The Executioner Always Chops Twice: Ghastly Blunders on the Scaffold

by Geoffrey Abbott

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466838147
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/03/2004
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Geoffrey Abbott served for many years as a Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London. Author of sixteen books and contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica, he has made numerous television appearances. He lives in London.

Geoffrey Abbott formerly worked for the RSPB. He now lectures part-time for the Field Studies Council. He is responsible for the plants and insects sections of the RSPB Handbook of Garden Wildlife.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	9
Part 1	Methods of Torture and Execution	13
Part 2	The Unfortunate Victims	43
	Axe	43
	Boiled in Oil	59
	Branding	60
	Burned at the Stake	66
	Electric Chair	73
	Firing Squad	85
	Gas Chamber	91
	Guillotine	92
	Hanging	102
	Lethal Injection	209
	Sword	212
	The Wheel	229
	A Happy Ending?	233
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