The brutal truth of our bloodthirsty love of hanging people

CRIME author Amanda Howard has delved into the horrifying and bloody history of prisoners who were hanged in Australia.

Amanda Howard thinks people will be shocked to learn of how bloodthirsty people were when it came to public hangings.

TRUE crime author Amanda Howard wasn’t sure what to expect when she began researching her latest book about hangings. She laughed, she cried, she was appalled.

Rope: A History of the Hanged wasn’t a project where she expected to find herself shedding tears for condemned prisoners — or being horrified by the actions of ‘ordinary’ members of society.

Yet that’s exactly what happened.

“It was one of those books my publisher asked if was I interested in doing something along the lines of executions or tortures, and I thought, yeah a bit dry, but I’ll give it a go — but it was the complete opposite,” Howard told new.com.au.

“I laughed, I cried, I was mortified, I was excited. It was so, so different to anything I was expecting.”

Many people had the false impression hanging was “a quick way of dispatching prisoners and criminals” along with deaths and suicide. The brutal reality is it is far from that.

“It’s actually done so poorly, so often I’m surprised it lasted through the centuries. It really is a difficult way to kill someone. I mean, we all assume the trapdoor opens and they’re dead. Very few had successful hangings.”

Hangings still occur in third world and Middle Eastern countries.

The results were unbelievable — decapitations, strangled people, cardiac arrests, ripped open throats. “All these sort of stuff when you consider a swift and easy (way to die) ... That was the most frightening thing to find.”

But there were other horrors.

“We used to hang animals, for human crimes. Elephants, dogs, pigs and cows, chickens ... all for doing things that were at times an accident, or just what they do.”

And humans don’t escape being put to death for what we would regard in today’s society

“We’ve killed children for stealing bread. I mean, that’s just horrifying to think a starving child would risk that for such punishment. It just goes to prove how desperate times were.”

In that instance the child, who isn’t identified, had their sibling put to death alongside them.

Other heartbreaking stories include a pregnant woman who was hanged because she supposedly made a false complaint of rape.

“There’s these sorts of cases that bring up a lot of suffering that just makes you angry and question, why do we think this is a good way of dealing with criminals?”

AUSTRALIAN HANGINGS

Australian true crime lovers will have heard of Ronald Ryan before. He was the last Australian legally hanged. But questions swirl to this day about whether he was innocent of the murder he was sentenced to death for.

“Was he hanged for a crime he didn’t commit? I could have arguments with people on both sides of the fence on that one.”

Howard said a guard was shot from a bullet from another guard’s gun. That much is fact. And it happened as Ryan was trying to escape. But did he pull the trigger?

“Both the guards and escaped prisoners all had guard’s guns. So we’ll never know for sure who fired the final shot. It could have been friendly fire ... He always protested his innocence, claiming he never fired a shot. But if he hadn’t have tried to escape, it wouldn’t have gone down ..."

Howard said the case helped propel Australia away from capital punishment. Others had been sentenced to hanging after Ryan’s 1967 death, but they have been quashed.

“We could still sentence people to death but they were later quashed — we don’t do those things these days.”

Australia’s largest hanged prisoner, Ronald Ryan

Despite that there was still talk of people wanting a return to the death penalty. It’s an emotive argument — often one made as a knee-jerk reaction to violent crime — that Howard isn’t convinced of.

“Throughout history it has never been a deterrent. It's not lie we hanged one person a century. There’s a lot of hanging. [It continues] in third world countries and the Middle East, there are still them happening.”

In the US they haven’t had a hanging since the 1970s — but three states still had legislation for it which meant someone sentenced to be hanged before 1986 can still choose it.

A scene from the execution yard at Hobart's historical Penitentiary Chapel.

Gallows at Old Dubbo Jail.

‘PEOPLE WANTED TO SEE THE HANGINGS GO WRONG’

“People think they drop a trapdoor and the person would fall through,” Howard told news.com.au, of the reaction she got when she told people about the book.

It was then she put them straight.

“I would tell them stories and they would stop and think. One, a famous cowboy from the States, Blackjack Ketchum, was hanged. But they did it so poorly he was decapitated.”

The executers then sold pictures of his hanged corpse as postcards. “It became a whole sort of circus atmosphere at times. People wanted to see the hangings go wrong. And they so often did.”

The more Howard dug, the more macabre stories of hangings she found.

“There is so much info out there you can actually put together a book like this. It shows how poorly and often it was done.”

As the condemned person stood waiting for the trapdoor to send them to their death, they would often be heckled and abused by the crowd. Sometimes it got physical.

“They would have things thrown at them or their clothes torn. Everyone wanted a souvenir who attended these executions. That’s why they ended up having to go behind prison walls.”

In England, “thousands” of people would show up. “It was their entertainment.”

A hanging was becoming an “exciting thing” and not something to deter people from crime.

THE EXECUTIONERS

There were a few common themes when it came to executioners, Howard said.

“Most were horrible drunks. The sheriff, judge or even butcher, or just a local guy who got paid in whiskey and would turn up to do executions.”

If they couldn’t find someone they would sometimes get a volunteer from the crowd.

In Adelaide, there was a case of man who was hanged and everyone started to pack up and leave. It was almost an hour after they discovered he was still alive.

“By the time they tried to get executioner to do it again he was already drunk. There was a guy called John Lee who they tried to hang three times, but the trap door wouldn’t open. When someone else stood on it, it would open, and when they put sandbags on it would.”

When John Lee stood there though, nothing happened.

Howard said there were Australian examples also of people who “couldn’t be hanged”.

Saddam Hussein’s hanging was filmed and broadcast on television.

‘WE HAVE A BLOODY HISTORY’

They still happen in some parts of the world, in Iran and Iraq and places like that. “There’s a lot of bloodthirsty executions ... Often for insignificant crimes or things we wouldn’t consider crimes, like homosexuality, and the drinking of alcohol.”

A famous example is Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator. Parts of his execution was shown on television around the world, but Howard thought those scenes of a “broke old man” was more about propaganda than anything else.

“I think it sometimes has to do about having proof, this is Saddam, that monster, he’s only human and now he’s dead.”

Howard hoped people reading her book would take a few things away from it.

“That we have a very bloody history. We don’t understand the criminal mind or understand how to deal with that.”

It showed something else about ourselves, Howard said.

“That we can be bloodthirsty — that the death of someone else can be a good thing.”

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Originally published as The brutal truth of our bloodthirsty love of hanging people