Death Penalty in The World; Brief History of Cruelest Method Ever Used

                    Decades of fierce debate over the death penalty in modern society has at least led some people to realize that man has shown plenty of imagination in thinking out means of execution, from Persian “boat death” to Turkish impaling. But whether the cruelest executions serve as deterrent has never been really settled. The French deputy Dr Guillotine who in 1789 suggested a machine to cut off heads did so because he felt the executioner’s axe was too brutal and messy. Three years later another deputy also a physician, Dr Louis perfected the machine into the guillotine we know today. The story that Dr Guillotine was executed by his own machine is inaccurate. In fact he survived the revolution. The guillotine, in the past half-a dozen years, has been used with growing rarity. Death sentences are still handed down by French criminal courts but presidential reprieves have almost halted executions in France.

                   Britain always uses the gallows, with the hangman being   supplied for a number of generations by the Pierre -point family. When this British system was used to execute German war prisoners sentenced by American tribunals, an American army master -sergeant was the hangman. This started off a bizarre rivalry between English and American “school of hanging”, with the English looking on the American   method as slow strangulating instead of the “drop” breaking the spinal cord and causing instant death.  The Kaiser’s Germany the Weimar Republic and the Nazi Third Reich in peace time all used the same method of execution-the axe. Two young German women caught spying for Poland some years before the war were both decapitated. The Spanish garofe is generally considered a medieval form of execution.  The victim is strapped into a chair with his back to a wooden post. An iron collar is put around the man’s neck and he is slowly and painfully choked to death as it tightened. But this form of death is almost pleasurable when compared to execution practiced by Persians and described by Plutarch.

                “Two boats are chosen, of equal size, and one is up ended over the other. The criminal is put in one of them, with his head, arms and legs hanging over the side. The rest of the body is covered by the boats. He is then stuffed with foods. If he refuses to eat, he is forced to eat by needles piercing his eyes. After he has eaten the food, he is covered with a mixture of milk and honey which is also carefully wiped over his face. As he is put under a blazing sun, his face is soon covered with flies until it is no longer visible. Meanwhile his bodily functions are operating in the interior of the boat and he is soon covered in his own excrement and urine. Worms and insects soon cover his entire body and he is literally eaten alive. When the boats are separated, the man is dead”.

                The Turkish method of impaling people condemned to death either on an iron or wooden stake was exported by them throughout the Balkans in the middle ages. Some local rulers thought nothing of impaling 1000 people at a time and they died in excruciating pain after three or four days of suffering.