This page will contain wikis about Hanging, as they become available.

Hanging

Suicide by hanging.

Hanging is a form of execution or a method for suicide. It has been used throughout history as a form of capital punishment. There are four methods of hanging:

A long-drop hanging may break the neck (cervical fracture) causing traumatic spinal cord injury and consequent asphyxia and brain hypoxia.[3]

A long-drop, short-drop, standard-drop or suspension hanging may do one or more of the following:

  • Close the airway causing asphyxia or anesthesiologination
  • Close the carotid arteries
  • Close the jugular veins
  • Induce carotid reflex, which reduces heartbeat when the pressure in the carotid arteries is high, causing cardiac arrest

In England the short-drop method was used until the 19th century, when the long drop was introduced. The short drop could be a protracted affair and was primarily for the entertainment of the watching public, the struggling of the victim giving rise to such terms as "the hangman's hornpipe".

History

Hanging has been used as punishment throughout history; it is known to have been invented and used by the Persian Empire. The typical sentence involving hanging is that the condemned person "be hanged by the neck until dead". A more elaborate sentence, once used for particularly heinous crimes (e.g., high treason in Britain), was for the person to be "hanged, drawn and quartered" – here the victim was saved from asphyxiation in order to endure the further ordeals.

Hanging has historically been the method of execution used for common criminals; in feudal England, for example, peasants were usually hanged for crimes, while the nobility were usually beheaded. Since as a result hanging has become associated with dishonorable execution, the courts in the post-World War II war crimes trials in Germany (the Nuremberg trials) and Japan mandated its use for war criminals rather than execution by firing squad.

As a form of judicial execution in England, hanging is thought to date from the Saxon period, circa AD 400. Records of the names of British hangmen begin with Thomas de Warblynton in the 1360s; complete records extend from the 1500s to the last hangmen, Robert Leslie Stewart and Harry Allen, who conducted the last British executions in 1964.

Early methods of hanging simply involved a hangman's noose on a rope placed around the victim's neck, with the loose end thrown over or tied to a tree branch; the hangman then drew up the criminal, who slowly strangled. An early refinement had the victim climb a ladder or stand in a cart that the hangman then removed. As the number of executions increased, purpose-built gallows, which usually consisted of two posts joined by a crossbeam, replaced trees. Soon virtually every major town and city in Britain had its own gallows.

Although hangmen had introduced the "drop" by the late 1700s, it was initially only a substitute for the ladder or the cart. The first well-known practitioner of "the drop" was William Calcraft, but his successor William Marwood (who was often quoted as saying "Calcraft hanged them, I execute them"), introduced the "long drop". Marwood realised that each person required a different drop, based on the prisoner's weight, which would dislocate the cervical vertebrae resulting in "instantaneous" death.

detail from a painting by Pisanello, 1436-1438

A process of sometimes grisly experimentation led to the discovery that an energy of 1260 foot pounds (1710 joules) would have the desired effect, so one could calculate the required drop by dividing 1260 by the weight of the victim: a person weighing 112 pounds (50.8 kg) required a drop of 11'4" (3.43 m). Over time, Marwood refined this basic formula to take account of the prisoner's age, stature, and physical condition, especially after some early mistakes when too great a drop resulted in decapitation. Marwood also experimented with the positioning of the knot, and discovered that placing it under the left ear or under the angle of the left jaw would jerk the head backwards at the end of the drop and instantly sever the spinal cord and dislocate the cervical vertebrae. Prison governors and staff who were required, following the abolition of public executions in 1868, to witness executions at close quarters, welcomed the development of swift and "clean" methods of hanging.

As time went by, hanging became more of a science than an art. By the mid-20th century the average time between taking a victim from the cell and death was around fifteen seconds – although on May 8, 1951 Albert Pierrepoint conducted the fastest hanging on record when James Inglis, whom a court had only three weeks earlier convicted and sentenced for the murder of a prostitute, fell through the trap only seven seconds after leaving his cell.

Extra-legal primitive forms of hanging persisted well into the 20th Century in the United States in the form of lynchings, where torture and/or mutilation of the corpse often accompanied the hanging.

Mechanism of action

Death is caused by severing the spinal cord between C1 and C2, which stops breathing by effectively stopping the diaphragm from working. Forensic experts can tell if hanging is suicide or homicide, as each leaves a distinctive ligature mark. If the hyoid bone is broken, it usually means the person has been murdered. Also, there have been cases of autoerotic asphyxiation leading to death; recently, children have accidentally died playing the choking game.

Hanging by country

Britain

Until 1808 the law in Britain offered the death penalty for some 200 offenses, including:

  • Attempting suicide
  • Being in the company of gypsies for one month
  • Vagrancy for soldiers and sailors
  • "Strong evidence of malice" in children aged 7–14 years old

A variety of loopholes in British criminal law, together with judicial leniency, tempered the law's tendency to prescribe hanging for what many would today consider minor offences. First-time offenders could escape a capital sentence for some crimes through the benefit of clergy, and of those criminals actually sentenced to death, many were later pardoned. Only about half the death sentences pronounced at common law in the 18th century were carried out, and by the beginning of the 19th century, growing doubt over the appropriateness of capital punishment led to nearly 90% of British capital sentences being commuted to lesser punishments.

Between 1832 and 1834 Parliament abolished the death penalty for:

  • Shoplifting goods worth five shillings (£0.25) or less
  • Returning from Transportation
  • Letter-stealing
  • Sacrilege

In 1861 The Parliament reduced the number of capital crimes to four:

  • Murder
  • Treason
  • Arson in Royal Dockyards
  • Piracy with violence

Britain ended public hangings in 1868 and formally abolished the hanging, beheading and quartering of traitors in 1870.

In 1965 Parliament passed the 'Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act' abolishing capital punishment for murder. And with the introduction of the Human Rights Act in 1998, the death penalty was officially abolished for all crimes in both civilian and military cases.

Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union, the last persons to be sentenced to death by hanging were Andrey Vlasov and 11 other officers of his army on August 1, 1946.

Iran

One of the hanging execution procedures currently used in Iran does not use a drop, but involves using an automotive telescoping crane to hoist the condemned aloft. This method may have been adapted from yardarm hangings carried out by the Royal Navy.

A recent hanging carried out by this method in Iran was that of a 16 year old girl, Ateqeh Rajabi, who was hanged in August 2004 for sexual misdemeanours. The conduct of her case and her actual execution were very controversial internationally.

The United States

Main articles: Capital punishment in the United States, Capital punishment in New Hampshire, and Capital punishment in Washington

In the United States, other forms of capital punishment, such as the electric chair and more recently lethal injection, have largely replaced hanging.

At present, only Washington and New Hampshire still retain hanging as an option. Laws changed in 1996 that penalties of death must be executed by injection unless the convict chooses hanging, but none has taken place ever since. In New Hampshire if it found "... to be impractical to carry out the punishment of death ..." by lethal injection, then the condemned will be hanged.[4] In Washington, the default method is lethal injection, though the condemned can choose hanging.[5]

Serial killer and child molester Westley Allan Dodd chose it over injection in 1992. (See the book Driven to Kill.) Charles Campbell was another person hanged in the same State on 27 May 1994. The last person hanged in the United States was Billy Bailey, on January 25, 1996 in Delaware, and later the same state abolished this practice.

Singapore

Singapore currently employs mandatory execution as punishment for various crimes (for example, drug trafficking over certain quantities). The only execution method currently employed is via hanging using the long-drop method. There is little evidence for a change in policy such as the adoption of lethal injection, with the Singapore Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng informing the Parliament of Singapore that the government "had previously studied the different methods of execution and found no reason to change from the current method used, that is, by hanging". [6]

Recent hangings

Iranian minority Arab youths Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni on the scaffold. (Mashhad, July 19, 2005). [1][2].

Hanging is commonly the method of executing penalties of death in Commonwealth countries that still have it, such as in the cases of Malaysia and Singapore.

A recent case of capital punishment by hanging is that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was convicted of the 1990 murder and rape of a 14 year old girl in Kolkata(Calcutta) in India. Although the Supreme Court of India has suggested that capital punishment be given in the rarest of rare cases, Chatterjee was executed on August 14, 2004 in the first execution in West Bengal for eleven years.

On February 27, 2004 the mastermind of the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, Shoko Asahara, was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Hanging is the common method of execution in capital punishment cases in Japan, although the punishment is rarely executed.

On July 19, 2005, two Iranian boys, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, were publicly hanged at Edalat (Justice) Square in Mashhad, northeast Iran, on charges of homosexuality and rape. The punishment has been met with international outrage. At the ages of 15 and 17, respectively, they were discovered having sexual relations. They were imprisoned for fourteen months and subjected to 228 lashes each, then executed. According to the ISNA report as translated by OutRage "They admitted having gay sex but claimed in their defense that most young boys had sex with each other and that they were not aware that homosexuality was punishable by death." Subsequent to their execution the government broadcast the allegation that they had raped a 13-year-old boy, a story rejected by MAHA, the voice of the Iranian gay community.[7][8]

In Singapore, a 25-year old Australian, Nguyen Tuong Van, was hanged on December 2, 2005 after being convicted of drug trafficking in 2002. Numerous efforts from both the Australian government, numerous QCs (Queens Counsels) and countless petitions from organisations such as Amnesty International failed. Opinion in Australia is divided, with people both opposed to and in support of the death penalty for Nguyen. Many Australian people have said that they will boycott Singapore in a backlash from this hanging. Others, in both Singapore and Australia, have accepted the hanging as law.

In USA Mitchell Rupe a former death row inmate once found too heavy to hang, died at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla following a long illness. He was 51. Juries twice sentenced him to death, but higher courts overturned the sentences.

In 1994, a federal judge upheld his conviction but agreed with Rupe's contention that at 400 pounds, he was too heavy to hang because of the risk of decapitation. Rupe argued that would be cruel and unusual punishment.

At the time, Washington's only manner of execution was hanging. The main method now is lethal injection.

Grammar

The term "hanging" is the focus of a famous bit of grammatical trivia. Traditionally, the past tense and past participle of the verb "to hang" are "hung" when referring to the abstract idea of hanging things, but "hanged" when referring to an execution or death by hanging.[9][10]

A useful way of remembering this is the old school saying, "Meat is hung, men are hanged.'

The distinction is not always followed; but in cases where it is not, such as when, in the song "Why Can't the English?" from the musical My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins sings

the choice often appears to have been made to suit the rhyme and meter. (Professor Higgins is a linguist, so there may also be an element of intentional irony in his phrasing.)

Hanging to Music. (A Minstrel condemned to the Gallows obtained permission that one of his companions should accompany him to his execution, and play his favourite instrument on the ladder of the Gallows.) – Facsimile of a Woodcut in Michault's "Doctrinal du Temps Présent": small folio, goth., Bruges, about 1490.

Folklore

A common legend holds that if the rope used to hang a person breaks three times, it is a sign of divine intervention and the condemned should be released.


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A common legend holds that if the rope used to hang a person breaks three times, it is a sign of divine intervention and the condemned should be released. Many overdrive pedals in production, especially those by "boutique" manufacturers, are a modified version of the Tube Screamer circuit. (Professor Higgins is a linguist, so there may also be an element of intentional irony in his phrasing.). Original TS-808's, and to a lesser extent, TS-9s, have become highly collectible. the choice often appears to have been made to suit the rhyme and meter. Due to popular demand, Ibanez reissued the TS-808 in 2004, complete with the JRC4558D chip. The distinction is not always followed; but in cases where it is not, such as when, in the song "Why Can't the English?" from the musical My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins sings. Post-2002 circuit boards say Ibanez instead of Maxon.

A useful way of remembering this is the old school saying, "Meat is hung, men are hanged.'. Then in 2002, Maxon stopped production of the TS-9 for Ibanez. Traditionally, the past tense and past participle of the verb "to hang" are "hung" when referring to the abstract idea of hanging things, but "hanged" when referring to an execution or death by hanging.[9][10]. In 1998, the new TS-9DX was introduced, which included a 4-way switch for capacitor changes and changes in the clipping section. The term "hanging" is the focus of a famous bit of grammatical trivia. Around 2000 came the Tone Lok series, and the TS-7, which included a switch for added gain. The main method now is lethal injection. In the early 90's, Ibanez released the Soundtank series, which, except for the first run which was metal, had cheap plastic enclosures and like the Power Series before it, used less expensive parts.

At the time, Washington's only manner of execution was hanging. Then in 1996, Ibanez added a CE mark to the back of the pedal, which is required for it to be sold in Europe. Rupe argued that would be cruel and unusual punishment. In 1992, Ibanez began re-issuing the TS-9. In 1994, a federal judge upheld his conviction but agreed with Rupe's contention that at 400 pounds, he was too heavy to hang because of the risk of decapitation. To make production cheaper, these pedals used circuit board-mounted potentiometers (pots) and jacks. Juries twice sentenced him to death, but higher courts overturned the sentences. Like many of the Master and Power Series pedals, there were not many differences in the circuitry between these and their 9-series counterparts.

He was 51. Based on the Master series but with slight changes in in housing in 1986, the Power Series were introduced, which included the TS-10. In USA Mitchell Rupe a former death row inmate once found too heavy to hang, died at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla following a long illness. The name change was most likely for marketing reasons. Others, in both Singapore and Australia, have accepted the hanging as law. Looking closer circuitwise shows that there is one but in the disguise of the Metal Screamer with slightly changed component values. Many Australian people have said that they will boycott Singapore in a backlash from this hanging. Many claim that in this series there's no Tubescreamer.

Opinion in Australia is divided, with people both opposed to and in support of the death penalty for Nguyen. In 1985 the Master or L series were introduced and sold only for a year. Numerous efforts from both the Australian government, numerous QCs (Queens Counsels) and countless petitions from organisations such as Amnesty International failed. The first was the TS-9 Tube Screamer, which included only a few component changes and often, but not always, different IC's. In Singapore, a 25-year old Australian, Nguyen Tuong Van, was hanged on December 2, 2005 after being convicted of drug trafficking in 2002. Over the years, Ibanez released many different kinds of pedals bearing the Tube Screamer name. According to the ISNA report as translated by OutRage "They admitted having gay sex but claimed in their defense that most young boys had sex with each other and that they were not aware that homosexuality was punishable by death." Subsequent to their execution the government broadcast the allegation that they had raped a 13-year-old boy, a story rejected by MAHA, the voice of the Iranian gay community.[7][8]. Many players consider this one of the best solid state pedals to emulate the sound produced by an overdriven vacuum tube guitar amplifier.

They were imprisoned for fourteen months and subjected to 228 lashes each, then executed. These contained the famed JRC4558D integrated circuit (IC). At the ages of 15 and 17, respectively, they were discovered having sexual relations. Tube Screamers - Based on the earlier Overdrive I and II pedals, Ibanez began releasing the first Tube Screamer, the TS-808 in the late 1970's. The punishment has been met with international outrage. The two companies eventually began doing less and less business together until Maxon ceased manufacting the TS-9 reissue for Ibanez in 2002. On July 19, 2005, two Iranian boys, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, were publicly hanged at Edalat (Justice) Square in Mashhad, northeast Iran, on charges of homosexuality and rape. Ibanez licensed these for sale under their name outside of Japan.

Hanging is the common method of execution in capital punishment cases in Japan, although the punishment is rarely executed. In the 1970's, the Maxon company developed and began selling a series of effect pedals in Japan. On February 27, 2004 the mastermind of the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, Shoko Asahara, was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. The company also began an extensive program of consulting with well-known guitar players and creating signature models made to the players' specifications. Although the Supreme Court of India has suggested that capital punishment be given in the rarest of rare cases, Chatterjee was executed on August 14, 2004 in the first execution in West Bengal for eleven years. This led to an increasing popularity with heavy metal musicians. A recent case of capital punishment by hanging is that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was convicted of the 1990 murder and rape of a 14 year old girl in Kolkata(Calcutta) in India. Abandoning the strategy of copying "classic" electric guitar designs, the newer models began incorporating more modern elements into their design, such as radical body shapes, slimmer necks and flatter fingerboards (which allowed for faster playing), higher-output electronics and colorful finishes.

Hanging is commonly the method of executing penalties of death in Commonwealth countries that still have it, such as in the cases of Malaysia and Singapore. Ibanez settled out of court, and by 1978 had begun making guitars from their own designs. [6]. The actual lawsuit referred to was brought by the Norlin Corporation, the parent company of Gibson guitars, in 1977, and was based on an Ibanez headstock design that had been discontinued by 1976. There is little evidence for a change in policy such as the adoption of lethal injection, with the Singapore Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng informing the Parliament of Singapore that the government "had previously studied the different methods of execution and found no reason to change from the current method used, that is, by hanging". These guitars have become known as "lawsuit" guitars and have become somewhat collectible. The only execution method currently employed is via hanging using the long-drop method. Many guitar aficionados feel that the early- and mid-70s mark a low point in the quality of guitars from the major manufacturers, which helped contribute to the popularity of the Ibanez copies.

Singapore currently employs mandatory execution as punishment for various crimes (for example, drug trafficking over certain quantities). The low price combined with the relatively high quality of the guitars made these models very popular. The last person hanged in the United States was Billy Bailey, on January 25, 1996 in Delaware, and later the same state abolished this practice. Using somewhat cheaper materials and greater automation in manufacturing, they were able to sell these guitars for a significantly lower price than the originals. (See the book Driven to Kill.) Charles Campbell was another person hanged in the same State on 27 May 1994. In the early 1970s Ibanez began making guitars that were almost exact copies of popular models by Gibson, Fender and Rickenbacker. Serial killer and child molester Westley Allan Dodd chose it over injection in 1992. In 1971 Hoshino purchased Elger Guitars, renaming the company "Ibanez U.S.A." and retaining the company headquarters in Bensalem, Pennsylvania as a distribution and quality-control center.

to be impractical to carry out the punishment of death ..." by lethal injection, then the condemned will be hanged.[4] In Washington, the default method is lethal injection, though the condemned can choose hanging.[5]. Hoshino had recently acquired a small Spanish guitar company named Ibanez, and it was decided to market the instruments under this brand name. In New Hampshire if it found ".. At the time, the phrase "made in Japan" was considered to have negative connotations of low quality, so Hoshino Gakki and Rosenbloom wanted to distribute the instruments under a "non-Japanese" name. Laws changed in 1996 that penalties of death must be executed by injection unless the convict chooses hanging, but none has taken place ever since. By 1965 Rosenbloom had decided to stop manufacturing guitars and chose to become the exclusive North American distributor for Hoshino Gakki instruments. At present, only Washington and New Hampshire still retain hanging as an option. The Elger Guitar company made a relatively small number of hand-built, high quality guitars through the early 1960s.

In the United States, other forms of capital punishment, such as the electric chair and more recently lethal injection, have largely replaced hanging. Due to the post-World War II music boom, his sales soon outstripped his inventory, and he began a company called Elger Guitars in an attempt to manufacture enough guitars to fill his needs. The conduct of her case and her actual execution were very controversial internationally. In 1954, Harry Rosenbloom opened a music store in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, northwest of Philadelphia. A recent hanging carried out by this method in Iran was that of a 16 year old girl, Ateqeh Rajabi, who was hanged in August 2004 for sexual misdemeanours. The company had little presence in the Western world until the mid-1960s. This method may have been adapted from yardarm hangings carried out by the Royal Navy. In 1935 they began manufacturing their own stringed instruments.

One of the hanging execution procedures currently used in Iran does not use a drop, but involves using an automotive telescoping crane to hoist the condemned aloft. The Hoshino Gakki company began in 1908 as a musical instrument sales division of the Hoshino Shoten bookstore company. In the Soviet Union, the last persons to be sentenced to death by hanging were Andrey Vlasov and 11 other officers of his army on August 1, 1946. Ibanez is a guitar company in Nagoya, Japan, the company was started by Hoshino Gakki. And with the introduction of the Human Rights Act in 1998, the death penalty was officially abolished for all crimes in both civilian and military cases. Ibanez History - Ibanez History. In 1965 Parliament passed the 'Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act' abolishing capital punishment for murder. Ibanez JS Site - Ibanez Joe Satriani fansite.

Britain ended public hangings in 1868 and formally abolished the hanging, beheading and quartering of traitors in 1870. JEM Site - An Ibanez JEM series fansite. In 1861 The Parliament reduced the number of capital crimes to four:. IbanezRules - Buy/Sell used Ibanez guitars, technical guides, catalog scans, manuals, wiring diagrams, etc. Between 1832 and 1834 Parliament abolished the death penalty for:. Ibanez Register - Gallery of past and present Ibanez guitars and basses. Only about half the death sentences pronounced at common law in the 18th century were carried out, and by the beginning of the 19th century, growing doubt over the appropriateness of capital punishment led to nearly 90% of British capital sentences being commuted to lesser punishments. Origins of Ibanez and the Lawsuit Models.

First-time offenders could escape a capital sentence for some crimes through the benefit of clergy, and of those criminals actually sentenced to death, many were later pardoned. History of Hoshino Gakki Co., Ltd. A variety of loopholes in British criminal law, together with judicial leniency, tempered the law's tendency to prescribe hanging for what many would today consider minor offences. Ibanez. Until 1808 the law in Britain offered the death penalty for some 200 offenses, including:. Also, there have been cases of autoerotic asphyxiation leading to death; recently, children have accidentally died playing the choking game.

If the hyoid bone is broken, it usually means the person has been murdered. Forensic experts can tell if hanging is suicide or homicide, as each leaves a distinctive ligature mark. Death is caused by severing the spinal cord between C1 and C2, which stops breathing by effectively stopping the diaphragm from working. Extra-legal primitive forms of hanging persisted well into the 20th Century in the United States in the form of lynchings, where torture and/or mutilation of the corpse often accompanied the hanging.

By the mid-20th century the average time between taking a victim from the cell and death was around fifteen seconds – although on May 8, 1951 Albert Pierrepoint conducted the fastest hanging on record when James Inglis, whom a court had only three weeks earlier convicted and sentenced for the murder of a prostitute, fell through the trap only seven seconds after leaving his cell. As time went by, hanging became more of a science than an art. Prison governors and staff who were required, following the abolition of public executions in 1868, to witness executions at close quarters, welcomed the development of swift and "clean" methods of hanging. Marwood also experimented with the positioning of the knot, and discovered that placing it under the left ear or under the angle of the left jaw would jerk the head backwards at the end of the drop and instantly sever the spinal cord and dislocate the cervical vertebrae.

Over time, Marwood refined this basic formula to take account of the prisoner's age, stature, and physical condition, especially after some early mistakes when too great a drop resulted in decapitation. A process of sometimes grisly experimentation led to the discovery that an energy of 1260 foot pounds (1710 joules) would have the desired effect, so one could calculate the required drop by dividing 1260 by the weight of the victim: a person weighing 112 pounds (50.8 kg) required a drop of 11'4" (3.43 m). Marwood realised that each person required a different drop, based on the prisoner's weight, which would dislocate the cervical vertebrae resulting in "instantaneous" death. The first well-known practitioner of "the drop" was William Calcraft, but his successor William Marwood (who was often quoted as saying "Calcraft hanged them, I execute them"), introduced the "long drop".

Although hangmen had introduced the "drop" by the late 1700s, it was initially only a substitute for the ladder or the cart. Soon virtually every major town and city in Britain had its own gallows. As the number of executions increased, purpose-built gallows, which usually consisted of two posts joined by a crossbeam, replaced trees. An early refinement had the victim climb a ladder or stand in a cart that the hangman then removed.

Early methods of hanging simply involved a hangman's noose on a rope placed around the victim's neck, with the loose end thrown over or tied to a tree branch; the hangman then drew up the criminal, who slowly strangled. Records of the names of British hangmen begin with Thomas de Warblynton in the 1360s; complete records extend from the 1500s to the last hangmen, Robert Leslie Stewart and Harry Allen, who conducted the last British executions in 1964. As a form of judicial execution in England, hanging is thought to date from the Saxon period, circa AD 400. Since as a result hanging has become associated with dishonorable execution, the courts in the post-World War II war crimes trials in Germany (the Nuremberg trials) and Japan mandated its use for war criminals rather than execution by firing squad.

Hanging has historically been the method of execution used for common criminals; in feudal England, for example, peasants were usually hanged for crimes, while the nobility were usually beheaded. A more elaborate sentence, once used for particularly heinous crimes (e.g., high treason in Britain), was for the person to be "hanged, drawn and quartered" – here the victim was saved from asphyxiation in order to endure the further ordeals. The typical sentence involving hanging is that the condemned person "be hanged by the neck until dead". Hanging has been used as punishment throughout history; it is known to have been invented and used by the Persian Empire.

. The short drop could be a protracted affair and was primarily for the entertainment of the watching public, the struggling of the victim giving rise to such terms as "the hangman's hornpipe". In England the short-drop method was used until the 19th century, when the long drop was introduced. A long-drop, short-drop, standard-drop or suspension hanging may do one or more of the following:.

A long-drop hanging may break the neck (cervical fracture) causing traumatic spinal cord injury and consequent asphyxia and brain hypoxia.[3]. There are four methods of hanging:. It has been used throughout history as a form of capital punishment. Hanging is a form of execution or a method for suicide.

Piracy with violence. Arson in Royal Dockyards. Treason. Murder.

Sacrilege. Letter-stealing. Returning from Transportation. Shoplifting goods worth five shillings (£0.25) or less.

"Strong evidence of malice" in children aged 7–14 years old. Vagrancy for soldiers and sailors. Being in the company of gypsies for one month. Attempting suicide.

Induce carotid reflex, which reduces heartbeat when the pressure in the carotid arteries is high, causing cardiac arrest. Close the jugular veins. Close the carotid arteries. Close the airway causing asphyxia or anesthesiologination.