Execution, in criminal law, is the infliction on criminals of the punishment of death in conformity with legal decree (see CAPITAL PUNISHMENT). The modes of execution have varied greatly, both in the progress of time and in different countries. On the whole, the manner of executing the death-penalty, as of decreeing and inflicting punishment in general, has tended to grow more humane with the advance of civilisation. Among the Jews a frequent form of execution was stoning, while burning alive appears (Genesis, xxxviii. 24) to have been practised in their patriarchal history, and is sanctioned by Mosaic law. Casting from a rock was a mode recognised by the Jews and the Twelve Tables of the Romans. Under the Roman republic vestal virgins violating their vows of chastity were buried alive, and in the time of Paul crucifixion, burning, and decapitation were the chief modes of execution. Crucifixion (see CROSS) was in use likewise among the Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians, Carthaginians, and Greeks. Constantine, on his adoption of Christianity, abolished crucifixion in the Roman empire. The Italians of the middle ages, however, crucified some of their prisoners of war. Another revolting form of execution among the Romans was that of condemning the criminal to fight with wild beasts. Impalement, by thrusting a sharp stake through the body lengthwise, was one of Nero's cruelties, and is referred to by Juvenal. It is said to have been practised in the Balkan Peninsula so recently as 1876. Under Charles V. impalement was effected by driving a pointed stake through the heart while the criminal in open grave was being covered with earth. Other barbarous modes of execution were pouring melted lead on the criminal; sawing him asunder, a mode practised by the Jews against the conquer in Palestine; starvation in dungeons; pressing to death; breaking on the wheel; tearing to death with red-hot pincers. Boiling alive was occasionally practised on the Continent; and in England in Henry VIII.'s time poisoning was punishable by boiling to death, and 'it seems,' says Sir James Stephen, 'that three or four persons were so boiled.' In 1532 sentence of boiling alive was put in execution against a miscreant who attempted to poison Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and actually poisoned some of his household. The act under which that sentence was carried out was repealed by 1 Edward VI. Drowning a paricide in a sack, in which were also a dog, cock, viper, and ape, was a Roman punishment, initiated in the middle ages, when quartering alive, tearing to pieces by horses, and disembowelling were likewise punishments known on the Continent. Among the severer forms of military execution were hunting and spearing the condemned to death by his fellow-soldiers, practised in Germany in the time of the Lanzknechts of the end of the 15th and during the 16th century; making him run the gantlet of rods till dead; flogging him to death with the knout. These last two modes of execution were practised in Russia till into the 19th century.
English law has in practice, according to Sir J. Stephen, been in a marked manner distinguished from the practice of the Continent by its aversion to execution by torture. The usual mode of execution in England has been for many centuries, and still is, hanging, though in early times decapitation was also known. Treason, however, was punished in the case of men by hanging, drawing (anciently dragging at the tail of a horse), and quartering; of women by burning. A woman was burned alive for petty treason (killing her husband) at Tyburn in 1726. Heresy was also punished by burning. In 1283 David, the last native Prince of Wales, was for treason sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, and to have his bowels burned. Pressing to death, or the peine forte et dure, is said to have been practised as late as 1741 at the Cambridge assizes. Burning continued till 1790 to be the punishment inflicted on women for treason, high or petty; at Ipswich a woman was burned in 1783 for murdering her husband. In practice, however, women were strangled before being burned. A woman was burned for witchcraft at Dornoch in Sutherland in 1722. By 25 Geo. II. any person convicted of murder was to be executed on the next day but one after sentence, but if sentenced on a Friday he was to be hanged the following Monday. In the interval he was to be fed on bread and water, and his body after death was to be either dissected or hung in chains. By laws passed in 1832-34 the bodies of murderers were no longer to be anatomised or hung in chains, but to be buried in the precincts of the prison in which they were last confined before execution. This regulation, repeated in 24 and 25 Vict., is now in force. On 21st February 1803 Edward M. Despard (q.v.) was drawn on a hurdle, hanged, and decapitated; and on 1st May 1820 Thistlewood and four of his fellow-conspirators were likewise hanged and decapitated. In this case—the last execution for treason in England—the head was cut off with an amputating knife by a masked executioner, who then thrice held it up by the hair to three different points of the compass, with the words, 'This is the head of Arthur Thistlewood, a traitor.' The mode of execution now obtaining in Britain and British colonies is hanging; in Austria, strangling; in Spain, Carrotting (q.v.); in France, decapitation by the guillotine; in Germany, decapitation—by the axe in Prussia, elsewhere by the guillotine. In New York state it was enacted that after 1st January 1889 executions should be by electricity, a mode calculated to effect instantaneous death. Lynching (q.v.) sometimes takes the place of judicial execution in America. The Bowstring (q.v.) was an old Turkish institution; and the Hari-Kari (q.v.) was peculiar to old Japan. Shooting is the military form of execution. In India, during and after the mutiny of 1857–58, some of the rebels were blown from the mouth of cannons. Till 1868 executions in the United Kingdom were performed publicly, in London for the most part at Tyburn till 1783. At Edinburgh the place of execution was chiefly in the Grassmarket till 1784, when it was transferred to a platform at the west end of the Tolbooth, a building removed in 1817. The gallows at Tyburn was a permanent erection on three posts, 'Tyburn's triple tree,' and wooden galleries near it accommodated the crowds of spectators. The scandalous scenes, however, attending the procession of the criminal from Newgate to Tyburn caused the place of execution to be changed in 1783 to the area in front of Newgate prison, where on the 3d December 1783 ten were executed.
In 1868 an act was passed prohibiting public execution, and directing that all executions proceed inside the walls of the prison in presence of the sheriff, gaoler, chaplain, and surgeon of the prison, and such other officers of the prison as the sheriff requires or allows. The Act of 1868 further orders that execution take place at 8 A.M. on the first Monday after the intervention of three Sundays from the day on which sentence is passed. A black flag has to be hoisted at the moment of execution conspicuously above the prison, and remain displayed for an hour, while the bell of the prison or parish church tolls for fifteen minutes before and fifteen minutes after the execution. Till 1783 the mode of execution was by drawing away the cart from under the prisoner after the rope had been fastened round his neck. From 1783 the prisoner was placed not on a cart but on a platform, which on the withdrawal of a bolt suddenly fell from under him. In 1874 this method was improved upon by a plan whereby the length of the rope is proportioned to the weight of the body, so that the momentum of the fall suffices to rupture the ligatures of the spine, and thus cause instant death. Execution in England must in all cases be performed by the sheriff, or, as is invariably the practice, by his deputy called the executioner. In royal burghs in Scotland, the office is imposed on the civic magistracy, one of whom attends the execution, similarly as does the sheriff in England.
In several German states the office of headsmen is said to have been hereditary, and in Coriolanus (act ii. scene 1) Menenius speaks of 'hereditary hangmen.' The last headsmen of the Tower of London died in 1861. The office had grown to be a mere sinecure. In some parts of England the office was annexed to other posts; for instance, in the time of Henry II. and Henry III. the porter of the city of Canterbury was executioner for the county of Kent, and in receipt on account of that office of an allowance of 20 shillings per annum from the sheriff. Derrick was public executioner in the first part of the 17th century, and gave his name to a kind of crane; after him came Gregory Brandon, whose son, Richard Brandon, executed Strafford, Laud, and Charles I. John Ketch, public hangman from 1663 till 1686, executed William Lord Russell and the Duke of Monmouth, and bequeathed his name ('Jack Ketch') as a nickname to his successors in office for nearly two centuries. The family of Sanson for many generations gave Paris her executioners, the name 'M. de Paris' being first playfully given to the elegant and handsome Charles Henri Sanson, who in his old age executed Louis XVI. In recent times, Calcraft, employed as executioner down till 1874, was paid by the corporation of London £1, 1s. per week as a retaining fee, and an extra £1, 1s. for each execution. He had, besides, from the county of Surrey £5, 5s. annual retaining fee, and £1, 1s. for each execution, and £10 for an execution in the country. Calcraft was succeeded in 1874 by Marwood, who, in turn, in 1883, was succeeded by Berry; and he, before his resignation in 1892, had been engaged for over 200 executions, and carried 134 sentences into effect.
Besides the references in the body of the article, and at the end of CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, see Hanging and Scenes witnessed before the Gallows, by F.L.A.T. (1868); Hanging not Punishment enough for Murderers, &c. (1701); a collection of broadsides, containing an account of murders and executions (1794–1860; and another collection, 1830–55?); Memoirs of the Sansons, edited by Henri Sanson, late executioner of the Court of Justice of Paris (Eng. trans. 2 vols. 1875); The Punishment and Prevention of Crime, by Sir E. F. Ducane, in 'English Citizen' series (1885). See also the articles DROWNING, GUILLOTINE, MAIDEN, NEWGATE, PARRICIDE, PEINE FORTE ET DURE, LONDON (p. 705 for TYBURN), and WHEEL (BREAKING ON THE).