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--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector- http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/behead.html BeheadingCapital Punishment U.K. - Contents Page http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/contents.html Note : Some people may find the images on this page disturbing - they do not load automatically. Historical background. Beheading with a sword or axe goes back a very long way in history, because like hanging, it was a cheap and practical method of execution in early times when a sword or an axe was always readily available. The Greeks and the Romans considered beheading a less dishonourable (and less painful) form of execution than other methods in use at the time. The Roman Empire used beheading for its own citizens whilst crucifying others. Beheading was widely used in Europe and Asia until the 20th century, but now is confined to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Yemen and Iran. Saudi Arabia publicly beheaded 52 men and 1 woman for murder, rape, sodomy and drug offences in 2003. (See Saudi Arabia below). One man was beheaded in Iran - the first for many years. Beheading was used in Britain up to 1747 (see below) and was the standard method in Norway (abolished 1905), Sweden (up to 1903), Denmark and Holland (abolished 1870), and was used for some classes of prisoner in France (up until the introduction of the guillotine in 1792) and in Germany up to 1938. China also used it widely, until the communists came to power and replaced it with shooting in the twentieth century. Japan too used beheading up to the end of the nineteenth century prior to turning to hanging. Equipment for beheading. There are two distinct forms of beheading - by the sword and by the axe. All present day beheadings using the sword. Where a person is to be decapitated with a sword, a block is not used and they are generally made to kneel down although they could, if short, be executed standing up, and in Germany women were sometimes allowed to sit in a chair. A typical execution sword is 36 - 48 inches (900 - 1200 mm) long and two to two and a half inches (50 - 65mm) wide with the handle being long enough for the executioner to use both hands to give maximum leverage. It will weigh around 4 lbs. (2 Kg.) In Saudi Arabia, a traditional Arab scimitar is used which is 1000 - 1100 mm long. Where an axe was the chosen implement, a wooden block, often shaped to accept the neck, was required. Two patterns of block were used, the high block, 18 - 24 inches, (450 - 600 mm) high, where the prisoner knelt in front of it and lent forward so that the neck rested on the top, or lay on a low bench with their neck over the block. The neck on a high block presented an easier target due to the head pointing slightly downwards, thus bringing the neck into prominence. It also meant that the axe was at a better angle at that point in the arc of the stroke to meet the neck full on. The high block was favoured in later times in Britain and was standard in Germany up to the 1930's. Some countries used a low block where the person lies full length and puts there neck over the small wooden block which is just a few inches high. This arrangement was used in Sweden where some 600 people, including nearly 200 women, were beheaded in the 19th century, until manual beheading was replaced by the guillotine in 1903. http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/sweden.jpg This drawing is of the execution of 48 year old Anna Mansdotter in Kristianstad, southern Sweden on 7th of August 1890. She was the last woman to be executed in Sweden, and had been convicted of strangling her daughter-in-law, Hanna Johansdotter. Anna was having an incestuous relationship with her son, Per, who received a life sentence for his part in the crime. The low block presented the executioner with certain difficulties. The arc prescribed by the axe as he brought it down meant that the blade was at quite an angle to the prisoner's neck making it more difficult to sever the head with a single blow. In Anna's case it passed through her lower jaw which was left attached to her neck. Two patterns of axe were also used - the pattern used in Britain, which was developed from the traditional woodsman's axe, has a blade about one foot eight inches (500 mm) high by ten inches (250 mm) wide with a five foot (1525 mm) long handle. In Germany the axe was like a larger version of a butcher's cleaver, again the handle was long enough for the headsman to use both hands. Beheading in Britain. In Britain beheading was introduced during the reign of William the Conqueror for the execution of Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland in 1076. It was confined to those of noble birth who were convicted of treason, or in a very few cases murder. Several members of Royalty were beheaded, including Charles 1st, Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots and Lady Jane Grey. Many other Earls, Lords and Knights, including Sir Walter Raleigh, and even some Bishops were beheaded. The majority of English beheadings took place at the Tower of London. 7 were carried out in private within the grounds, of which 5 were of women and just over 150 on Tower Hill outside the walls of the Tower, where there stood a permanent scaffold from 1485. Only a very small number of beheadings were carried out elsewhere, as the Tower was the principal prison for traitors. It should be noted that treason often meant displeasing the monarch, rather than in any way betraying the country. The spot indicated as "The site of the scaffold" on Tower Green which visitors can see today was not used for all of the seven private beheadings although the plaque implies this. Those beheaded in private on Tower Green were Lord Hastings in 1483, Anne Boleyn on the 19th of May 1536, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury on the 28th of May 1541, Catherine Howard on the 13th of February 1542. Her Lady in Waiting, Jane, Viscountess Rochford was beheaded on the same day. Lady Jane Grey on the 15th of February 1554 and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex on the 25th of February 1601. At various times both the low block and the high block have been used . The axe was the normal implement of execution in Britain, although Anne Boleyn was beheaded with a sword (see below). A replica of the scaffold used for the 1601 execution of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex has been constructed for exhibition in the Tower. The original was set up in the middle of the Parade Ground and was made of oak, some 4 feet high and having a 9 feet square platform (1.2 m high x 2.75 m square) with a waist high rail round it. The prisoner mounted it by a short flight of stairs and was not restrained throughout the execution as it was expected that people of noble birth would know how to behave at their executions! Devereux lay full length on the platform and placed his neck on the low block with his arms outstretched. It is recorded that three strokes of the axe were required to decapitate him. Straw was spread on the scaffold to absorb the blood. Beheading in public on Tower Hill was used when the government of the day wished to make an example of the traitor or traitors. Double beheadings were rare although not unknown and were carried out in order of precedence of the victims, as occurred with the Jacobite Earls, Kilmarnock and Balmerino executed in 1746 for treason after the battle of Culloden. Simon Lord Lovatt became the last person to be beheaded on Tower Hill when he was executed for treason on April 9th 1747. The high block used for Lord Lovatt together with the axe are on display in the Tower. http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/axe2.jpg (see photo). It was normal for the executioner to pick up the severed head and display to the crowd, proclaiming "Behold the head of a traitor!" The execution of Anne Boleyn. http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/boleyn.jpg 29 year old Anne, (see photo) Henry VIII's second wife, had been convicted on trumped up charges of adultery and treason and was thus sentenced to death by burning at the stake or beheading at the Kings pleasure. Fortunately for Anne he chose the latter and perhaps through a pang of conscience imported a skilled headsman from Calais in France to ensure the execution was performed as humanely as possible. British hangmen normally got the job of beheading those condemned but were generally very poor at it due to the rarity of such sentences. On the 19th May 1536 Anne was led to the Parade Ground within the Tower with an escort of two hundred Yeoman of the Guard (Beefeaters). She was wearing a loose, ermine trimmed, grey damask robe over a red underskirt. Her hair was "up" covered with a white coif and a small black cap and she wore a cross on a gold chain at her waist and carried a white handkerchief and a prayer book. She had to climb 4 feet (1200 mm) up the steps to the scaffold to meet her headsman who was wearing a black suit and half mask covering the upper part of his face. The long two handed execution sword was concealed under the straw on the scaffold. Anne made a short speech to the assembled witnesses and then removed her cape and her hair coif and cap which was now replaced by a white cap. She knelt on the platform and prayed with her chaplain. When she had finished one of her ladies in waiting blindfolded her with a large handkerchief. All was now ready and the headsman took up the sword and beheaded her with a single blow. (Click here to see a shot of her execution as portrayed in a film). http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/boleyn2.jpg Her ladies in waiting recovered her head and as there was no coffin provided she was placed in an old arrow box and duly buried in the in the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vinicula, within the Tower. Lady Jane Grey. Lady Jane Grey, the daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, was born in October 1537 and was only sixteen years old when she was proclaimed Queen on the 10th of July 1553 by Protestant nobles, including her father, after the premature death of Edward VI. She reigned, uncrowned, for just 9 days and was unable to win public acceptance because of her religion in what was a predominately Catholic country. Queen Mary (Bloody Mary) took over the throne and commenced her persecution of Protestants. Thus Jane was deposed and imprisoned in the Tower for 6 months before being condemned for treason and executed on the 13th of February 1554. She was led to the scaffold erected on Tower Green in front of the White Tower. She made a speech and recited a psalm before using a large white handkerchief to blindfold herself. She knelt on a cushion in front of the high block. Having blindfolded herself she couldn't see the block and fumbling for it said "What shall I do, where is it, where is it?" One of the people on the scaffold guided her down and before the fatal blow she said "Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit". (Click here to see an artist's impression of her execution). http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/gray.jpg Earlier on the same day her husband, Lord Guilford Dudley, whom she had married on the 21st of May 1553, was beheaded on Tower Hill and her father suffered the same fate 11 days later for his part in the alleged conspiracy to seize the thrown for his daughter. Many others were to be beheaded or burned at the stake under Mary's reign, hence her nickname. Germany. Beheading with a high block and axe was the normal method of execution in some Länders (provinces) of Germany and was carried out in public up to 1851. Other Länders used the sword or the guillotine. Franz Schmidt, the executioner of Nuremberg in the 16th century, sometimes allowed condemned woman to be beheaded, rather than hanged, as a mercy to them. The condemned woman was seated in a chair and Schmidt beheaded her with his sword from behind. He executed at least 42 women during his 44 years in office. The execution of Bertha Zillman on October 31st 1893 was described by journalists. Zillman had poisoned her husband with arsenic because he beat her and their children and was sentenced to death. She was beheaded at Plötzensee prison at 8.00 a.m. Her dress was cut out at the neck down to her shoulders and her hair put up in a bun. She was given a shawl to wear. When the Inspector of the prison went to fetch her he found her prostrate with fear and she had to be helped to the high block by two male warders. She silently removed the shawl and with one swing of the axe the executioner had decapitated her. It was all over by 8.03 a.m. There was a double female execution in 1914 when Pauline Zimmer and Marie Kubatzka were beheaded for murder in Ratibor. The women were executed in turn using a high block. In front of the block was a black cushion on which the manacled woman knelt and then bent forward to put her head on the block which was higher on the body side so that it caused the neck to be slightly bent. The assistant executioner held the women's hair out in front of her to prevent her moving at the crucial moment while the masked executioner beheaded her with a short handled axe, rather like a butcher's cleaver. (Click here to see a picture of an earlier, but similar female beheading in Germany) http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/behead.jpg Two famous beheadings in Germany were carried out at 6 a.m. on 18th February 1935 when Baroness Benita von Falkenhayn and her friend Renate von Natzner, who had been convicted of spying, were beheaded with the axe by the executioner Carl Gröpler wearing the traditional tail-coat, top hat and white gloves, at Berlin's Plötzensee prison. In 1938 Hitler decreed that all future executions should be by hanging or guillotining. West Germany abolished capital punishment altogether in 1951 and the last execution there was in 1949. Saudi Arabia - the beheading capital of the modern world. Saudi Arabia uses public beheading as the punishment for murder, rape, drug trafficking, sodomy and armed robbery, apostasy and certain other offences. 45 men and 2 women were beheaded in 2002 and a further 52 men and 1 woman in 2003. The condemned of both sexes are given tranquillisers and then taken by police van to a public square or a car park after midday prayers. Their eyes are covered and they are blindfolded. The police clear the square of traffic and a sheet of blue plastic sheet about 16 feet square is laid out on the ground. Dressed in their own clothes, barefoot, with shackled feet and hands cuffed behind their back, the prisoner is led by a police officer to the centre of the sheet where they are made to kneel facing Mecca. An Interior Ministry official reads out the prisoner's name and crime to the crowd of witnesses. A policeman hands the sword to the executioner who raises the gleaming scimitar and often swings it two or three times before approaches the prisoner from behind and jabbing him in the back with the tip of the sword causing the person to raise their head. (see photo) http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/saudi.jpg Normally it takes just one swing of the sword to sever the head, often sending it flying some two or three feet. Paramedics bring the head to a doctor, who uses a gloved hand to stop the fountain of blood spurting from the neck. The doctor sews the head back on, and the body is wrapped in the blue plastic sheet and taken away in an ambulance. The body is then buried in an unmarked grave in the prison cemetery. Beheadings of women did not start until the early 1990s, previously they were shot. 33 women have been publicly beheaded up to the end of 2003. Most executions are carried out in the three major cities of Riyadh, Jeddah and Dahran. Saudi executioners take great pride in their work and the post tends to be handed down from one generation to the next. The cause of death. Beheading is effective and is probably as humane as any other modern method if carried out correctly. When a single blow is sufficient to decapitate the prisoner, they lose consciousness within a few seconds. They die from shock and anoxia due to haemorrhage and loss of blood pressure within less than 60 seconds. However because the muscles and vertebrae of the neck are tough, decapitation may require more than one blow. Death occurs due to separation of the brain and spinal cord, after the transection (cutting through) of the surrounding tissues. According to Dr. Harold Hillman "this must cause acute and possibly severe pain. Consciousness is probably lost within 2-3 seconds, due to a rapid fall of intracranial perfusion of blood" (blood supply to the brain). It has often been reported that the eyes and mouths of people beheaded have shown signs of movement. It has been calculated that the human brain has enough oxygen stored for metabolism to persist about seven seconds after the head is cut off. The problem with beheading. Beheading requires a skilled headsman if it is to be at all humane and not infrequently several blows are required to sever the head. It took three blows to remove Mary Queen of Scot's head at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587. The prisoner is usually blindfolded so that they do not see the sword or axe coming and move at the crucial moment. Again this is why in both beheading and guillotining it was not unusual for an assistant to hold the prisoner's hair to prevent them moving. In any event the results are gory in the extreme as blood spurts from the severed arteries and veins of the neck including the aorta and the jugular vein. No doubt these two factors have lead to the abandonment of beheading by most countries that used it. All the European countries that used it have now totally abolished the death penalty. The guillotine http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/guillotine.html The Guillotine 1792 - 1977. Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin did not invent the execution machine that bears his name. A similar device known as the Halifax Gibbet had been in use in that Yorkshire town since 1286 and continued until 1650. It was noticed by a Scotsman, James Douglas Earl of Morton, who had one built in Edinburgh in 1556, which became known as the Maiden and lasted until 1710. There is a credible recording of an execution by a similar machine in Milan in 1702 and there are paintings of a guillotine like machine used in Nuremberg in the mid 1500's. However it was Dr. Guillotin (Deputy of Paris) who on October the 10th 1789 proposed to the Constituent Assembly that all condemned criminals should be beheaded on the grounds of humanity and egalité (equality). Beheading was seen as by far the most humane method of execution at the time and was allowed to people of noble birth in many countries. Ordinary prisoners were slowly hanged, broken on the wheel (an horrendously cruel form of execution) or burnt at the stake. The idea of a standardised, quick and humane death was much more in line with revolutionary thinking. The Constituent Assembly duly passed a decree making beheading the only form of execution on the 25th March 1791 and this came into law on the 25th March 1792. There was a small problem to this, as was indicated by the then official executioner, Sanson, who pointed out the impracticality of executing all condemned persons by the sword. Beheading requires a skilled executioner with a lot of strength, a very steady hand and a good eye, if it is to sever the criminal's head with a single stroke. Sanson proved to be right as during the Terror the rate of executions reached staggering proportions, well beyond the capacity of the few skilled headsmen to carry out. It was clear that some sort of machine was required and after consultation with Dr. Antoine Louis, the Secretary of the Academy of Surgery, such a machine was devised and built. It was initially known as the louisson or louisette, but no doubt much to the relief of the good surgeon took on the name of its proposer and became known as the guillotine. The first one was built in Paris by one Tobias Schmidt, a German engineer, and was ready for testing using recently deceased bodies from the hospital of Bicerte on the 17th of April 1792. It had two large uprights joined by a beam at the top and erected on a platform reached by 24 steps. The whole contraption was painted a dull blood red and the weighted blade ran in grooves in the uprights which were greased with tallow. However it worked well enough and its first execution was that of Nicholas-Jacques Pelletier for robbery with violence on 25th of April 1792 in the Place de Greve. The execution went according to plan with his head being severed at the first stroke. Guillotines were soon supplied to all Departments in France and models were made as children's toys and even as earrings for women. Experiments were made with a 45 degree angled blade and also a rounded blade but this proved unsatisfactory and the angled blade became the standard pattern, in use until the abolition of capital punishment in France. The "Terror" began on the 10th of August and trade for the guillotine increased rapidly. In the thirteen month period May 1793 - June 1794, no less than 1225 people were executed in Paris. The Place de Greve saw the first use of the guillotine on the 22nd of August 1792 for ordinary criminals. Political offenders were executed at the Place de Carrousel. Virtually the whole French aristocracy were sent to the guillotine during the French Revolution. On the 21st of January 1793 it was erected for the first time in the Place de la Revolution for the execution of King Louis XVI, its most famous victim. This was also the place of execution for such famous women as Marie Antoinette and Charlotte Corday. Charlotte was condemned after a brief trial for stabbing to death Jean-Paul Marat, one of the revolution's leaders. She was executed on the evening of the 17th of July 1793 and upon arrival at the Place de la Revolution in the usual tumbrel (horse drawn cart) asked Sansom (her executioner) to be allowed to look at the guillotine as she hadn't seen one before and felt that it was of interest to someone in her position! She was an attractive and brave 24 year old who was seen as something of a martyr by many. In June of 1793 the guillotine was temporarily moved to the Place St. Antoine where 96 people were decapitated in 5 days. Due to protests from local traders it was then moved to the Barriere Ranverse where 1,270 people were executed in under 2 months. It returned to the Place de la Revolution for the execution of the famous revolutionary, Robespierre, and 21 of his followers on the 28th of July. The guillotine was also being used in all the other French cities with great frequency at this time and many thousands of people fell victim to it. France was not the only country to adopt the guillotine as many other governments saw the advantages in speed and humanity of it compared to the other methods then available. It was used by Algeria, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Switzerland, Sweden and Vietnam well into the 20th century. More people were guillotined in Germany during Hitler's time, than in France during the whole of the French revolution. The guillotine had been in use in some parts of Germany long before Hitler came to power. The Rhine province had introduced it as far back as 1798. The provinces of Bavaria, Saxony and Wuerttemberg used it from 1854, 1852 and 1853 respectively. From 1871 German law stated that all condemned criminals must be decapitated but allowed both the axe and the guillotine. Executions were fairly infrequent during the early years of the twentieth century, however, but increased dramatically, particularly between 1938 and 1945. Hitler ordered that criminals and those who opposed his regime should suffer death by either guillotining or hanging and had 20 guillotines built and dispersed to prisons around Germany and Austria. He also greatly increased the number of crimes punishable by death. Between 1933 and 1944, a total of 13,405 death sentences were passed. Of these, 11,881 were carried out. In 1940, alone, some 900 German civilians were put to death. In 1941, the minimum age for execution was reduced to just 14 years. The execution rate had risen to over 5,000 by 1943. Between 1943 and 1945 the People's Courts sentenced around 7,000 people to death. In the first few months of 1945 some 800 people were executed, over 400 of them, German citizens. Nazi executioners could guillotine a prisoner every three minutes if required, which it often was. It has been claimed that it took just 90 minutes to guillotine 75 prisoners at Breslau Prison. In Austria and some 1,377 men and women were guillotined between 1938 and 1945 after sentence at Vienna's District Court. Most of them were executed for opposing the Nazis and for treason. It is thought that in all some 16,000 people were guillotined by the Nazis. For accounts of some of these executions click here. After the war the Allies permitted the use of the guillotine for German nationals and even had some new ones constructed by the company of Fritz and Otto Tiggeman. In the Soviet zone the guillotine continued to be used until 1953, one being portable and carried from place to place in a truck. West Germany (as it became) abolished capital punishment in 1951, the last guillotining, that of Berthold Wehmeyer, taking place on the 11th of May 1949. East Germany continued to use the guillotine for a few more years afterwards but records of executions there are very sketchy. Construction. All guillotines follow the same basic pattern, but the modern ones did not have a scaffold for the condemned to climb and were placed directly on the ground. As with the gallows in Britain this was found to be a great improvement, due to the difficulty of getting an often terrified person with their hands strapped behind them up a flight of steps. French guillotines had two uprights of approximately 14 feet (4000 mm) high and 15 inches (370 mm) apart, with metal lined grooves to ensure free movement of the triangular shaped weighted blade which ran on a four wheeled carriage. The substantial frame is set perfectly level using spirit levels after the guillotine is erected, to prevent the blade jamming. At right angles to the uprights is a bench shaped structure, about 800 mm from the ground, at the end of which is the bascule. This is a hinged board which stands upright to receive the prisoner who is then strapped to it before the bascule is turned to the horizontal and the slid forwards bringing the prisoner's head into the lunette. The lunette is formed in two halves each with a semicircular cut out for the neck. When the victim is correctly positioned in the lower half, the top half is lowered into position to prevent them moving. The blade is of high quality steel, about 300 mm deep and is weighted with lead to give a total weight of approximately 40 Kgs. It falls just over 7 feet (2250 mm) in around one third of a second before being brought to rest by a spring mechanism in the block beneath the lunette. The blade is drawn up by a rope running through a brass pulley until it is caught by a spring release mechanism. It is released by pulling a cord or a lever mounted on one of the uprights. There is a metal bucket to catch the head and a metal tray for the blood. Originally a wicker basket lined with oil cloth had been used to catch the head. The decapitated body falls or is pushed off the bascule onto an angled board that deposits it into a basket or coffin. The Nazi guillotine (fallbeil ) was similar to the French style but not as high, as the photo of the one in Plötzensee prison in Berlin shows. http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/image49.jpg It is around 8 feet tall but has a heavier blade to produce the required force. The condemned was made to lie face down on a simple bench rather than being strapped to a bascule and the head fell into a metal basin attached to the frame. Later a tip board was used to further speed up the process and Johann Reichhart designed a device for rapidly clamping victims to this. Two guillotinings described. Marie Margarete (Grete) Beier. Grete Beier, the 22 year-old daughter of the Mayor of Freiburg in Saxony, was guillotined for the murder of her fiancée, a civil engineer named Proffler, whom she had poisoned for financial gain. Grete was in love with another man, Hans Merker, of whom her father didn't approve. Her father had forced her into the engagement with Kurt Proffler, whom he felt had much better prospects than Merker. The case attracted international attention due to her age, sex, personality and the elaborate nature of the crime. She was seemingly a happy and fun-loving girl from a good background. (Click here for a photo of her) http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/grete1.jpg At her trial she admitted that, on May 13th 1908, she had visited her fiancée's house and given him potassium cyanide in a drink she mixed for him, and then, to make sure of his death, shot him in the mouth with his own revolver. She then did her best to make the scene look like a suicide, placing the gun carefully at his side, leaving a forged will in her favour on his desk and with a final note to herself, also forged, saying that he feared to lose her love, because of a relationship that he had had with a woman in Italy who was now accusing him of desertion and threatening to tell Grete everything. These forgeries were good enough to initially deceive the police and Coroner. She fell under suspicion when about a month later a letter was found that she had written to another man hinting at what she had done, when he was arrested for an unrelated crime. She was arrested and made a detailed confession to the murder. She hoped by confessing that she would be granted a lesser sentence but, as the crime was a premeditated poisoning, she was sentenced to death. Her execution took place on the morning of July 23rd 1908 in the yard of the regional court building before some 190 people. The guillotine had been erected earlier in a corner of the yard and at around 6.25 a.m. the public prosecutor, Dr. Mannl, the judges who had heard her case, including their chairman Dr. Rudert, and the twelve official witnesses came into the yard. The public prosecutor and the judges all wore their official robes. At precisely 6.30 a.m. a bell was rung as the signal to bring out the prisoner. She was led through the gardens by her lawyer and the prison chaplain, her hands folded and her eyes on the ground, walking slowly but upright and unaided. She was very pale but seemed calm and showed no emotion. She wore a black dress, that had been cut down at the neck. She was led onto the platform of the guillotine by the executioner and his assistant and strapped to the board which was then tilted into the horizontal and slid forward, so that she could now see directly into the bucket in which her head would land. This was too much for Grete, who was beginning to lose her composure. She cried out "Father, into your hands I lay my soul - Father". The upper part of the neck ring had been closed about her and at this moment the blade fell. The executioner took off his hat and announced to the public prosecutor in the traditional German fashion that the judgement of death had been executed. The prosecutor requested the witnesses to depart quietly. The whole execution had taken just 3 minutes. Grete's body was taken away in a hearse decorated with flowers and buried next to her late father. Martha Marek. http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/martha1.jpg Martha Lowenstein Marek (see photo) was guillotined by the Bavarian State executioner, Johann Reichhart, in Vienna on the 6th of December 1938, for the poisoning of her husband, their baby daughter, an elderly relative, whose money and house she inherited, and finally a lodger in her house. Emil Marek had conspired with his wife Martha to defraud his insurers by getting Martha to chop off his leg in order that they could collect $30,000 in accident insurance he had taken out. Martha however was not very good at wielding the axe and it took three blows to sever the leg. The insurer's doctors were not convinced that it was an accident that had occurred while cutting down a tree as the Mareks claimed and therefore rejected their claim. Emil died, apparently from tuberculosis, in July 1932 and their 9 month old baby daughter died a month later. When her lodger Felicitas Kittsteiner died, his relatives became suspicious because he had told them that when he ate or drank anything that Martha prepared he immediately felt violently sick. Martha had taken out a life insurance policy on him before he died. The relatives informed the police who ordered the exhumation of all four bodies. They found that they had all been poisoned with a compound of thallium. She was arrested and brought to trial in Vienna in 1938. Hitler had re-instated capital punishment in Austria when he took control of it and a new guillotine was sent to Vienna by rail, packed as "industrial machinery" on October 3rd 1938. As you read earlier it was to see plenty of use. No woman had been executed in Austria for over 30 years and there was some reluctance on the part of the authorities to execute Martha. Martha was alleged to be paralysed so it was decided to take her from the condemned cell to the execution chamber in a wheel chair. The executioner, Johann Reichhart, and his assistants practised tipping the wheelchair in front of the guillotine so that Martha would fall directly onto the bench in the right place. On the morning of execution, however, Martha's paralysis seemed to have disappeared and she struggled violently with her guards and was able to land a heavy kick on Reichhart before being subdued and tied to the bascule by his assistant. Reichhart executed 3,165 people between 1924 and 1947. Many British accounts of Martha Marek state that she was beheaded with an axe but this is not correct and may well stem from an incorrect translation of the German for guillotine -fallbiel - literally drop or fall hatchet (axe). Modern French execution procedure. In the 20th century the guillotine would be sent from Paris to the prison by rail and be erected in a suitable place during the night. Just before dawn the officials would go to the condemned man's cell and inform him that his appeal had failed and that he was to be executed immediately. He would be allowed a few minutes to pray with his priest before having his hands strapped behind his back and the collar of his shirt cut down. The prison register would be signed for the final time and the prisoner escorted to the guillotine by warders. On arrival he would immediately be strapped to the upright bascule and then turned horizontally and slid into the lunette. The top of the lunette would be brought down, instantly followed by the release of the blade. The whole procedure typically took less than two minutes to complete. Up to 1939 executions were carried out in public - normally just outside the prison gates. The crowds saw very little as the guillotine was always surrounded by gendarmes but reporters and invited witnesses were permitted. Eugene Weidmann became the last to suffer in public outside the Pallais de Justice at Versailles before a large crowd on 16th of June 1939 for multiple murder. This execution was photographed and the shots appeared in the French press. The general public obviously enjoyed it more than was felt good for them and a week later the government changed the law making all executions private. Guillotinings had got steadily fewer during the 20th century and France came under pressure from its European neighbours to end capital punishment. The French death penalty was finally abolished in 1981. At least 247 men and 4 women went to the guillotine in 20th century France (roughly a third as many executions as occurred in Britain during the same period). The war time period, under the Vichy government, saw a rise in the number of executions and for the first time in many decades women were guillotined. They were Elizabeth Ducourneau on the 8th of January 1941 at Bordeaux, Sinska Czeslawa on the 29th of June 1943 at Chalons sur Soane, Marie Louise Giraud on the 30th of July 1943 in Paris and Germaine Godefroy on the 22nd of April 1949 at Angers. Marie Louise Giraud, a laundress, was convicted of having performed 26 illegal abortions. Prior to that the last recorded female execution was that of Georgette Thomas on the 24th of January 1887, along with her husband, Henri, at Romorantin, 100 miles south of Paris. Georgette attempted to distract her executioner by taking off her clothes! This ploy was not successful however. There were 11 executions between 1958 and 1969, during General de Gaulle's term as president. De Gaulle commuted 18 or 19 sentences, one of those condemned rejected the offer of clemency and was executed. Between 1969 and 1973, President Pompidou commuted 12 sentences out of 15. One of the executions during Pompidou's presidency took place in May 1973 (Ali Benyanes), the other two in November 1972 (Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems, the Clairvaux mutineers). Valery Giscard d'Estaing sanctioned the execution of Christian Ranucci in July 1976; Jerome Carrein in July 1977; and Hamida Djandoubi who became the last person to be guillotined on the 10th of September 1977. Philippe Maurice was granted clemency by Mitterrand in 1981. Maurice, a hardened and uneducated criminal at the time, is now noted as a talented history researcher. He was released from prison in 2001 and has written a much acclaimed book about his life. The cause of death. The person guillotined becomes unconscious very quickly and dies from shock and anoxia due to haemorrhage and loss of blood pressure within less than 60 seconds. It has often been reported that the eyes and mouths of people beheaded have shown signs of movement. It has been calculated that the human brain has enough oxygen stored for metabolism to persist about seven seconds after the supply is cut off. As in hanging the heart continues to beat for some time after decapitation. Various experiments have been made on guillotined heads and generally seem to show that little consciousness remains after 2 - 5 seconds of separation from the body although some have concluded that the head retains feeling for much longer. Whatever the truth, guillotining is probably one of the least cruel methods of execution and yet one that has a high deterrent value because it is perceived as gruesome. The guillotine was the catalyst for the famous Madame Tussaud's waxwork exhibitions. In the 1790's there was, of course, no television and the rudimentary media of the time had no means of printing pictures in quantity. Thus only very few people knew what the French aristocracy looked like. Madame Tussaud collected the guillotined heads and made plaster casts of them, which she then filled with wax to give a reasonable likeness. She toured France with her exhibition for some time before falling foul of the Revolution herself and fleeing to England where her work continued. Her waxworks are still enormously popular today. Executed criminals continued to be popular subjects and Tussaud's used to buy the clothes and other effects of famous criminals from the hangman in the days when these items became his property after the execution. For further reading visit Jorn Fabricius' excellent site at http://www.guillotine.dk ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Yahoo! 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