Death machines have always varied in design and construction—from the barbaric cruel rituals of being burned at the steak, or hanged, drawn and quartered to modern, efficient devices such as the guillotine and the gas chamber. Women convicted of violent crimes frequently succumbed to rigors of death by fire or a modern-day gas chamber execution. Many of these contraptions were designed to instill fear in the masses by way of example, forcing the condemned to endure an untimely demise.
Burning at the steak was popular in Catholic and Protestant lands. Three techniques were used. The first involved burning wood placed around a steak driven into the ground. The prisoner dangled from the steak by chains or iron hoops. In the second method—reserved for witches—wood was piled high around the accused, so onlookers could not see her suffering as she burned, nor could the witch harm the crowd before she perished. The third method required the condemned to be bound to a ladder and tied to a frame above the fire. The ladder, which was swung down into the flames, signified the individual’s descent into the fiery depths of Hell.
Law mandated that convicts be strangled before burning at the stake, but many criminals were deliberately burned alive. If the fire was small, the accused burned slowly and died in agony.
Joan of Arc was burned at the steak in May of 1431 on charges of heresy. She was accused of taking part in magic because she claimed to hear the voices of St. Michael, St. Margaret, and St. Catherine. These were the voices that told her to dress as a boy and fight for the French in the Hundred Years War against the English. The charge against her claimed that the voices were demons instead of saints.
She was headstrong in speaking about her faith, she dressed as a boy, fought in the war, received communion as a male, all off which horrified the people of her time. On those charges, Joan of Arc was burned at the steak at the Old Market Place of Rouen, near the Church of Saint-Sauveur at the age of eighteen. When her sentence was to be carried out, she asked to face the cross from the church and to hold a small wooden cross until she died. Historian Anne Llewellyn Barstow remarked, “…in giving up the ghost and bowing her head, she uttered the name of Jesus as a sign that she was reverent in the in the faith of God.”
The practice of drawing and quartering was a brutal death machine that served as the penalty ordained in England for treason. It was the epitome of “cruel and unusual punishment” and was reserved for traitors because treason was considered more heinous than murder.
Guy Fawkes and his fellow “Gun Powder Plot” conspirators were perhaps the most famous recipients of this punishment. Fawkes was captured and tortured on the rack, so he would reveal the names of the others, who were quickly apprehended. There were tried at Westminster Hall and all seven sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. The execution took place on January 30th and January 31st, 1606. The first three, Sir Everard Digby, Thomas Bates, and Robert Winter were put to death St. Paul’s Church, while Guy Fawkes, Ambrose Rockwood, Thomas Winter, and Robert Keyes suffered the following day in the Old Place Yard in front of the Houses of Parliament. Their heads were displayed on spikes on the London Bridge as gruesome mementos of civil disobedience.
Full punishment for the crime required the culprit to be dragged over a hurdle to the place of execution, where the criminal was slowly hanged, but cut down before losing consciousness. After being stripped, the prisoner’s penis and testicles were cut off. Their stomach was split open, and their intestines were removed and burned. The body was then divided into four quarters: One end of thick rope was tied to each appendage, the other was tied to a horse. A shot was fired skyward and four startled horses took off in opposite directions at breakneck speed.
Up until the 1850s, most hangings were carried out with little or no drop, often just one or two feet. The prisoner was hanged from a tree after being turned off the back of a cart, ladder, or horse. This normally resulted in death either by strangulation, due to the Carotid or Vagal Response, which prompted rapid unconsciousness and cardiac arrest.
After the hanging, the sentenced lost consciousness almost immediately: Death occurred by asphyxiation, due to a slipknot placed around their neck and fixed to a support at the other end. The weight of the body, hanging in mid-air or inclined forward, rested on the slipknot and caused restriction of the respiratory tract.
A standard drop of four or five feet was used in many hangings during the better part of the 19th Century and into the early 20th Century. A drop from this height often failed to break the prisoner’s neck and they died by strangulation, although a lot of cases we knocked unconscious by the force of the drop and the impact of the knot against the side of the neck.
It was discovered that it was necessary to remove any stretch in the rope to prevent the prisoner from bouncing up again in the trap, as often happened in earlier times. This was accomplished by dropping a bag of sand of approximately the same weight as the prisoner and leaving it suspended for several hours prior to the execution.
The coiled noose was used in most states up to abolition of hanging. It is typically comprised of manila hemp rope and has from five to 13 coils, which slide down the rope, delivering a heavy blow to the side of the neck, hopefully rendering the prisoner unconscious.
The modern noose is prepared in accordance with a procedure outlined in the U.S. Army manual: From 30 feet of ¾” – 1” diameter rope, boiled to remove stretch and any tendency to twist. It is formed into six coils and then waxed, soaped, or greased to ensure that the knot slides easily. The knot is normally placed beneath the prisoner’s left year and the noose drawn tight. Hanging with no or insufficient drop produces death by strangulation (asphyxia) due to the weight of the person’s body pulling down on the noose, causing it to contract around the trachea, while applying pressure to large blood vessels in the neck.
The condemned usually struggles for some time after suspension, due to the physical pain caused by the noose. It can take up to three minutes for the person to lapse into unconsciousness during this kind of hanging, as the rope obstructs the jugular veins and the carotid arteries, but the vertebrae protect the vertebral and spinal arteries, which also supply blood to the brain; however, these arteries traverse the outside of the fourth vertebrae instead of inside of it, which subjects them to blockage if the pressure on the neck is high enough (usually 40 – 50 pounds for a normal person) and this can cause the loss of consciousness in under 15 seconds.
After suspension the face typically becomes engorged and turns blue due to lack of oxygen. The tongue protrudes and muscular reflexes produce rippling movements of the body and limbs. In death, marks of suspension are apparent, (e.g., bruising and rope marks on the neck and in some cases traces of urine, semen, and feces). Sometimes male prisoners experience erections and even ejaculate while hanging, a phenomenon similar to Autoerotica Asphyxia.
If a measured drop is used, it takes between a quarter and a third of a second for a person to reach the end of the rope after the trap opens. The force generated by the prisoner’s weight multiplied by the length of the fall and the force of gravity, coupled with position of the knot is designed to instantly fracture the neck, which leads to death by strangulation. Typically, brain death occurs in approximately three to five minutes and complete body death happens within five to 15 minutes.
On April 14, 1965, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith were the last convicts in the United States put to death by hanging in the Kansas State Prison Gallows for murdering the Clutter family. Their heinous crime was chronicled in Truman Capote’s book, In Cold Blood.
A sophisticated death machine, the guillotine decapitated criminals—delivering a swift, clean cut every time. The device consisted of a tall, upright wooden frame, which housed a heavy triangular blade. The blade was hauled to the top of the frame on a thick cord and held in place while the victim had his or her head placed in a restraining bar. The cord was released, and the heavy blade fell, severing the neck.
Guillotine-like devices (gibbets) were used for executions in Britian before the French Revolution, but the French enhanced the machine and became the first nation to use it as a standard execution method.
The guillotine was not, however, a French invention, although Joseph-Ignace Guillotin is often named as its inventor, similar devices have been used in Scotland, Italy, and Switzerland before 1600. This device also had a history as a farm implement used to kill poultry in Germany, England, and Prussia before being introduced as a method of capital punishment.
The first guillotining was performed on a highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier on 25 April 1792 in front of what is now Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, the city hall of Paris. During the French Revolution, King Louis XVI selected the guillotine as the death machine of choice for corporal punishment. Ironically, Louis XVI had his own head chopped off on January 21, 1793. His wife, Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, was executed on October 16, 1793.
As the device’s popularity grew, the machine was dubbed “the widow” by the masses received several enhancements. Newer versions introduced the more effective 45-degree angled blade, shallow depressions to correctly align the prisoner’s head, a metal bucket to catch the head, and a metal tray to collect the blood.
Despite its efficiency, execution by guillotine remained a sickening spectacle. When the head was severed, blood poured from the body, as the heart continued to pump. When it was used frequently (as it was during the Revolution), the stench from execution site was horrible. There is also evidence to suggest that the head retained some life movements after being severed, so the death might not have been as quick as supposed.
Thousands of people were guillotined during the French Revolution and execution became a public celebration. The last execution by guillotine took place in Marseilles, France on September 10, 1977, when the murderer Hamida Djandoubi was beheaded.
Another popular death machine was the gas chamber. Originally designed by Dr. Allen McLean Hamilton, a toxicologist who suggested gassing as an execution method would be more humane than hanging or shooting, which were the alternatives offered to condemned men in Nevada in the early part of the century. The original idea involved gassing the prisoner while he slept in his cell. This approach proved too difficult, and so the gas chamber was invented by Major Delos A. Turner, an Army Medical Corps Officer and was first used in 1924.
The first woman to be executed legally in California was Juanita Spinelli, the cold-blooded “Duchess” of a Bay area robbery gang. A grandmother and an ex-wrestler, she had a reputation for being to pin a poker chip with a throwing knife at 15 paces. She was convicted of the murder of a gang member she feared would inform on her.
“The coldest, hardest character, male or female I have ever known,” Warden Duffy wrote, “a homely, scrawny, nearsighted, sharp-featured scarecrow…the Dutchess was a hag, evil as a witch, horrible to look at, impossible to like, but she was still a woman, and I dreaded the thought of ordering her execution.”
But the day after Thanksgiving in 1941, her time came. The Los Angeles Times reported that she wore a short-sleeved green dress and clutched a white handkerchief in her left hand. Photos of her children were tied over her heart.
The California gas chamber at San Quentin, built in 1938, located in a basement room, has a pale green painted octagonal metal box, six feet across and eight feet high. There is a 30 feet high chimney outside to remove the gas.
Prisoners enter through a rubber-sealed steel door secured with a large, locking wheel. There are five windows that enable witnesses to view the execution.
Inside the chamber are two identical metal chairs with perforated seats, marked “A” and “B”. The twin chairs were last used in a double execution in 1962. Two guards strap the prisoner into chair A, attaching straps across his upper and lower legs, arms, thighs, and chest. They also attach a long Bowles Stethoscope to the person’s chest to monitor the heartbeat and pronounce death. Beneath the chair is a bowl filled with sulfuric acid mixed with distilled water, with a pound of sodium cyanide pellets suspended in a gauze bag. After the door is sealed, and when the warden gives the signal, the executioner, in a separate room, operates a lever that releases the cyanide into the liquid. This causes a chemical reaction that generates hydrogen cyanide gas.
A typical witness’s view of gassing is as follows, “At first there is evidence of extreme horror, pain, and strangling. The eyes pop, the skin turns purple, and the victim begins to drool.”
In medical terms, victims of cyanide gas die from Hypoxia, lack of oxygen to the brain, resulting in spasms similar to an epileptic seizure. Because of the straps, involuntary body movements are restrained. Seconds after the prisoner first inhales, he or she will feel himself or herself unable to breathe but will not lose consciousness immediately.
“The person is unquestionably experiencing pain and extreme anxiety,” according to Dr. Richard Traystman of Johns Hopkins University. “The pain begins immediately and is felt in the arms, shoulders, back, and chest. The sensation is similar to the pain felt by an individual during a heart attack, where essentially the heat is being deprived of oxygen.”
The prisoner usually loses consciousness between one and three minutes after the gas hits their face and the doctor will pronounce them dead in approximately 10 to 12 minutes. An exhaust fan then sucks the gas out of the chamber. Next the corpse is sprayed with ammonia, which neutralizes any traces of cyanide that remain. After half an hour, orderlies come into the chamber, wearing gas masks and rubber gloves. Their training manual advises them to ruffle the victim’s hair to remove any trapped cyanide gas before removing him or her.
Death machines have always served as a grim harbinger of the lethal punishment society has devised for convicted criminals. Whether a primitive, hands-on approach is administered, resulting in a painful death for the accused, the idea remained the same—to scare the public into submission and help curtail violent behavior.
