad Kadhoda

Zoleyhad Kadhoda, a married woman, was arrested on charges of treason and an affair with a man. As is customary in the East, such a woman was sentenced to death by stoning. It looks like this, a man is buried up to his waist in the ground, and stones are thrown at his head. Zoleyhad was quickly stoned, but after she was taken to the morgue, she was found to be alive.

Vincelao Miguel

Vincelao Miguel was arrested during the Mexican Revolution. He was sentenced to death by firing squad. After 9 shots, Miguel managed to survive. He escaped and lived a long life.

John Smith

John Smith was arrested after robbing several houses and banks. He was hanged by dropping with a rope through a hatch, but survived and lived a full life for some time.

Anna Green

Anna Green got pregnant by her employer, whom she is believed to have seduced. After the due date, she had a child, but the baby died immediately after birth. Anna tried to hide the body, and was charged with murder, for which she was sentenced to death. Anna Green was hanged, thrown down the stairs with a rope around her neck, but during the funeral her coffin was opened and found to be breathing, after which she was sent to the hospital.

Joseph Samuel

Joseph Samuel in 1801 committed several robberies and murders. He was part of a gang, all members of which were sentenced to death. On the day of execution, Joseph was hanged three times, and three times he managed to survive, first his rope broke, then the rope jumped off. Joseph Samuel was pardoned and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Maggie Dixon

Maggie Dixon cohabited with the innkeeper after her husband's death and gave birth to a child by him, who died shortly after giving birth. She threw the child's body into the river, but it was discovered and she was sentenced to death. After the execution, the coffin with her body was transferred to the cemetery, but there was a knock on the way. Maggie survived and lived for another 40 years!

Willie Francis

Willie Francis killed a pharmacy owner when he was 16 years old. He confessed and was sentenced to death in the electric chair. When he was executed in the electric chair, Willie Francis screamed and shuddered, but after the power outage, he remained alive. He was executed again exactly one year later.

This is hardly the worst thing - to hear your death sentence. This means the end, after these words the timer is started, and the count goes sometimes for days, and sometimes for hours. No one even thinks of surviving after being shot or hanged, or lethal injection. However, miracles do happen. Mathematical probability is sometimes very funny. There is always a tiny percentage that the condemned will live after the execution.

Today's collection is about such people. They were literally born wearing shirts. Or maybe they, like cats, were given not one life, but several, well, or at least two.

Maggie Dixon

In 1724, Maggie of Edinburgh accompanied her husband, a fisherman, to long-distance navigation. Then such events lasted for years. And, unfortunately for Maggie, she was not known for being faithful. The girl realized that she became pregnant while her husband was swimming. The situation is very bad.

Maggie gave birth to a baby in the woods, who either died immediately or died shortly after birth. She could not throw a small corpse into the river and wrapped it in her scarf. Soon the body was found, and Maggie was identified by the handkerchief as the killer mother. The only punishment for this was the death penalty by hanging. For some incredible reason, Maggie's vertebrae didn't break while she was hanging from the noose around her neck. However, everyone was sure that she was dead.

When the relatives took the girl’s corpse to the cemetery, they were horrified, as a knock was heard from the coffin. Maggie Dixon survived the death penalty. She has since been dubbed "Half-Hanged Maggie". Today there is even a pub in Edinburgh named after Maggie Dixon.

Shimon Srebrnik

In 1945, Shimon was a 15-year-old Jewish boy of Polish origin who had already gone through a lot. He had to see how his father was killed in the Lodz ghetto. He had to live with the idea that his mother had been killed in the gas chamber. He had to survive the Holocaust.

Shimon was imprisoned in one of the death camps called Chelmno, which was located in occupied Poland. There, Shimon was forced to work at the crematorium, where the bodies of the killed people were destroyed around the clock.

January 18, 1945 Soviet troops fought for the territory where Chelmno was located. The camp leadership decided to get rid of the witnesses of their atrocities and crimes. All prisoners were sentenced to death, they began to be shot. Shimon, saying goodbye to life, received his bullet in the back of the head. He fell on other prisoners. The Nazis continued to shoot. Shimon found that blood was pouring from his mouth, he was in pain, he could move, which means that he was completely alive. The bullet somehow miraculously passed without hitting a single spinal cord, no headache, she came out through her mouth, there was even a little blood.

Srebrnik lived until 2006, he testified a lot against the Nazis, his testimony became almost the main one against the leadership of the Chelmno camp.

Today, these first and last names are not widely known even in the territories of the post-Soviet space. And in honor of Constantine on the Moon, one of the craters is named, however, on its reverse side, but still. Feoktistov was an astronaut and an outstanding space engineer. At the age of 16 he fought with the Nazis as part of the Soviet troops.

During the Nazi occupation of Voronezh, Kostya performed reconnaissance missions for the Voronezh Front. Unfortunately, the guy was captured by an army patrol of the Waffen-SS. The conversation with the young intelligence officer was short - the death penalty on the spot through execution. A Wehrmacht soldier aimed at the head and fired. The bullet hit the right place, and the guy fell backwards. There was no time to check whether the scout was dead or not, and everything shows that he is dead. However, Kostya almost immediately realized that they don’t die like that. Death should be dark and no. But it is hot, angry and lashes right from the throat, because this is not death - this is blood, this is life. Kostya crawled to his own.

As it turned out later, the bullet passed through the neck and chin, but did not touch the brain and large arteries. Constantine was destined to leave a significant mark on the history of mankind. He lived until 2009 and died at the age of 83.

Another "bulletproof", surviving after his own execution. The sentence was carried out during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917. Some of the nine shots he received severely disfigured the guy's face. But he survived, left the place of his execution on his own, and found people who helped him. There are a lot of memories left, and Miguel was forced to look like a veteran of the First World War, to whom part of his face was blown off by a fragment all his life.

Willie Francis

The case of Willie Francis is very resonant, because he became the first person who managed to survive after an execution in the electric chair. Willy was 16 years old when he was sentenced to capital punishment for the murder of his employer - the owner of a pharmacy. In May 1946, Willy sat in the electric chair. But when it started working, he shouted: "I'm not dying, I'm frying, turn it off." The chair was turned off, and then it turned out that it was faulty.

Willie Francis in his cell on the eve of his execution

The incident gave Willie another year of life. Lawyers fought for him as best they could, they asked to replace the execution with life imprisonment. However, their efforts were in vain, and the guy was executed in May 1947 in the electric chair.

This is a disgusting man, he kidnapped, raped, and killed. He definitely deserved to die. In 2009, he was sentenced to it, and lethal injection was chosen as the instrument of execution - as a humane means.

Romel became the first and only person who survived after her. The fact is that the executioner for a very long time could not find a vein on the body of Romel. And after vain attempts, the injection was introduced into the place where the vein should approximately be. This allowed Broome to survive.

This incident saved the man's life. Since he witnessed that the death penalty by injection is actually not humane and terrible. His lawyers managed to initiate a whole movement against this type of execution.

Evan McDonald

In 1752, this man in an ordinary brawl cut his friend's throat. For this he was sentenced to death by hanging. But something went wrong, and Evan did not die completely (hanging is generally some kind of unreliable way). He was sent to the mortuary, because everything seemed that the man was dead.

When, a few hours later, a surgeon entered there, who was going to cut and thoroughly examine the body of the criminal, he was dumbfounded. Evan sat on the table and looked around in great surprise. The surgeon was a good guy and decided to stand up for his life in front of the revived dead. He grabbed an operation hammer and hit MacDonald on the head. This finished off the man completely, and the surgeon began to carry out his plan.

Amerigo Dumini was born in St. Louis, USA to Italian and British immigrants and moved to Italy. In 1913 he joined the army and renounced his US citizenship. During the First World War, he was an attack aircraft, was seriously wounded and awarded. After he became an ardent supporter of Benito Mussolini, participated in custom political assassinations. In general, he was a bright figure. During World War II, he served in Derna, Libya, where he was captured by British soldiers. He was quite rightly mistaken for a spy and, according to the laws of wartime, they decided to shoot Amerigo. 17 bullets fired by the firing squad did not reach their target.

When Dumini returned to Italy, he was received with surprise and offered a generous pension. He went into business as a carrier and bought a villa in a residential area of ​​Florence. He lived to be 73 years old, successfully released after a life sentence for serving the fascist regime, after serving eight years.

Philip Fabricius

This is also the case for a long time past days. Philip was included in this collection because of the unusual type of execution to which he was quickly sentenced during the Protestant uprising in Prague on May 23, 1618. He was present in the office of the Bohemian courtier in Prague Castle, along with the Catholic regents, during the meeting. At that moment, armed Protestant lords burst into the hall, who rebelled against the Catholic king. The rebels decided to carry out massacre on the spot. Those sentenced to death flew from the windows of the palace down from a height of 20 meters (approximately the seventh floor of a classic nine-story panel building).

Apparently, the fall softened something, and therefore the execution failed. Everyone who was thrown out of the windows escaped with injuries. varying degrees gravity, and Philip is generally a couple of bruises and abrasions. Fabricius immediately fled to Vienna and there spoke about the uprising. There he lived his life, successfully moving up the career ladder. Philip died 13 years after surviving his own execution.

"Man Franks"

In 1872, an incredible event took place in Australia, which was even written about in the newspapers. The killer, known to everyone as Man Franks, survived his own hanging because he was executed by incompetent dupes.

First, the rope, on which the condemned man was to be hung, got wet from the rain, as it was left on the street. Then the executioners decided to dry it, but quickly, so they lit a fire. The rope dried up, but it stopped sliding completely. It could not even be properly fixed on Franks' neck. When this somehow happened, a support was knocked out from under him, and he began to hang out, trying in vain to suffocate. He wheezed, spat and asked to be finished off. At last he was able to free his hands, which were tied as badly as the noose around his neck. Frank pulled himself up on them, which caused a wave of laughter. He rudely cursed the useless organization of the execution, and the rope on which he hung was cut.

No one had a desire to complete what they had begun, and the sentence to the failed hangman was replaced with a more benign one.

The information below is drawn from many sources, including pathology textbooks, the Journal of Forensic Medicine, survivor accounts, reports from the 17th and 19th centuries, photographs taken in a later era, and reports from the official responsible for overseeing the execution of sentences and who, along with many impeccably executed executions, witnessed two cases of "marriage". As illustrations, photographs of the execution of the guards of the Nazi concentration camp, committed after the war near Danzig, are given; this is the only series I know of that actually allows you to follow the progress of the execution.

But first of all, two warnings to those who would think to experiment on themselves.

DON'T DARE AND THINK ABOUT ACTING ALONE. Anyone who tries to experiment with a noose alone is already almost dead. Loss of consciousness occurs suddenly, and nothing can save a person. Most of those found in the noose, both suicides and accident victims, had their feet touching the ground.
It doesn't take much pressure to cause death. Enough 10 - 20 pounds (5 - 10 kilograms). Those who have strangled themselves to death are found in a sitting position - to pull the rope, they simply leaned over. The Journal of Forensic Medicine tells of a woman who apparently played with a vibrator. The found body was lying on the floor, with the neck resting on a string stretched a few inches from the floor. No loop, no additional load - just the weight of the head. She probably suddenly lost consciousness and died in that position.
Some use pulleys by holding the rope with their own hand. It would seem that safety is ensured ... but it is common for pulleys to seize. Nothing can replace a person who is nearby for insurance. But even in this case, there is a danger of causing excitation of the vagus nerve that passes through the neck and controls the work of the heart - this can cause cardiac arrest. There may also be swelling of the damaged trachea and larynx, which can cause a slow death.

DO NOT EXPERIMENT WITH FALLING. Fracturing the cervical vertebrae DOES require a significant fall in MOST cases - anywhere from four to nine feet (1.2 - 3.6 m), depending on weight. But a fall from a much lower height can cause serious neurological diseases, up to paralysis. In the literature, there are also cases of fracture of the cervical vertebrae when falling from a height, which, it seems, should not have led to such a result - not all people have equally strong bones.
By the way, about the fall: the explanation that death occurs directly as a result of a fracture of the cervical vertebrae is incorrect. Damage to the spine causes paralysis, which makes the execution by hanging more acceptable - the hanged man does not convulse. One would hope that the victim will lose consciousness, but this is not obvious; a person with a broken neck can remain conscious. Most theories agree that the impact knocks the victim unconscious. Possibly - in execution by hanging, the spine is often lengthened by two inches (5 cm), the neck is noticeably elongated and the spine is separated from the base of the skull. In most cases, the vertebrae separate or displace while remaining intact on their own.
"Unsuccessful" hangings occur when the spine remains intact. The drop height calculation is not based on exact science: The idea is to cause a fracture of the spine, but not to tear off the head, and this is not so simple. It would really be necessary to take into account the strength of the neck muscles when calculating and place the knot on the side of the neck where these muscles are weaker (for right-handers - on the left). On the "strong" side, the neck muscles are much stronger, so British experts believe that improper placement of the knot leads to a slow hanging despite right choice fall height.
By the way, my friend, who watched executions by hanging, said that during the "correct" execution, the neck breaks with a clearly audible crack.

Technical side

The loop. There are many opinions and customs here. Americans traditionally use a very complex loop that tends to tighten tightly. In most other countries, a simple slip knot is used (for those who know maritime knots, a double half-bayonet). In Britain, in the last century, they came to a metal thimble woven into a rope, believing that the American knot softens the blow and breaks the neck less reliably.

If we talk about slow hanging, there is almost no difference. Photographs of real hangings with a sliding loop show that the loop is not actually tightened tight, and the knot rises to the back of the head. The strangulation comes from the weight on the throat, not from tightening the noose around the neck. This is shown in a photograph taken during the execution of Nazi criminals. Please note that the loop is pulled up at the back, and not evenly tightened around the neck. In France in the 15th and 16th centuries, various, often very complex loops were used, which required two ropes. The first was folded in half, and its ends were passed into the resulting loop. The second was tied around the neck between the branches of the first loop. For this second rope, the victim was led to the scaffold and dragged onto the ladder, after which the ends of the first rope were tied at the crossbar. After the victim was pushed down the ladder, the executioner could pull on the second rope to strangle the hanged man even more.

Binding. The victim is not tied up so that she cannot jump out of the noose - not a single person is able to pull himself up on the rope and climb it, intercepting with his hands, after being hanged. The doomed one is tied up rather so that at the last moment he, out of fright, does not start to fight or fight. It is one thing to keep the presence of mind in a prison cell, and quite another to behave calmly, climbing the stairs or waiting on the scaffold while the noose is being prepared. With your hands tied behind your back, resistance is useless. One of the executioners holds the doomed man, the other puts on a noose.
In most countries, hands are tied behind the back. In Britain until the late 1880s, the hands were tied in front. Why is unknown; perhaps the custom has survived from the time when the victim had to climb the stairs with his back to him? In many developed countries, leather belts are currently put on the victim in advance and at the last moment their hands are fastened to them in front.
The legs were also sometimes tied in the past, sometimes at the knees and sometimes also at the ankles. A friend of mine who now oversees executions (he served as an executioner after World War II and has since watched many executions) says that the legs are tied not so much to restrict movement, but to prevent loss of bladder control from causing unnecessary anxiety when a hanged man begins to swing his legs. Hoods. Until the end of the 17th century, hoods were not used, and the audience saw the face of the dying. Around the indicated era, it became customary to put a hood on the head of the victim, or at least to blindfold. Although this changes almost nothing for the doomed, it was believed that in this way the execution procedure becomes more acceptable to the audience. The hoods were short enough to leave the neck open. Later in the UK, longer hoods began to be used, over which a loop was worn. This was explained by the desire to prevent the appearance of marks from the rope on the corpse, although it is not clear what changes for the better from this (as we noted above, the neck is noticeably stretched in any case).

Method

In England, at least, the method of execution changed several times.
Pull up. At first, the victim was simply lifted up on a rope. It was not easy and required several executioners. Lifting a load weighing fifty or more kilograms is not a job for one person, especially if the rope is simply thrown over the crossbar (there is no mention of the use of blocks in these cases).
Stairs. AT XVII century stairs were used. The convicts were forced to climb a folding ladder with their backs to it. They could be driven up the stairs with kicks or blows (a French custom), or the executioner could drag them up the stairs by pulling on the noose: in order to breathe air, the victim was forced to obey.
The loop was tied to the crossbar. Then the ladder was overturned or folded, or the executioner pushed the victim down the ladder. Sometimes the executioner himself stood on the second ladder, thus having a reliable support.
During the ladder era, gallows were tall, 12 - 15 feet (4 - 5 m) in the UK and sometimes over 20 feet (6 m) in continental Europe. This was done so that the victim was visible to everyone. Engravings of those times show that the convict was usually hung so that his head was almost at the level of the crossbar. So they hung from a rope no more than two feet (60 cm) long, with the legs of those hanging at eye level and above.
Cart. Starting from the end of the 17th century (that is, partially overlapping the era of the use of stairs), carts were used. According to tradition, the doomed were brought to the gallows in a cart - so why make them go down to the ground and then climb the ladder? This is even more humane, because often the victims were horrified at the sight of the ladder they had to climb, and they had to be driven up by force.
Here, however, the executioner simply forced the victim to stand up, usually facing the front of the cart (often this meant facing the clerk reading the death warrant). This forward-facing position ensured that the noose would not slip down her throat as the cart drove off, thereby prolonging the suffering and agony.
The rope was tied on the crossbar (sometimes this was done by the executioner's assistant, sitting on the crossbar), and the executioner had only to touch the horses to roll the cart out from under his feet. According to tradition, this was done at the moment when the clerk read out the last phrase of the death sentence formula - "ashes to ashes, dust to dust".
The cart had the advantage of allowing several convicts to be hanged at the same time. When using the ladder, they had to be executed one at a time, so the latter waited for his turn, sometimes for an hour or more, watching in horror as the others anogized and painfully lost their lives a few meters away (apparently, according to tradition, the next convict was hanged only after the previous one will die).
On the still common old high gallows, the victim was usually hung on a rope six to eight feet (2 to 2.5 m) long, two to three feet (60 to 90 cm) from the ground. (On some newer gallows, the bar was lower). The innovation also required an assistant who had to untie the rope from the crossbar - the executioner could not get it on older and higher gallows. The engravings show that before hanging, the rope was pulled tight enough: the executioner's assistant, sitting on the crossbar, pulled it up so that the victim could breathe while standing still, but no more.

Luke. Beginning with late XVIII century, the modern scaffold came into use. The victim stood on the hatch, and the hatch opened. Often the scaffold was equipped with a long hatch, which made it possible to hang several people at once. In other versions, the entire front of the flooring was a hatch, and in the first structures, the victim stood on a raised platform that sunk into the flooring (this design was abandoned because it began to jam; in one particularly egregious case, the victim was left standing on tiptoe, trying to get out onto the scaffold, and the executioner pushed the legs of the unfortunate back). The use of the scaffold made the method of falling from a height possible, although it did not come into use in the next century. When hanging from the scaffold, the rope was not necessarily pulled tight, often leaving a foot (30 cm) or so of slack.
Sometimes (mainly in the USA) they used, so to speak, the reverse method. The victim stood on the ground, and a load, such as a box of stones, was attached to the other end of the rope with a loop. Then another rope holding the load was cut, it fell down, and the victim flew into the air. Although this seemed like a practical solution (and doubled the chances of breaking the neck: the first time the victim was pulled up and the second time he fell down), this method did not take root.

Sometimes the executioner could "help" the victim, especially if the agony dragged on. When hanging from a ladder, the executioner could jump onto the crossbar, rest his feet on the shoulders of the hanged man and stand on them. Or, having removed the ladder, he could jump astride the shoulders of the victim, holding on to the rope or crossbar. On a gallows with a hatch, he could grab the victim by the legs and pull him down. Studies have not shown how much this actually helps, since it seems that with any hanging, the victim is completely unable to breathe without this help. One engraving of the 17th century shows noteworthy an attempt to hasten the death of a hanged woman. The executioner pulls her by the legs, and the soldier beats her in the chest with the butt of a musket! When hanging from a ladder, friends or relatives sometimes also pulled the victim by the legs - a case is noted when, when hanging one woman, the executioner was forced to drive them away, because they pulled so hard that they could break the rope. All this, of course, applies to official executions by hanging. During extrajudicial executions (for example, when the Nazis exterminated "partisans" or anyone who looks like a partisan), the victim is simply forced to stand on any object that is at hand - a chair, a box - and then the support is knocked out. In some places, the rope hung from the top of the post, and the hanged man pressed his back against the post. During the execution of the concentration camp guards, the trucks were driven back to the gallows, and then the cars drove off. In our time, cases of using truck cranes in third world countries are known!

Medical aspect

With the usual slow hanging, suffocation, as a rule, does not occur from pressure on the trachea, the windpipe. Rather, the pressure of the loop shifts the base of the tongue backwards - upwards and thereby causes the cessation of breathing. Many pathologists believe that relatively little pressure is enough to completely cut off the air supply, which means that the hanged man is completely unable to breathe. This may again depend on the position of the loop. If the knot is in front, there may be slight pressure on the airways.
Another cause of death is the cessation of blood supply to the brain due to clamping of the carotid arteries. This alone would have been enough to cause death, a fact proven by several cases of people accidentally hanging themselves to death while the airway was left wide enough for breathing. There is still a little blood flow to the brain - there are vertebral arteries that, in the place where the loop is usually located, pass inside the spine and are protected from compression - but this is not enough to maintain the viability of the brain for a long time.

Hanging process
Initial stage (15 - 45 seconds)
The loop rises sharply, causing the mouth to close. (A common mistake in staging hanging scenes in films is often to show an open mouth.) The tongue rarely protrudes from the mouth because the lower jaw is pressed down with no small amount of force. There are exceptions when the loop has been placed low and moves upward, pressing on the tongue before it presses the jaw - in these cases the tongue is strongly bitten.
Survivors testify to a feeling of pressure in the head and clenched jaws. The feeling of weakness makes it difficult to grasp the rope. It is also said that the pain is mainly felt from the pressure of the rope, and not from suffocation. The feeling of suffocation, of course, increases with the passage of time.
Often, a newly hanged victim in a panic begins to kick or tries to reach the ground with his fingertips. These convulsive movements of the legs are different from the real agony, which begins later. In other cases, the hanged man hangs almost motionless at first, perhaps because the body is numb with pain. If the hands are tied in front, they rise sharply to the middle of the chest, usually clenched into fists. Here is a scene taken at the very beginning of the execution of the concentration camp guards. (The second convict's truck hasn't even moved yet.) Their legs are bound, but the legs of the hanging woman in the foreground seem to have begun to twitch in their bonds.

In most cases, the blood does not rush to the face. The noose cuts off the blood supply to the head, so that the face remains white and turns blue as it is strangled. In some cases, if the blood supply is partially preserved, the face turns red. Sometimes there is bleeding from the mouth and nose. Most likely, this is actually a nosebleed in cases where blood pressure rises in the head. Sometimes foam or bloody foam comes out of the mouth - apparently in cases where the airways are not completely closed and some air enters the lungs, despite the loop.

Loss of consciousness

Generally speaking, the hanged man retains consciousness only for a short time, although it may seem like an eternity. Based on survivor accounts and pathological studies, loss of consciousness may occur in 8 to 10 seconds due to cessation of blood circulation, or in about a minute. Few survivors of hanging report being conscious and convulsing so that they feel suffocated and can feel convulsive movements of the legs and body, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
The position of the node is important here. If the loop does not compress both carotid arteries, the blood supply may continue. If the noose is in front (intentionally placed that way or slipped off when the victim fell), blood circulation and some breathing may be preserved, and then loss of consciousness and death may occur later.
Victims often lose control of their bladder. This seems to occur in the unconscious state, or most often just before the loss of consciousness, as confirmed by the experience of several women who engage in erotic self-hanging. Pathologists sometimes use this fact to determine if a victim is strangled in a standing position. A long trail of urine on a skirt or trousers indicates that the victim passed out in an upright position and was then lowered to the floor by the killer. A shorter track indicates that the victim was lying at that moment. The use of such forensic evidence again suggests that bladder control is lost immediately prior to loss of consciousness.

Convulsive phase (usually after 45 seconds) This phase begins approximately 45 seconds after hanging. The real agony begins when what we associate with the pain of suffocation becomes unbearable. A more scientific explanation is that convulsions begin when the brain's carbon monoxide detection centers in the blood become overloaded and the brain starts sending out erratic signals. Here are photographs taken during the execution of the concentration camp guards, in which they begin to twitch their legs.
At this stage, powerful movements of the chest usually begin - the victim unsuccessfully tries to inhale air, and the speed of these movements increases rapidly. Witnesses to the hanging of a female spy during the First World War say that her agony resembled a fit of hysterical laughter - her shoulders and chest shook so quickly. This stage is quickly replaced by convulsive movements of the whole body. They can take various forms, and one form can change into another.

One of the forms is a strong tremor, the muscles alternately quickly spasmodically contract and relax, as if vibrating. In one "unsuccessful" execution by hanging, the victim was out of sight after the hatch opened, but witnesses heard the buzz of the rope due to spasmodic body movements. These movements must be very strong and occur with great frequency in order for the rope to make an audible sound. Clonic spasm is also possible, when the muscles simply convulsively contract. In this case, the legs can be tucked under the chin and remain in this position for some time. A more spectacular form is the well-known "dance of the gallows", when the legs quickly twitch in different directions, sometimes synchronously, sometimes separately. (In a number of executions in the 17th century, the musicians actually played a jig while the hanged twitched on the ropes.) These movements are sometimes compared to riding a bicycle, but they seem to be more abrupt. Another form (often the last stage, if there have been several) consists in prolonged tension, to an absolutely incredible degree, of all the muscles of the body. Since the muscles on the back of the body are much stronger than the front, the victim bends back. (My friend, an observer of executions, testifies that in some cases the heels of the hanged man almost reach the back of the head. There is also a photograph of a person strangled in a supine position; the body is not so strongly bent, but bent almost in a semicircle).

If the arms are tied in front, they usually rise to the middle of the chest during convulsions and fall only when the convulsions cease.
Often, but not always, hanged people lose bladder control. Apparently, this occurs during these convulsive movements, after loss of consciousness, perhaps as a result of contraction of the abdominal muscles, despite the fact that control over the bladder has already been lost. My friend, who saw the hanged, explained that the legs of the victim were tied so that the feces would not flow down the legs and scatter to the sides during convulsive movements. That this happens not only at the time of death is confirmed by the report of one coroner (an investigator investigating cases of violent or sudden death - approx. Trans.) about an unusual case (apparently, a person hung himself on some kind of "harness" of belts, standing on something "The harness" somehow failed, so that all his weight fell on his stomach. This pressure caused the lungs to compress, and the man died of suffocation. From the report and photographs, it is clear that the stool scattered all over the floor and walls, which implies that muscle control was lost during the convulsions.)

The convulsions continue until death, or almost until death. Accounts of executions by hanging note that the duration of convulsions varies widely - in some cases as little as three [minutes], in others as much as twenty. A professional English executioner, who watched the American volunteers hang Nazi war criminals, lamented that they did it ineptly, so that some of the hanged agonized for 14 minutes (he probably watched by the clock). The reasons for such a wide range are unknown. Most likely, we are talking about the duration of convulsions, and not about the time of death. Sometimes a hanged man dies without convulsions at all, or the whole agony is reduced to a few movements, so perhaps a short agony does not mean a quick death at all. Death without a fight is sometimes associated with "excitation of the vagus nerve" - ​​a nerve that runs in the neck and controls the contractions of the heart. This is difficult to understand, because if the loop stops the blood supply to the brain, then it makes a big difference whether the heart beats or not.

Death

Irreversible changes in the brain begin in about 3 to 5 minutes, and if they continue, convulsions continue. In the next five or so minutes, these irreversible changes intensify.
The convulsions slow down and gradually stop. Usually the last convulsive movement is the heaving of the chest after the rest of the body is motionless. Sometimes the convulsions return to an already seemingly calm victim. (In the 18th century, a hanged man, presumed dead, struck a man who was taking off his clothes on duty.) The heart continues to beat for some time after all functions cease, until the acidity of the blood due to the increase in carbon dioxide causes it to stop.

About other phenomena

Sometimes two phenomena are reported that cannot be verified.

Death sounds. First, in the old accounts of executions by hanging, there are reports that the victim at the time of death (that is, when the convulsions stop, the only sign by which witnesses can judge) emits something like a groan. (In Kipling's "The Hanging of Danny Deaver," the soldier witnessing the execution hears a groan over his head; he is told that this is the victim's soul flying off.). It seems incredible, since the airways are securely closed, but such reports exist.
Ejaculation in men. This phenomenon is noted often, almost in all cases. Ejaculation, like the often noted erection, can be caused by the same reactions of the nervous system that cause convulsive movements. This happens at the end of the hanging. (There is a report by an American military policeman and a German overseer who discovered a German prisoner who had hanged himself. The American watched with surprise as the German overseer unzipped the hanged man's fly and announced that it was too late to take him out of the noose: ejaculation had already occurred.)

Reconstruction of the death penalty by hanging (circa 1750)

The way in the cart to the gallows, near which a crowd of spectators had already gathered, anticipating the spectacle, took about an hour. The condemned woman, with her hands tied in front, a noose around her neck and a rope wound around her waist, sobbed, sitting on the coffin intended for her.
The executioner drove the cart up to the gallows. Unwinding the rope from the convict's waist, he led her, as if on a leash, to death. The ladder was already under a high rung. Now the victim was already trembling with fear. The executioner and an assistant placed her with her back to the stairs, but she was unable to climb up. The executioner rose higher and pulled the unfortunate woman by the noose, forcing her to rise, step by step: a jerk - and she, panting, stands on the next step, and so time after time. Having reached the crossbar, the executioner sat down on it, without ceasing to pull on the rope. Finally, the head of the victim rose to the crossbar, and the executioner fastened the rope to the crossbar. Meanwhile, on the ground, the clerk read out the final sentence formulas.

When he had finished, the executioner pulled a white linen sack out of his pocket and pulled it over the condemned woman's head. It was the only allowable tribute to decency: the purpose of hanging was not to kill the criminal, and not even to make him suffer. The goal was to humiliate the condemned. The humiliation began with the fact that he was taken to the gallows on a cart, like some kind of pork belly or a pile of dung, and continued until the very end, when the executioner declared his own outer clothing of the executed. When executed or beheaded, the victim could retain at least part of his human dignity - but not when hanging.
Putting on the hood, the executioner got down from the crossbar, hanging on his hands for a few seconds and jumping from a height of just over a meter. Turning, he lifted his leg to knock out the ladder. The victim groaned in horror: she could see something through the fabric. The spectators around the gallows tried not to miss anything.
The executioner kicked hard. The ladder went, leaned over and fell towards the executioner. The last sound the victim made was a wheeze as the noose squeezed the larynx under its weight. Her body hung, spinning around where the noose had held it by the neck. Her hands rose and clenched into fists as she swung back and forth like a pendulum, spinning on a rope. The neck stretched unnaturally under the weight of the body.
The executioner saw her legs reaching down, shaking as she tried to find a foothold and ease the pain of the rope. The tense body swayed for a few seconds, then the hanged woman's chest rose. Again and again, and faster as the supply of oxygen in the lungs was depleted. He had nowhere else to go. The only sound was the creak of a rope rubbing against a tree. After half a minute, her legs were no longer looking for the ground - she either lost consciousness or despaired and stopped thinking about finding support. One shoe began to slip off the foot from sudden movements. Urine ran down her legs, and the hanged woman kicked her legs back and forth. The shoe fell off immediately.

The movement of her legs accelerated, her whole body began to tremble and beat, dangling helplessly on the rope. Legs swung back and forth with incredible speed. It seemed that every muscle of the body either contracted or relaxed, forcing the hanged woman to twitch, breathe, buck with inhuman speed. As always at this moment, the crowd fell silent as they watched the agony of the woman spinning slowly in front of them, kicking and convulsing. The only sounds were the rustling of her dress and petticoats as she kicked them. The audience saw her legs - an attractive sight in an era when women could show off a chiseled ankle at the most.
After a minute or two, both legs abruptly pulled up to the chin. The crowd held their breath at the spectacle that opened their eyes - underwear then consisted of a shirt, garters, frills, and it was all pulled up now. Then the legs dropped with a powerful jerk, bent back and began to move back and forth again, even more violently. The whole body of the dying woman shook, and the executioner could hear the buzz of the stretched rope. The noose lifted the hood and opened the neck. The executioner could see how blue she was.

The victim had been struggling for five minutes, and her movements began to slow down. Now she arched back so that her heels reached the level of her waist. The crowd heard the sounds of exhaust gases and saw the feces stuck to the feet of the hanged woman. The humiliation of the criminal was complete. Thus, trembling all over, with her breasts heaving high, she hung for several seconds. Then the legs began to stretch - they were still trembling, but they no longer fought. At last she hung straight and motionless, slowly spinning on the rope. Finally, the chest rose in the last breath - and it was all over.

On this, the work of the executioner was almost finished. The convict was dead and humiliated. The townspeople, neighbors and relatives watched her agony, saw her legs and intimate places, saw how she managed and died a bad death. There was only one thing left. The executioner put the ladder in place. According to his watch, she had more than twenty minutes left to hang before the prescribed half hour. After that, he could cut the rope and take off her dress. The hanged woman was buried in her undershirt. The family could take the body to wash it for burial. Otherwise, he himself put it in a coffin and buried it in an unmarked grave.