The executioner always chops twice
The executioner always chops twice: ghastly blunders on the scaffold Geoffrey Abbott
Publisher: New York : St. Martin's Press, 2004.
ISBN: 0312325630
DDC: 364.66
LCC: HV8551
Summary:
A morbidly fascinating mixture of bungled executions, strange last
requests, and classic final one-liners from medieval times to the
present day. Sometimes it's hard to be an executioner, trying to keep
someone from popping up to make a quip when they should have
spectacularly sunk without a trace. Or to be told that the condemned
to the guillotine won't have a last drink for fear of "completely
losing his head." The business of death can be absurd, and nothing
illustrates this better than these tales of the gruesome and frankly
ridiculous ways in which a number of ill-fated unfortunates met (or
failed to meet) their maker. Did you know: When Sir Thomas More was
ordered to position his head on the block, he said "though you have
warrant to cut off my head, you have none to cut off my beard?" When
the guillotine took three strokes to sever the neck of Isabeau
Herman, the mob attempted to stone the executioner to death for
cruelty? After the English hanged the pirate Captain Kidd they
chained his body to a stake on the Thames River as a warning to
seafarers? From the strange to the gruesome, from the weird to the
completely unbelievable, The Executioner Always Chops Twice is
popular history at its best: witty, lively, and wonderfully bizarre.
Notes:
Originally published: Chichester, West Sussex: Summersdale, c2002.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [240]).
Methods of torture and execution -- Unfortunate victims -- Axe --
Boiled in oil -- Branding -- Burned at the stake -- Electric chair --
Firing squad -- Gas chamber -- Guillotine -- Hanging -- Lethal
injection -- Sword -- Wheel -- Happy ending? -- Select bibliography.
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