Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (46 page)

SWORD

‘[W]hen placed on the stone, his head turned several times as if it wanted to look about it, moved its tongue and opened its mouth as if it wanted to speak, for a good half-quarter hour…’

What is more practical, when a criminal had to be executed, than to utilise a weapon that nearly every man carried – a sword. Perhaps not exactly the elegant weapon needed for self-defence, and definitely not a rapier, but rather a heavy-duty model similar to that used in battle. And so the execution sword was born.

The specifications were few but vital. It had to be finely balanced to ensure accuracy in its trajectory, with a long grip, both hands being needed to wield it; it should be heavy, so as to increase the momentum as it was swung, and had to be capable of being honed to razor sharpness. The handle’s covering needed to be of a non-slip material, and at its other extremity the tip should be rounded and blunt; the executioner wasn’t going to stab his victim to death.

The swords used for executions in Germany in the seventeenth century fulfilled these requirements to perfection, as an inspection of the two displayed in the Royal Armouries will prove. One, dating from about 1602, has a fig-shaped pommel and a button of brass gilt, and still retains the original leather on its two-handed grip. The blade itself is 31 inches in length and is 2 inches wide, the overall length of the weapon being 39 inches. It weighs 4 pounds 1 ounce, and was manufactured by Clemens Keuller, an expert swordsmith of the day.

The other exquisite weapon is slightly longer, at 43½ inches total length, its blade being 34¼ inches long with a width of 2½ inches; it weighs 4 pounds. Although it was made about 1700, it has worn its years well, the gilding on its brass hilt still discernible. The two-handed grip retains traces of its original covering of fish-scales, the quillons (guards) are straight and, like its death-dealing mate, the sharp edges of the blade are parallel and its tip, too, is rounded.

Near the grip on each side is a ‘fuller’, a wide, longitudinal groove cut along its length, to allow the blood to flow towards the handle and not coagulate on the cutting surfaces. Bordering the fullers are etched floral decorations, together with macabre slogans. On the obverse appears ‘
Wan Ich Dass Schwert thue aufheben, So Wunsche Ich dem suncler das E. leben
’ – ‘Whenever I raise the sword, I wish the sinner an everlasting life’. Near to it is a finely detailed engraving of a companion device which also brought death, the executioner’s wheel on which some criminals were broken.

On the reverse of the blade, next to an engraving of the gallows, is the statement ‘
Die Herren Steuren Dem Unheill, Ich Execuirire Iht Ends Urtheill
’ which, translated from old German, says, ‘The judges check evil, I carry out their capital punishment’.

But the finest sword in the world would have been useless unless wielded by an executioner of the right calibre. He needed to be fit and strong, for the human neck is surprisingly tough; of a dispassionate nature, for obvious reasons; and have an accurate eye coupled with an aversion to intoxicating liquor.

Nuremberg’s much-vaunted executioner, Franz Schmidt, who ruled that city’s scaffold from 1573 to 1617, had all the qualities required for such a demanding role. Tall and well built, intelligent and sober, his general mien was one of dignity and responsibility, traits which, however, did not endear him to the Teutonic man in the
Strasse
. As in most countries, executioners were viewed with contempt and repugnance, and Franz was no exception, though he performed his duties as competently and efficiently as he could.

With his years of office he developed great skill, experience teaching him how to cope with victims facing death. Sometimes their stance, not being tied, gave them so much freedom of movement that they would flinch or sway, so requiring more than one stroke. Yet in most cases the culprits asked to be beheaded ‘as a favour’, for hanging, also administered by Schmidt, was considered disgraceful and was generally reserved for thieves and other common criminals. Such a favour was granted in 1609 out of regard for a felon’s two daughters, who complained that their fiancés would refuse to marry them if their late father had been hanged and not beheaded!

Until 1513 some criminals, and the majority of adulterous women, were buried alive, but in that year public outrage at the penalty grew, and so it was abolished, its place being taken by drowning the victims instead. This method in turn was replaced, where women criminals were concerned, by decapitation, the heads of those guilty of child-murder being nailed over the gallows.

This latter decree, whereby women should be beheaded rather than drowned, was instigated by Schmidt, who regarded it as a more merciful end. If nothing else, it was at least quicker. In advocating that, he ran a considerable risk for, as was pointed out to him by one of his critics, ‘these females, through timidity, might fall to the ground and thus hinder the executioner, who might then be obliged to finish them off as they lay prone on the earth’.

Strange to say, not all death sentences were actually carried out. It occasionally happened that some extenuating circumstance would move the judge to mercy. But, by way of warning, the sufferer would still be made to endure the agony of full preparation, to be taken to the scaffold and there hear the terrifying swish as the executioner built up speed with the weapon – then to be respited as, after a few circles with the flashing blade over the victim’s head, the executioner would stop, having left an indelible memory in the felon’s mind.

The very procession itself was enough to daunt the most defiant spirit. On the day of an actual execution the prisoner, preceded by two mounted constables, walked or rode in a horse-drawn cart accompanied by two chaplains. Behind came the executioner’s assistant bearing the pall and a strong drink to hearten the victim and calm his nerves. The magistrate was also present, to ensure that the sentence was correctly complied with, and
en route
the condemned man or woman would halt for the chaplains to give the sacrament.

Should the victims be aged or infirm, chairs were provided in the cart, but such solicitude was not extended to those who had committed heinous crimes; they were drawn to the scaffold on a wooden sledge or an oxhide, such a method of transport threatening to injure the victim severely had not charitable groups deemed it a pious act to walk alongside and support the bound man’s head, thereby preventing it from striking the cobbled and muddy surface of the street.

The whole party was met at the gallows’ gate by the executioner, the master of ceremonies himself. There, a loud proclamation was made, to the effect that should anyone attempt to hinder or to avenge the execution, dire would be the retribution. The door was then unlocked and the prisoner, with some of the officials, would mount the scaffold and stand in full view of the crowd, while the executioner, with calm deliberation, would complete the arrangements. The victim, meanwhile, would declare his innocence or guilt to the public or, if subjected to their abuse, would reply in kind.

No block was used for beheading, for the end of the sword would have struck the block before the blade had penetrated the neck to the fullest extent. The victim had to stand or kneel, although occasionally women were allowed to steady themselves by sitting in a chair.

Tragic errors are bound to happen where the human element is involved. In 1641 one of Schmidt’s successors, Valetin Deusser, lost his job ‘on account of bad workmanship, for he had the misfortune to miss the poor woman being executed, so that she fell down twice from the chair’ (
he
had the misfortune?). And it was reported that on his way home he would have been stoned to death if the town guard had not come to his help in the nick of time.

On other occasions executioners gave the crowd every opportunity to applaud their expertise, as evidenced by one Matthias Perger who, on 20 October 1645, when beheading a man who raised his hands at the crucial moment, took off not only the head but both hands as well!

Franz Schmidt, while not perhaps excelling to that extent, rarely needed to swing his sword a second time. That this was so was testified to by the large number of people who witnessed the executions.

On 26 January 1580 Margaret Dorfflerin, aged 50, together with Elizabeth Ernstin, 22 years old, and Agnes Lengin, also 22, mounted the dreaded steps, having been found guilty of infanticide. Dorfflerin gave birth to her child ‘in the garden behind the fort’, as Schmidt wrote in his diary, and left it lying in the snow so that it froze to death. Ernstin’s baby was found in a trunk, having had its skull crushed in by its mother, and the woman Lengin throttled her infant and buried it in a heap of refuse. All three were executed as murderesses ‘and their heads were nailed above the great scaffold, no woman having been beheaded before this in Nuremberg’.

On 26 August of that year another woman suffered the same fate. Margaret Bockin murdered a woman who asked her to look for lice, whereupon Margaret struck her on the head from behind with a chopper, killing her instantly. Led out to execution on the tumbril, she ascended the scaffold steps, where Schmidt nipped her body twice with the red-hot tongs, then decapitated her with the sword as she stood. He then fixed her head on a pole above, her body being buried beneath the scaffold.

Of the long list of his victims – for during his 44 years of service and extermination he executed no fewer than 360 felons, at least 42 of whom were women – Franz noted in his diary the case of George Schorpff; who was ‘a lecher, guilty of beastliness with four cows, two calves and a sheep. I beheaded him at Velln, his body being afterwards burnt, together with a cow.’

Also that of George Praun, who robbed a youth travelling with him. Later, in Vienna, he stole a pair of white silk stockings from a man, and then a valise containing a blue mantle, a pair of red velvet hose and a white satin doublet. Doubtless in all his finery he kept his enforced rendezvous with Franz, who, after decapitating him, reported ‘when placed on the stone, his head turned several times as if it wanted to look about it, moved its tongue and opened its mouth as if it wanted to speak, for a good half-quarter hour – I have never seen the like of this.’

In 1617 Schmidt retired from beheading, hanging, branding, amputating and flogging members of the criminal fraternity, and settled down in his home town until he died in 1634. Despite his calling, he was given a dignified funeral, the service being attended by many of the city officials and councillors as a mark of respect for his services to the community.

Not all his successors deserved such honours, especially he who, on 27 June 1665, missed his aim and lost his job because ‘the woman was clumsily executed; after five strokes she still cried out, and finally her head was taken off as she lay on the ground’. That anonymous executioner should have taken lessons from Johann Michel Widman, the long-serving executioner who practised, not that he needed any, from 1665 until 1736. So expert was he that on one occasion in 1717, not only did he take off the victim’s head at one stroke but almost severed the hands of his assistant who was supporting the ‘patient’!

John Howard, the prison reformer, visited Hamburg in 1776, and in the prison there the executioner, who, being also the gaoler, had ample opportunity to study his eventual clients, showed Howard his lethal-looking sword which, he explained, he had already used eight times.

Executions by beheading still continued in Germany into the last century. In Hanover Fritz Haarman, a butcher, augmented the cuts of meat he displayed on his slabs with supplies he obtained from young men he had met. Cultivating their acquaintance, he rendered them unconscious, bit their throats until they bled to death, and then dismembered them. Not only did he then sell their flesh as pork but blended their blood with offal to produce black puddings. Ultimately arrested and tried, he was decapitated at Hanover on 19 December 1934.