- 160 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Judicial hanging is regarded by many as being the quintessentially British execution. However, many other methods of capital punishment have been used in this country; ranging from burning, beheading and shooting to crushing and boiling to death. Execution: A History of Capital Punishment in Britain explores these types of execution in detail. Readers may be surprised to learn that a means of mechanical decapitation, the Halifax Gibbet, was being used in England five hundred years before the guillotine was invented. Boiling to death was a prescribed means of execution in this country during the Tudor period. From the public death by starvation of those gibbeted alive, to the burning of women for petit treason, this book examines some of the most gruesome passages of British history. This carefully researched, well-illustrated and enthralling text will appeal to those interested in the history of British executions.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Beheading By Sword, Axe And Rope
- 2 The Rise of Hanging
- 3 Mechanical Decapitation: A British Invention
- 4 Shot at Dawn: The British Firing Squad at Work
- 5 Burning at the Stake
- 6 The Bloody Code: The Heyday of British Hanging
- 7 Drawing and Quartering: Variations on the Theme of Hanging
- 8 The Nineteenth Century: The Birth of Modern Hanging
- 9 Lesser Known Methods of British Execution: Crushing, Breaking and Boiling to Death
- 10 Unofficial Death Sentences: Flogging and the Pillory
- 11 The Twentieth Century: The Decline of the Death Penalty in Britain
- 12 The End of Capital Punishment in Britain
- 13 A Gallery of British Executioners
- Bibliography
- Copyright