A vibrant & witty approach to the science of execution

books:


	• Lord High Executioner: An Unashamed Look at Hangmen, Headsmen, and Their Kind Howard Engel Key Porter Books, 1996 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Light Jests and Heavy Sermons

Wry! Using mock detachment, clinical detail, understatement and overstatement, Howard Engel presents a chronicle of capital punishment through the eyes, ears, minds and hearts of the world's tribe of hangmen, headsmen and their henchmen. With feigned scientific aloofness and a straight face, Engel allows the death penalty to speak for itself against itself. His masterful treatment of a sordid subject proves that a light jester teaches more than a heavy sermonizer.

It's a dirty job but somebody has to do it.

Public executions have always attracted large crowds of curious citizens. This was even truer in the pre-mass communication, pre-radio, pre-television era. When the most exciting forms of entertainment were traveling minstrels and circuses, executions were a favorite form of spectator sport. It was even required in some areas that everyone witnesses punishments in hopes that they would avoid breaking the same laws. History records huge crowds coming from great distances to see the final act of their fellow humans. Hangings, impalements, drowning, beheadings, burning people at the stake, drawing and quartering and disemboweling were horrible events. Carrying out these legal executions was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it. And most people weren't anxious to have the job. Sometimes other condemned prisoners had their own sentences commuted if they served as the executioners of their fellow condemned prisoners.
Since executioners were considered practitioners of the worst job on the planet, many of the people serving as the actual final instrument for carrying out the dictates of the judicial system, were ostracized by society. This book does a decent job of portraying the world of the executioner and details the lives of many of England's most infamous executioners. Since so many of these people didn't have any idea of what they were doing, it was a major breakthrough when some of the more sensitive executioners began to develop more humane ways to carry out death sentences. Eventually, these men devised scientific methods to instantly break their client's necks rather than letting them slowly strangle to death. Likewise for developing machines to instantly cut off heads rather than maybe having an executioner have to swing his ax or sword half a dozen times to complete his work.
The book is morbidly fascinating. The author did a good job of trying to stick with the facts and not editorialize on the subject of the death penalty. The author's bias against the death penalty does show up in the text occasionally and usually results in him making bleeding heart (no pun intended) conclusions that defy both common sense and historical fact. The book is still worth reading because it shows that humanity is definitely making progress and is at least trying to be as humane as possible in cases of capital punishment. It also introduces and discusses many fascinating historical characters on both sides of law. It's good to see that some high-minded individuals can make even the dirtiest job in the world more humane and scientific. Those were traits that many of the viewers of these macabre public events didn't really appreciate or desire. Many actually preferred long, drawn out shows and that morbid fact is why most executions are no longer major public events.

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Executioners are people too.....

I found this book to be quite entertaining and informative look at people who executed other people in the name of the law. The book centered more or less around British justice system. In more ways then one, these executioners tries to be as professional as possible in their crafts. The author goes back to the mediveal period to the current time in telling accounts of how executions were done and conducted. Stories like one of James Barry (a hangman) who came up with a chart of how far a man should drop before his neck breaks on the knotted rope based on the body weight revealed that some people tries to make serious work out of their job.

The author writes with clarity and the book appears to be well researched. I supposed the author tries to insert an political anti-capital punishment bias into this book but I thought the effort was partially defeated because the book showed how capital punishment if properly applied, works! (Meaning, murderers don't killed again after they were hung!!) After that read this book, I was more for capital punishment then before.

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A vibrant & witty approach to the science of execution

Not only does this book take you through the long drop, the short drop, and the always crowd-pleasing beheading, it takes you through the lives of the death bringers themselves. Some who were truly masters of their craft, and humerous tales of those who would need four hits with a sharp axe in order to take the head. Not nearly as dry as most books written on the subject, has good illustrations and would be an excellent research tool for any writer. Begins with an intensive focus on England, especially the infamous "road to Tyburn" and continues onto focus on the hanging methods in Canada, and lastly the evolution of death in America. The volume also gives a brief note to the only documented female headsmen that I have yet to come across. High marks! Where most history books run by numbers, names, and locations, this one takes the time to give you an intense look at the method of execution and the personal character and life of each on of its subjects. Very well researched and I cannot praise the quality of the writing enough.

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Dying to Know More?

This is a popular, anecdotal, enjoyable account of executioners. It relies over-much on the stories of the criminals who were executed rather than focusing on the exeuctioners themselves. Alas, this is a necessity for filling pages since the documents are scanty and sparse more than a century back. Still, this book is fun and reads well. For the non-academic reader it should be quite interesting. The scholarly reader would do well to continue searching elsewhere.

reviews: page 1, 2

In Lord High Executioner, Howard Engel produces a wonderfully wise and witty social history of the men and women who represent our agents of death, and who have done our dirty work over the centuries.

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