Read The British Execution: 1500–1964 (Shire Library) for Free Online Page A

all was Jack Ketch (active 1663–86), whose name became a synonym for subsequent hangmen. No portrait survives, but a contemporary woodcut from 1678 (see contents page ) shows a man being drawn to Tyburn to be hanged, drawn and quartered declaring ‘I am sick of a traytorous disease.’ Jack Ketch stands alongside him, brandishing an axe and a rope and declaring ‘Here’s your cure, sir!’ One notices that Ketch is not wearing a mask. While a number of authentic metal executioners’ masks survive from Europe and some are exhibited in the Science Museum, the only known British example is probably a misidentification of a scold’s bridle used to silence nagging women. British masks were probably cloth or leather and have not survived. It is sometimes supposed that the executioner’s mask, which has become in the popular imagination an iconic symbol of his profession, was intended to prevent the executioner being identified and suffering reprisals. This is rather suspect – certainly in respect of Britain. Some wore masks, some did not: furthermore, some seem to have slipped them on only when beginning their work – by which time, of course, the crowd had already had a good look at them. Many British executioners seem rather to have revelled in their notoriety, or else used their ‘fame’ as a tool in touting for business or disposing of gallows souvenirs. Perhaps a better explanation is that the mask was a relic of an earlier theatrical and more torturous age; one of the accoutrements of horror to accompany the torture and final despatch of the victim. It served to disguise the emotion of the executioner going about his work – whether it be pity which might undermine the legitimacy of the punishment or sadistic glee, which might detract from its moral purpose. Certainly, after 1868, masks were abandoned in Britain. Accoutrements of horror merely made an execution more difficult and, whatever their actual competence, late Victorian executioners liked to portray themselves as considerate, businesslike men, arranging affairs with as little fuss as possible. William Marwood remarked upon the benefits of such an approach that ‘Whenever I tap a prisoner on the shoulder he nearly always comes to me.’
    Back in the seventeenth century, however, men such as Ketch were still engaged to inflict pain upon their victims as well as dispatch them. Even where that was not the intent, their competence was doubtful. Whatever his skills as a hangman, Ketch was notoriously maladroit with an axe. On 21 July 1683 he was employed to behead Lord Russell, who had been convicted of a plot to assassinate Charles II. Russell paid him well for a swift kill, but Ketch’s first blow was wholly inadequate and Russell is said to have declared ‘You dog, did I give you ten guineas to use me so inhumanely!’ It took three more blows to sever Russell’s head. When, in 1685, Ketch dispatched the Duke of Monmouth, Monmouth took the precaution of giving some money to a servant to pass on to the executioner if the job was done well. On the scaffold he fingered the axe and remarked ‘I fear that it is not sharp enough.’ Perhaps the Duke was right, for the first blow merely wounded him. The Duke half-rose and placed his neck again on the block. After two more blows the head was still not off and the body was quivering. Two more blows brought release to the Duke, though his head had still to be cut through with a knife. We do not know whether or not Ketch received his tip.
    Executions were still being botched in the nineteenth century. No drop was allowed at Robert Johnston’s hanging in Edinburgh in 1818. He was left strangling on tip-toe while the executioner and sheriff were pelted. Johnston was cut down and taken away by the crowd. The authorities recovered him and he was taken back to the scaffold by soldiers and then dispatched. When John Tapner was hanged in Guernsey in 1854, the executioner failed to pinion his arms securely. The drop was