Question on a 1926 Baltimore hanging

Factual Questions
1

I’m reading a book on US crime in the 1920s and one of the chapters deals with a jewel thief and murderer called Richard Whittemore, known as the Candy Kid. He was sentenced to death for the murder of a prison guard and hanged in Baltimore on August 13th, 1926. So far so clear but it’s the following which prompts my question:

15 minutes? The technique known as the Long Drop, which caused the neck to break and resulted in instant death, was introduced by British hangman William Marwood in 1872. I had assumed that this method would be standard practice in hanging by the 20th century, certainly in a country such as the US.

There is no indication in the book that this was a botched hanging so my question is in states which executed by hanging was the Long Drop used? Or was gradual death by strangulation on he rope considered part of the punishment? 15 minutes must seem a lifetime to a man dangling on the end of a rope.

2

One of the Capote films of a few years back (the one with Sandra Bullock and Daniel Craig), had a similar scene: Craig’s character took the long drop but didn’t expire immediately.

Not to be a pisher, but the quote doesn’t say he hung there 15 minutes, you have to get the vic down, lay him out on exam table and the doctor has to verify cease of heartbeat; that alone can take several minutes.

[Moderator Note: spoiler tags added for movie Dancing in the Dark.]

In Dancing In The Dark, Björk has to take the drop, and she is strapped into some heavy board, I assume for added weight.

In retrospect, probably not much help. :o

3

I searched two weeks of newspapers about the hanging and found no one remarking anything about botched or anything out of the ordinary.

Probably as burpo suggests.

4

Colibri, thank you for inserting the spoiler tags and covering my a$$; it never occurred to me. This getting old malarkey is for the birds.

5

I have never gained the impression that American executions up to the middle of the 20th century were purposed to minimize suffering.

Nowadays, thank God, it’s all very different.

6

Death in a long drop hanging isn’t instantaneous.

If done properly, the drop breaks the upper neck vertibrae, crushing or severing the spinal cord. This causes an instant loss of consciousness. If the phrenic nerve is severed, breathing stops immediately. If not, the rope often constricts the breathing passageway enough to cause asphyxia. The carotid arteries and jugular veins are constricted, resulting in brain death within a few (maybe 5 or 6) minutes of the drop.

Death in hanging is usually measured by when the heart stops. The heart has its own internal pacemaker and can beat just fine without any signals from the brain. The heart will usually continue to beat for anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes, but can continue for 20 minutes or longer.

The hanging as described in the OP sounds normal.

It may have taken 15 minutes for the heart to stop, but the man was unconscious from the moment his neck snapped.

7

Now I know who to ask when the subject of consciousness after decapitation come up again. :smiley:

8

Ironically, that’s what brought me to the SDMB in the first place. I saw a TV show about capital punishment and they made the claim that some guy was guillotined and blinked some odd number of times, which I was a bit skeptical about. I went searching on the net to find out the truth about it and stumbled across Cecil’s article on decapitation. Then I started reading Cecil’s other articles and I was hooked.