Judicial executions / by John J. de Zouche Marshall.

  • Marshall, John James de Zouche.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Judicial executions / by John J. de Zouche Marshall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    JUDICIA A” ^ By John J. de Z JiepHnted from The XIONS. Marsh ALvl-, ^OURNA iS .R.C.S.I. >ber 6th, 188S. ETC. in connection %vith the e profession the suggestions ^Iy name having been for execution of criminals, I am anxi?Hh|^^' which I have had the honour of laying*l!»rfeW«d;6rd Aberdare’s Capital Sentences Committee,and also some of the evidence, as well as the recommendations contain- ed in the report of tliat distinguished body ; thereby submitting to the physiologists of the country an issue on which they are so competent to decide. The subject of hanging seems never to have received any scientific attention until the year 1875, w’hen an important meeting of the Surgical Society of Ireland was held at the College of Surgeons in Dublin, which was attended by many surgeons who had experience in gaol executions, and to which Professor Samuel Haughton submitted his famous tables, regulating the length of the drop in proportion to the weight of the criminal, founded on his mathematical principles of animal mechanics. Up to then the “long drop,” even to the extent of 17 feet, was “ traditional in Irish goals,” while at the same time in England the custom of Calcraft, who held office until 1874, was to allow from 2 to 2J, and never more than 3 feet drop. In Ireland, two executions took place in 1865 and 1870, the culprits being about the same weight, list. 61bs.,and getting the same fearful drop of 14J feet, the knot being placed beliind (“ suboccipital ”). The second was decapitated, and the first, nearly so, which is not surprising. That no more decapitations occurred or were reported must be due to the employment of a much thicker rope than that now in use (J in.) In 1874 Marwood succeeded Calcraft, and went in for the long drop, being guided, it is supposed, by Dr. Haughton’s tables, though I have not the smallest belief in an executioner being guided by anything save his own ignorant vanity, which points to himself alone as the authority. The most important point in the whole proceeding is admitted by experts to be the position of the knot or eye, which has often been placed at the back of the head (“ suboccipital ”), but is now invariably put under the left ear (“ subaural ”), though every surgical work that mentions the subject states that the “ submental,” that under the chin, is the most deadly position. The members of Lord Aberdare’s Com- mittee seem to be in favour of this submental knot, as I intend to show, but, strange to say, “ they never mention it ” in the recommendations of their report, simply con- tenting themselves by laying down a scale of long drops to be used with the subaural knot, plus brute force much in excess of anything I have ever seen Berry use, even at Newgate. The Committee give as the chief reason for their attachment to the barbarous “long drop ” that it is better to risk the shock to the public with^painless decapitations than to risk painful suffocations. I should say “ by all means, that is, if I was as strong an advocate of the total abolition of capital punishment as the noble Chairman is suspected of being, he having (it is said) reprieved every convicted murderer during his tenure of the Home Secretaryship. Now suffocation has never been proved to be so very painful, the opposite being more likely from the fact of suicides by hanging always giving themselves as short a drop as possible, and never (probably owing to the sudden supervention of apoplectic unconsciousness) rescuing themselves by the many means generally at hand. Besides, it is quite possible for insensibility from concussion to take place with suffocation, as I saw at Winchester (a culprit named Whelan, weighing thirteen stone, getting a drop of but four feet). I This Committee on Capital Sentences was appointed in January. i886, by Sir Richard A. Cross, the Home Secretary, and consisted of Lord Aberdare, G.C.B., Chairman ; Sir Henry Selwin Ibbetson, Bart., M.P.; Sir Frederick Bramwell, F.R.S. ; the Rev. Professor Haughton, F.R.S.; and Dr. Gover, Medical Inspector of Prisons, and having the most courteous of secretaries in Major Alien Beamish, R.E.