On 14th July every year the French have a national holiday to celebrate Bastille Day. Back in 1789 an angry mob took that famous prison by storm and then proceeded to execute somewhere between 18,000 – 40,000 people on the guillotine.
Halifax’s gibbet
Long before the French method of disposing of their aristocrats in this manner, a West Yorkshire town had built its own form of the automated axe. The Halifax gibbet was first recorded as doing its grisly job as early as 1286; John of Dalton was the person who lost his head on that occasion. One of the gibbet’s early admirers was James Morton, the 4th Earl of Morton and Regent of Scotland, who spotted it when he was visiting Halifax.
Copied in Edinburgh
At the Earl’s suggestion, the Provost and Magistrates of Edinburgh had a similar contraption built and used in the city in 1564 during the reign of Mary Queen of Scots. Ironically Morton lost his own head on it when he was executed for his part in the murder of Mary Queen of Scots’ first husband, Lord Darnley.
The German version
In Germany they had a device which was known as the Fallbeil (‘falling axe’) where it was used in various regions from around the 19th century. A later version executed over 16,000 prisoners between 1933 and 1945. Similar contraptions were also used in the 18th and 19th centuries in Belgium and as late as the 20th century in Greece, Sweden and Switzerland.
Is he dead?
This method of execution was considered much more humane than hacking a head off with an axe or sword. But was it? The question arose as to how long the brain in a severed head actually retained consciousness. A Dr. Beaurieux decided to watch an execution and see if he could detect any sign of life in the head afterwards.
Hello there
As he appeared to get a response when he called the dead man’s name, he reached the conclusion that there was still some consciousness for quite a few seconds after the head had parted company with the body.
And what’s more …
Some five centuries after the introduction of the Halifax gibbet to the world, the Murder Act of 1752 was enacted “for better preventing the horrid crime of murder”. It included a clause precluding the murderer’s body from being buried which stated “in no case whatsoever shall the body of any murderer be suffered to be buried”, instead the remains had to either be publicly dissected or hung in chains.
Be warned
Most gibbets were sited somewhere conspicuous, like crossroads or on common land, and consisted of a scaffold of some sort. The criminal was either hanged from it using a rope noose and left there as a warning to others, or hanged elsewhere and then the dead body would be chained or put into a metal cage and left hanging there for all to see while the body decomposed.
That’s entertainment!
Far from being a macabre event, these executions attracted large audiences who saw them as a form of entertainment. For example 40,000 people were thought to have turned up to look at the remains of a chap called Spence Broughton as it dangled in chains on Attercliffe Common near Sheffield.
