"Gallows A gallows (or scaffold) is a frame, typically wooden, from which objects can be hung or “weighed.” Gallows were thus widely used for public weighing scales for large objects such as sacks of grain or minerals, usually positioned in markets or toll gates. The term was also used for a framework from which an ship’s anchor might be raised so that it no longer sat on the bottom, i.e., “weighing [the] anchor.” In modern usage it has come to mean almost exclusively a scaffold or gibbet used for execution by hanging. Public weighing gallows were often large permanent tripods"
"gallows to be constructed in the United Kingdom. The last officially operational gallows in the United Kingdom (as several remained unofficially in other prisons), at Wandsworth Prison, was removed in 1994. Salvaged parts from it are currently in the possession of the National Galleries of Justice, having previously been at the HM Prison Service museum. Japan has seven execution chambers used to kill condemned criminals. One is at the Tokyo Detention House. Hanging is Japan's method of execution. The execution chamber in Tokyo has a trap door. As the condemned dies, his or her body falls into a room below"
"be permanent to act as a deterrent and grim symbol of the power of high justice (the French word for gallows, ""potence"", stems from the Latin word ""potentia"", meaning ""power""). Many old prints of European cities show such a permanent gallows erected on a prominent hill outside the walls, or more commonly near the castle or other seat of justice. In the modern era the gallows were often installed inside a prison; freestanding on a scaffold in the yard, erected at ground level over a pit, enclosed in a small shed of stone, brick or wood, built into the gallery"
"of a prison wing (with the beam resting in brackets on opposite walls), or in a purpose-built execution suite of rooms within the wing. Gallows can also be temporary. In some of the cases, they were even moved to the location of the crime. In England, pirates were typically executed using a temporary gallows, at low tide in the intertidal zone, then left for the sea to wash over them during the following high tides. John the Painter was hanged in 1777 from the mizzenmast of HMS Arethusa for arson in royal dockyards, the highest temporary gallows erected in British"
"Jewish underground sentenced to death were executed in Acre. The British, fearful of the Jewish reaction to executions in the holy city, never used the gallows for Jews. In each cell, one prisoner was appointed supervisor and given a bed. Prisoners from the Jewish underground were put to work making coffins and gravestones for British policemen and soldiers who had been killed in attacks by Jewish underground groups. As the guards used to tell them, ""What you start on the outside, you finish on the inside."" The wire fence, bars and inscription ""Central Prison Jerusalem"" on the door are from"
"branch"". This points to the earlier execution style in which a person sentenced to death had been tied to a bent-down tree and then released. With the beginning of Christianization, Ulfilas used the term ""galga"" in his Gothic Testament to refer to the cross of Christ, until the using of the Latin term (crux = cross) prevailed. Gallows can take several forms: Occasionally, improvised gallows were used, usually by hanging the condemned from a tree or street light. Hangings from such improvised gallows are usually lynchings rather than judicial executions. In Afghanistan, Taliban used football goals as gallows. Gallows may"
"a broken neck rather than through strangulation, especially if extra weights were fixed to their ankles. During the era of public execution in London, England, a prominent gallows stood at Tyburn, on what is now Marble Arch. Later executions occurred outside Newgate Prison, where the Old Bailey now stands. Gallows A gallows (or scaffold) is a frame, typically wooden, from which objects can be hung or “weighed.” Gallows were thus widely used for public weighing scales for large objects such as sacks of grain or minerals, usually positioned in markets or toll gates. The term was also used for a"
"purpose-built gallows 33 ft high in Saffron Lane near the Aylestone Tollgate. According to ""The Newgate Calendar"": Although the practice of gibbeting had been abandoned by 1834 in Britain, during the British Raj of India in 1843, Charles James Napier threatened to have such structures built in parallel to any attempt to practice Sati, the ritualized burning of widows, to execute the perpetrators. Citations References Gibbeting A gibbet is any instrument of public execution (including guillotine, executioner's block, impalement stake, hanging gallows, or related scaffold), but gibbeting refers to the use of a gallows-type structure from which the dead or"
"Coci and Jonus Novotny, Czechoslovakian immigrants, were hanged for the murder of a taxi driver. The gallows were constructed especially for this execution, in the infirmary. A pit was dug into the floor at one end of the building, with brick walls either side to support the beam. A small trapdoor and flight of steps led down into the pit for the doctor to examine the bodies after the drop. The prisoners were held in wire cages at the other end of the infirmary prior to execution. The gallows remain on public view, and visitors can push the lever that"
"refers to the gallows for hanging men; the fossa was a ditch filled with water for the drowning of women. As previously stated, the hereditary right of high justice survived until 1747 when it was removed from the barons and from the holders of Regalities and sheriffdoms, by the Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746. It is not clear that the moot hill was also the actual site of executions; folklore, tradition and the association of separate 'gallow' places names with moot hills on balance suggests that the usual place of execution was a separate 'gallows hill'. At Gardyne Law however"
"privately owned and considered ""common lands"", leading some writers to misinterpret this as being the Boston Common. The gallows consisted of nothing more than a large elm tree. Here the prisoners would step up a ladder with one end of a rope about their neck and the other end secured to the tree, and the ladder would then be pulled away. William Robinson was the first of the three to mount the ladder, and when he was positioned he made a statement to the crowd, then died when the ladder was removed. Marmaduke Stephenson was the next to hang, and"
"were executed. Although the American army was 90% white, 10 of the 18 men hanged there were black and three were Hispanic. The Americans constructed a small, two-storey building containing a gallows (of identical design to those used in British prisons) adjoining one of the prison wings. The flat-roofed execution block has a single window, approximately one metre above the trap-door. There is an external wooden door on the ground floor which gives access to the area underneath the trapdoor. It was through this door that the bodies of executed prisoners were removed. The barred steel mortuary door, located below"
"Dungeon A dungeon is a room or cell in which prisoners are held, especially underground. Dungeons are generally associated with medieval castles, though their association with torture probably belongs more to the Renaissance period. An oubliette or bottle dungeon is a form of dungeon which is accessible only from a hatch or hole (an ""angstloch"") in a high ceiling. The word ""dungeon"" comes from French ""donjon"" (also spelled ""dongeon""), which means ""keep"", the main tower of a castle. The first recorded instance of the word in English was near the beginning of the 14th century when it held the same"
"Pillory The pillory is a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, formerly used for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse. The pillory is related to the stocks. The word is documented in English since 1274 (attested in Anglo-Latin from c. 1189), and stems from Old French ""pellori"" (1168; modern French ""pilori"", see below), itself from medieval Latin ""pilloria"", of uncertain origin, perhaps a diminutive of Latin ""pila"" ""pillar, stone barrier"". Rather like the lesser punishment called the stocks, the pillory consisted of hinged"
"execution was a form of entertainment at the time, and people came out to watch them as they would to a sporting event today. Newspapers reported details such as condemned men's last words, the prayers said by the priests, and descriptions of their final moments in the gallows. In England most of these executions took place at Execution Dock on the River Thames in London. In the cases of more famous prisoners, usually captains, their punishments extended beyond death. Their bodies were enclosed in iron cages (gibbet) (for which they were measured before their execution) and left to swing in"
"Gallows Corner Gallows Corner is a major road junction near Romford, England. It was the site of the gallows of the Liberty of Havering. During the 18th century, Gallows Corner was a lonely country crossroads and a favourite spot for waylaying coaches. It was close to the site for the gallows, thought to have been located north of what is now Eastern Avenue East, on a grassy stretch below Masefield Crescent. The place of execution was then the gallows at Gallows Corner. There are several entries in the Romford Registers of burials of felons who were executed there in the"
"of execution. The term later came to refer specifically to a cross. The English term ""crucifix"" derives from the Latin ""crucifixus"" or ""cruci fixus"", past participle passive of ""crucifigere"" or ""cruci figere"", meaning ""to crucify"" or ""to fasten to a cross"". Crucifixion was most often performed to dissuade its witnesses from perpetrating similar (usually particularly heinous) crimes. Victims were sometimes left on display after death as a warning to any other potential criminals. Crucifixion was usually intended to provide a death that was particularly slow, painful (hence the term ""excruciating"", literally ""out of crucifying""), gruesome, humiliating, and public, using whatever"
"lease granted by the Bishop of London, this is particularly mentioned"""". Tyburn was primarily known for its gallows, which functioned as the main execution site for London-area prisoners from the 16th through to the 18th centuries. For those people found guilty of capital crimes who could not get a pardon, which accounted for approximately 40%, a probable destiny was to be hanged at Tyburn. Other contemporary methods of punishment that may have been used as alternatives to Tyburn included execution, followed by being hung in chains, where the crime was committed; or burning at the stake; and being drawn and"
"of land extending into the Menai Strait about a mile west of the town. Gallows Point had originally been called ""Osmund's Eyre"" but was renamed when the town gallows was erected there – along with a ""Dead House"" for the corpses of criminals dispatched in public executions. Later, hangings were carried out at the town gaol and the bodies buried in a lime-pit within the curtilage of the gaol. One of the last prisoners to hang at Beaumaris issued a curse before he died – decreeing that if he was innocent the four faces of the church clock would never"
"there is a painted representation of the Ten Commandments. The words to the sixth commandment use the unusual translation of ""thou shalt do no murder"" rather than ""thou shalt not kill,"" the more common interpretation in the Church of England. Given that the gallows were still in regular use, it was felt that ""thou shalt not kill"" would have been hypocritical. The Catholic Chapel was put into the upper northern Association Ward in 1861. The floor has evidence of its former use for communal prisoner accommodation, in the form of mortices for hammock rails and a convict painted mural which"
"captured from Jewish underground organizations, Jews sentenced to death were sent to Acre prison for the actual executions. The British, fearful of the Jewish reaction to executions in the Holy City, never used the gallows of the prison for Jews. Prisoners from the Jewish underground organizations were often put to work making coffins and gravestones for the very same British policemen and soldiers they had killed. As the guards used to tell them, ""What you start on the outside, you finish on the inside."" The building houses now the Underground Prisoners Museum. The barbed wire fence, bars and inscription ""Central"
"thus be hanged at once, and so the gallows were used for mass executions, such as on 23 June 1649 when 24 prisoners—23 men and one woman—were hanged simultaneously, having been conveyed there in eight carts. The Tree stood in the middle of the roadway, providing a major landmark in west London and presenting a very obvious symbol of the law to travellers. After executions, the bodies would be buried nearby or in later times removed for dissection by anatomists. The crowd would sometimes fight over a body with surgeons, by fear that dismemberment could prevent the resurrection of the"
"history. The only surviving New Drop gallows in the UK are in Rutland County Museum. The gallows were portable and were set up at the gaol (jail) when needed. These gallows were first used in 1813 to hang two burglars. The New Drop design was not very effective as the drop was too short to break the neck cleanly. If a crime took place inside, gallows were sometimes erected—and the criminal hanged—at the front door. In some cases of multiple offenders it was not uncommon to erect multiple temporary gallows, with one noose per condemned criminal. In one case a"
"recorded in 1322 as ""Strangwas"" from the Anglo-Saxon ""Strang"" and ""gewæsc"" meaning ""[a place by] a stream with a strong current"". The prison was open to male and female prisoners until 1963 when the facility became male-only, and in 1980 it began to accept remand prisoners. As of 2005 the prison held more than 1,200 inmates. Originally, the prison contained an execution shed in B wing and after World War I a special execution room and cell for the condemned criminal was built. Strangeways was one of the few prisons to have permanent gallows. The first execution at Strangeways was"
"Beaurieux, who observed the head of executed prisoner Henri Languille, on 28 June 1905: During the span of its usage, the French guillotine has gone by many names, some of which include these: Guillotine A guillotine (; ) is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame in which a weighted and angled blade is raised to the top and suspended. The condemned person is secured with stocks at the bottom of the frame, positioning the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, to quickly fall and"
"for the crime of murder. Their names, ages and dates of execution are: Note: The execution of Jones & Mackintosh in 1949 was notable for being a double hanging i.e. both condemned men were executed simultaneously, whilst standing together on the same gallows. Jones & Mackintosh had committed unrelated murders. Double executions were already rare in the UK and the practice ended in 1952. The remains of all executed prisoners were buried in unmarked graves within the prison walls, as was customary. In April 2002, an inspection report from Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons condemned conditions for inmates at"
"in market squares, posts and cross beams, or a cantilevered beam projecting from the side of a building adjoining a market or toll gate or point, usually with a fixed hook for supporting the weighing scales. For anchors and other hanging points gallows could have many designs, but crucially project the hanging point perpendicularly away from a wall, object or ship’s hull so that objects hanging or weighing from the gallows are unlikely to come into contact and damage the perpendicular surface. The term ""gallows"" was derived from a Proto-Germanic word ""galgô"" which refers to a ""pole"", ""rod"" or ""tree"
"minister would also preach a sermon to the crowd that had gathered to watch the execution. Historian Louis P. Masur wrote, """"The ritual of execution day required that condemned prisoners demonstrate publicly that they were penitent, and the execution sermons repeatedly pounded the chord of penitence."""" In an ideal situation the convicted would confess to their crime, alleviating worry from the community that they were sending an unprepared soul to the next life. Elizabeth Howe, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good, Sarah Wildes and Susanna Martin were hanged on July 19, 1692, and buried in a crevice on Gallows hill. Nineteen people"
"tied; in other cases the condemned had to walk down a ladder that was then withdrawn. Many moot hills are located near to rivers or wetlands. In Norse law the reason was that men were sent to Wodan, and women were given to Ran (a sea goddess) or Hel. In Norse tradition the pit and gallows stood on the west of the moot-places or the prince's hall ready for use. The 'furca and fossa', or the 'pit and gallows', refers to the high justice including the capital penalty. The furca was a device for hanging slaves in ancient Rome and"
"defence. He was sentenced to death and hanged an hour after the trial at Winchester public gallows. His body was then taken to the scene of his crime and hung in chains from a gibbet erected in his home parish of Arreton. The gibbet was built at a cost of six pounds and five shillings by local wheelwright, John Phillips. It was positioned on a Bronze Age barrow (since known as Michal Morey's Hump) near a crossroads on Gallows Hill at the end of Burnthouse Lane. The gibbet-post now forms a prominent roof beam, over 22 feet in length, in"
"were kept in a concrete-floored cell in New Division. They were vigilantly observed to prevent them escaping their sentence through suicide. With hangings taking place on Monday mornings, at 8:00 am, condemned prisoners were woken three hours earlier, and provided with a last meal, shower, and clean clothes. Afterwards, handcuffed, they were moved to a holding or ""condemned cell"" nearby the gallows, and allowed a couple of sips of brandy to calm their nerves. Shortly before 8:00 am, they were hooded, led up to the execution chamber, which could hold as many as eleven witnesses, stood over the trap door,"
"sleep."" As Delaware had not carried out a hanging in 50 years, it sought advice from corrections officials at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington, where hangings had recently been performed. The wooden gallows were built on the grounds of the Delaware Correctional Center at Smyrna in 1986, prior to a January 9, 1987 execution date for Bailey which was stayed. The structure required renovation and strengthening before Bailey could be executed on it. The platform housing the trap door was from the ground and accessed by 23 steps. Delaware used an execution protocol written by Fred Leuchter. This"
"executions were carried out in the United Kingdom for any of these offences after the abolition of the death penalty for murder. Nevertheless, there remained a working gallows at HMP Wandsworth, London, until 1994, which was tested every six months until 1992. This gallows is now housed in the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham. England and in the United Kingdom: on 13 August 1964, Peter Anthony Allen, at Walton Prison in Liverpool, and Gwynne Owen Evans, at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, were executed for the murder of John Alan West on 7 April that year. Scotland: Henry John Burnett, 21,"