Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders Read Online Free PDF

head still alive? And if the head is still living, is the ‘owner’ still conscious? If so, could the victim actually see the ground or basket coming up to meet them – even perhaps have sufficient time to witness the gloating faces of those clustered round the scaffold as their head is brandished by the executioner? Alas, like death itself, only those who personally experience decapitation can know what happens and within what timescale.
     
     
     
    The Wheel
    Being ‘broken on the wheel’ was an agonising and prolonged way in which to die, and was used mainly on the Continent in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, although isolated cases reportedly took place in Scotland.
    The felon was secured, spread-eagled, face upwards, on a large cartwheel mounted horizontally on an upright which passed through the hub, the wheel sometimes being slightly canted in order to give the spectators a better view of the brutal proceedings. The wheel could be rotated in order to bring the particular part of the human target within reach of the executioner, thereby eliminating the need for him to walk round to the other side. Some versions of the device required the victim to be bound to the spokes, others to two lengths of timber in the form of a St Andrew’s Cross nailed to the upper side of the wheel.
     

     
    Breaking On The Wheel Or Cross
     
    Death was meted out by the executioner wielding a heavy iron bar, three feet long by two inches square, or using a long-handled hammer. Slowly and methodically he would shatter the victim’s limbs; the upper and forearms, the thighs and the lower legs; nor would other parts of the body escape being pulverised, until eventually the coup de grâce , known as the retentum, a final blow to the heart or the neck, would be delivered. Alternatively, a cord around the throat would be pulled tight, depriving the victim of what little life was left in them. On being removed from the wheel the corpse would resemble a rag doll, the various short sections of the shattered limbs being completely disconnected from each other.
    The judges might mitigate the sentence by permitting the death blow to be administered either following a certain number of strokes or after a certain length of time had elapsed; for example, one John Calas of Toulouse was not to receive a blow to the heart until two hours after he had been strapped to the wheel.
    In some states in Germany the regulation number of blows was forty. Franz Schmidt, executioner of Nuremberg in the sixteenth century, wrote in his diary that on 11 February 1585 he ‘dispatched Frederick Werner of Nuremberg, alias Heffner Friedla, a murderer who committed three murders and twelve robberies. He was drawn to execution in a tumbrel [a cart], twice nipped with red-hot tongs and afterwards broken on the wheel.’
    This multiple murderer was in fact Schmidt’s brother-in-law and, probably in view of their relationship, the judges decreed that only thirty-one blows need be struck. One wonders whether, after that number, there was anything worthwhile left to aim at.
     

 
    PART TWO:
     
    THE UNFORTUNATE VICTIMS
     
    The Axe
     
    Arthur Elphinstone, 6 th Baron Balmerino
    After the battle against the Scots at Culloden in 1745, Lord Balmerino, Colonel of the Horse Guards, was captured and imprisoned in the Byward Tower of the Tower of London. He was taken to face trial in Westminster Hall, not by being marched through the streets but, unusually, by coach. This departure from tradition caused the authorities some problems, one being where Mr Fowler, the Gentleman Gaoler of the Tower, would travel, for his role was to escort the prisoner at all times. His Lordship solved the dilemma by inviting the officer to accompany him in the coach, not realising that the Gaoler would be carrying the cumbersome Ceremonial Axe, the traditional symbol by which the sentence of the court would be indicated to the crowds waiting outside the Hall; if borne with the edge pointing