Now, I realize that alot of movies and t.v. shows about the old west is just fiction, but some of it has to be accurate, right?
Why is it that in every western when a guy is sentenced to hang, the men in town had to build the gallows, spending days sawing, hammering, etc. Didn’t they have a gallows up from the last guy? And wouldn’t it been easier to tie him to a post and shoot him? Are there any statistics about how many people actually hanged during that era. I have a feeling it’s a lot less than Gunsmoke & Bananza suggests.
In the very early days, most towns had a conveniently-shaped and -located “hangin’ tree.” By the mid-19th century, though, smaller towns had portable gallows, easily set up when needed, and larger towns had a permanent gallows in the jailyard.
I don’t know about local records . . . Of course, lynchings weren’t set down as “legal hangings.”
IANA historian, but having done some reading in the past, I believe that hanging was the most common form of capital punishment in the US during the late 1800’s. This is before the electric chair of course. We tend to think of the “Wild West” as a time of complete lawlessness where people were shot down in cold blood routinely or dragged out of a saloon and hanged on the spot. But I believe that’s far from the truth.
While shootouts certainly happened and have been documented… their was a crimimal justice system in effect at the time and law enforcement tried to capture and hold any prisoners until a circuit judge could be brought into town to hear the charges and, if necessary, hold a trial.
If the prisoner was charged with a capital crime… say murder… and was convicted during a trial they would be hanged. But this wasn’t an everyday occurance so they would have to hire a hangman to come into town, erect a suitable platform, and hang the convicted person “legally”… usually publically as a deterrant to others.
Once the hanging was completed, and after a doctor had declared the person dead, they would cut them down and bury them while later they tear down the scaffold. They were intended to be temporary not permenant fixtures. Again, I don’t think hangings were a monthly, let alone a weekly occurance so why would you keep these things around anyway?
Lining someone up on the side of the road and shooting them wasn’t considered a humane method of killing someone. If you were hanged your neck would snap and your would be dead almost instantly.
Well, I know Judge Isaac Parker (the hanging judge) employed his own hangman, George Maledon. Gallows aren’t that expensive to construct, and hanging was seen as a “humane” death.
<<<Quote by dolphinboy “If you were hanged your neck would snap and your would be dead almost instantly.”>>>
This is only if a professional did it correctly. In areas where hangings weren’t done regularly the person would often strangle to death. I’ve read where occasionally a kind-hearted person would grab the legs of the strangling person and pull to try to snap the neck and finish the job.
There have also been rumors that some novice hangmen who didn’t want to make the victim suffer would let the condemned man drop further than necessary. If dropped too far the force of the snap would decapitate the condemned.
I’ve also heard that the condemed prisoner, or more likely their relatives, would be asked to provide the hangman some kind of gratuity which they would then gladly pay. The idea being that if the hangman did a sloppy job the condemed might strangle to death for a few minutes or be decapitated which would certainly make an open casket funeral more challenging. The more money you paid, the better chance it would be a “clean job”. Whether this is true or an UL is anyone’s guess…
Having read the biography of one of the UK’s most prolific hangmen, Albert Pierrepoint, it seems that the classic ‘hangmans knot’ is nothing of the sort, it is more a decorative sort of arrangement, though who would appreciate the design is open to question.
The objective of hanging was to break the neck on the drop and when this was done it was probably more humane than other forms of execution, the closest other being the Halifax gibbet - more popularly and innacurately called the guillotine.
Setting the drop too long and thus decapitating the victim was a very rare occurance and definately preferable to the mid-European method of simply winching the victim from their feet, causing strangulation, and allowing relatives to grab ther legs in hope of a less drawn out death.
There are still plenty of places in the UK that pass under the soubriquet of gibbet hill, there is a book that may possibly be found on the net with a table of body weights and the drop required to achieve satisfactory neck breakage.
Having lived in the town that hanged Black Jack Ketchum, Clayton, New Mexico, one of the more famous hangings in the Old West, I can testify that they had to build a new gallows for the “event” because they had hanged no other person other previously. This was despite some very bad characters being (almost said “hanging”)around.
The lack of practice in executions by rope could account for their tearing Black Jack’s head off in their first attempt. After that rather gruesome result, they never hanged another bad guy.
Local history claims that when they buried Ketchum, they buried his head in a different location from his body. They say that the townspeople felt guilty about that and put the head in with the body a few years later. In the 1960s they encased the casket in concrete, because people kept trying to dig up the deseased and steal the head.