The apparatus in Turkey is that fine old institution, the gibbet, to which a malefactor can be at once strung up without any nonsense in connection with long and short drops, the efficacy of which have been so frequently discussed by the press of this country.
We have been hanging rogues and others in England for considerably more than a thousand years, but it should be extremely humiliating to us as a civilised, scientific, and mechanically ingenious people that we are as inexpert hangmen as in the days of the Saxon heptarchy.
It would be as well if half a dozen mechanical engineers and practical anatomists were commissioned by the Home Secretary to draw up a succinct report on hanging—distinguishing between the phenomena of strangulation and those of vertebral dislocation, and deliberate on the question of long versus short drops.
Marwood has declared on more than one occasion that his method is the most merciful one that has ever been put in practice; but the veteran Calcraft denies this assertion.
The public at large are perhaps indifferent as to whether an assassin dies from a broken neck or from strangulation, but there is a widely-spread feeling that no more physical pain than is absolutely necessary should be inflicted on the miserable wretch.
Marwood’s system should be subject to careful tests and exhaustive analysis, and if it is pronounced efficient he should enjoy immunity from further criticism.
If, however, the man’s method is faulty he should be directed to execute his victims in a more workmanlike style.
In any case, the recent discussion on “Bungling Executions” may be of service, as it is not improbable that advancing civilisation may some day devise a better mode of carrying out the last dread penalty of the law in a more satisfactory manner than that adopted at the present time.
A few French medical men revived some short time ago the strange paradox of the elder Sue—the famous anatomist, whose son was the author of the “Mysteries of Paris,” “The Wandering Jew,” and other popular works of fiction—that the action of the guillotine is not so painless as people have been led to imagine, and that the sensation does not cease for some moments after the head has been separated from the body. Dr. Sue’s arguments have been long since ably, and it would seem conclusively, refuted, and the fact that decapitation, skilfully performed, is an operation of anything beyond instantaneous pain to the criminal has been once more distinctly affirmed by the most eminent scientific authorities in France.
After this resuscitated dispute died away, Professor Haughton, of the University of Dublin, came forward with a learned and exhaustive disquisition on the economies of hanging, and on the best way of killing a murderer without causing him unnecessary agony. The Professor quoted a statement of the surgeon of Newgate that under Calcraft’s regime he had frequently seen the criminal struggle for more than twenty minutes before he became inanimate.