The Man Who Would Not Hang

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ATT Business Wireless connecting changes everything The vineyards of Saint Julian had been destroyed, crops pillaged, the harvest ruined, and French winemakers were not happy about it, but at least they knew who to blame, and so eager for retribution, the winemakers took the vandals to court. Now, we have to be clear here: it wasn't prank-pulling teenagers or even rival farmers who ransacked St. Julian's vineyards. In fact, the culprit wasn't even human. It was a weevil. Or rather, many weevils. That's right. In 1545, French winemakers took a bunch of bugs to court. The crime? Chowing down on grapevines. Granted, the chair of the ecclesiastical court, Francois Bonavar, found this just as ridiculous as you probably do today. He ordered the winemakers to chill out and repent for the sin of blaming an innocent animal for snacking. But in 1587, the winemakers tried again, and this time they weren't backing down. For eight wild months the winemakers and the weevils battled it out in court. Or rather the humans battled it out. The weevils had no idea what was happening. The defense, yes, the weevils had a lawyer, argued that as God's creatures, it was their prerogative to eat what they wanted. The mayor of Saint Julian even got involved offering the weevils the opportunity to move to a sanctuary under threat of excommunication. Now, before you ask exactly how one excommunicates a swarm of weevils? I cannot answer that question. Unfortunately, the final page of the court proceedings didn't survive the centuries. Ironically, it seems to have been destroyed by insects. Throughout time, society has struggled to determine the balance between crime and punishment. Who is guilty? And what do the guilty owe? Perhaps money? Perhaps in time behind bars or banishment from their home? And then there are the times when the condemned are forced to pay the most precious currency of all. Life itself . I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore . There has always been some form of capital punishment. No matter where or when in history you lived, if you messed up badly enough, you might be put to death. And while today we try to prevent what's known as cruel and un usual punishment. Let's just say that for much of human history, cruel and unusual was kind of the goal. Take this tactic from way back in the 23rd century BCE, one of the earliest execution methods we know of, in fact. And you can thank pre-imperial China for this creative bit of gore. It was called the five punishments, and as the title suggests, it had five distinct steps. Number one, tattooing. Number two, cutting off the nose. Number three, cutting off one or both of the feet. Number four, castration, and number five, death. And number five, by the way, was dealt out via strangulation, decapitation, or for the real N'erduelles, the cheery little something called death by slicing that I would rather not go into here. You see, in ancient China, it was believed that the body did not belong to you. It was a gift from your parents. So if you really wanted to punish someone, then messing up that precious gift was pretty much the worst thing you could do to a person. Ancient Egyptians placed a similar importance on a pristine body, but for different reasons. They believed that in order to have a good time in the afterlife, you needed to stay intact after death, hence the whole mummies thing. And suffice to say, Egyptian executions reflected this. Everything from murder to tomb robbing to perjury in courts could earn you a messy death. While nobles were usually allowed to drink poison, ordinary citizens weren't so lucky Techniques included being buried alive, impaled on a stake, and my personal least favorites, being fed alive to a crocodile. Some crimes even had specific corresponding penalties. For example, children who killed their parents would have finger-sized pieces cut out of them with a sharp reed before being burned alive on a bed of thorns. Pleasant stuff for sure. In classical Greece, they tried to keep things a bit more civil, tried, being the operative word here. You see, the Greeks believe that committing a murder, even in the context of execution, left behind a hideous spiritual stain called a miasma. And so they came up with ways to kill someone without, well, actually killing them. Things like throwing the convicted into a deep pit and just leaving them there, or tying them to a board before abandoning them to the elements. You see, the state didn't really kill anyone, just left people outside for a while. And if that person happened to die, well, no harm, no foul. By the way, that tie to a board method is sometimes called a bloodless crucifixion, which, yes, I hate as much as you do. Much more rarely, people were forced to drink hemlock, the famous death of Socrates being one of those examples. But to be honest, it was a pretty short-lived trend. Glee was on TV for longer than Greece's hemlock phase. Now, I know that ancient Greece and ancient Rome are sometimes spoken of interchangeably, but believe me when I say that the Romans had a very different approach to executions. While the Greeks were trying to keep their moral hands spotless and preserving capital punishment for cases of homicide, the Romans were just straight up beating people to death for cri mes as menial as, and I quote, publishing insulting songs, or making disturbances in the city at night. And it wasn't just beatings. If convicted, you might find yourself drowned, strangled, buried alive, crucified, or thrown off a special execution cliff known as Tarpean Rock. And remember how the Egyptians had a special punishment for people who murdered their parents? Well, so did the Romans . It was called penalty of the sack, and involved being stuffed into a leather sack alongside various unfortunate guests, such as a dog, a monkey, a snake, or a rooster, all before being flung into the sea. So, yes, clearly the Romans weren't too worried about the spiritual miasma that the Greeks were, and nothing proves this more than Rome's most famous execution method of all, domnatio ad bestias, or condemnation to the beasts. Imagine that you're found guilty of theft. You have been stripped naked, chained at the neck, and dragged into an arena where thousands of eager spectators scream for your death. And then suddenly across the stadium, a trapdoor swings open, someone steps into the ring, but it's not someone, it's something. A monster. And the monster is hungry. And while this may sound like a blend between the Hunger Games and Hopper's storyline in Stranger Things 4, I assure you that it is all too real. Romans imported lions, tigers, wild boars, bears, elephants, and leopards, all for the single purpose of tearing condemned men and women apart in front of a cheering crowd. And unlike the gladiatorial fights, those poor saps weren't given a single weapon for protection . Now, while the Romans were making sport of death, the Brits were keeping things pretty simple. During the 5th century BCE, the Gotu appeared to tossing criminals into a bog. Pretty straightforward, I know. By the 10th century AD, they had upgraded to the gallows with a smidge of drawing and quartering tossed in for good measure, not to mention beheading and burning at the stake. By the Middle Ages, torture was all the rage. In comparison, Bog Death must have felt like a spa day. And while I would rather do literally anything other than list medieval torture methods for all of you, I should mention that in the 1530s, Boiling Alive was added to the mix, which could take up to two hours. Now, what would earn you one of these delightful afternoons exactly? Well, in the 1700s, crimes punishable by death in Britain included murder, arson, forging currency, cutting down a tree , stealing a rabbit warren, destroying a fish pond, and being out at night with a blackened face, just to name a few. Luckily, in the 1800s, courts started to feel a little squeamish about executing someone for, say, counterfeiting stamps, and they started to rein it in. By this point, hanging had become the standard penalty, with burning at the stake having been abolished in the late 1700s. The idea was that hanging was more humane. It was quicker, an efficient, merciful way to die. But unfortunately, no matter how painless an execution method may be, even death itself has a way of going terribly awry . Mary Martin was only twenty two. She was a servant girl who'd become pregnant with her employer's child, and for a poor unmarried woman in sixteen forty seven, well that was basically a death sentence in itself. And so desperate to put the whole thing behind her, Mary had killed the child on the very day it was born. First she tried to smother the infant, but when that failed she resorted to dashing it on the floor. And yet it was all for naught. The tiny body was still found, and Mary was sentenced to hang. But here's the thing: when the time came for Mary's big drop, it did not end up being that big at all. That is, the execution er had made the rope too short. And so rather than a clean snap, Mary just dangled there. One witness said that after swinging for a while, she choked out a few words, asking what they intended to do. next Of course, the answer was to try again. And this second time it stuck. Not a great look for the Massachusetts justice system, but hey, at least one guy found the whole affair rather fitting. Cotton Mather of the Salem Witch Trial's fame. After all, Mather figured that Mary had tried to kill her child twice, so why shouldn't she be killed twice as well? It's an ugly story from top to bottom, I know, but the worst thing about it , botched hangings like Mary's weren't even rare. In fact, they happened all the time. Ropes too short leading to strangulation, ropes so long that the condemned would hit the ground, heads slipping out of nooses or, in particular , popping off altogether. Not to mention the fact that the crowds attending public hangings tended to turn into drunken mobs committing even more crimes, and suffice to say, things needed to change. A more humane, precise method was in order, and with electricity new on the scene, it seemed this buzzy modern tech should play a part. Enter a little piece of furniture c alled the electric chair. In eighteen eighty-eight, New York became the first state to allow the use of the electric chair, and two years later in 1890 it was officially put to the test. The guinea pig's name was William Kemmler. He was a vegetable seller from upstate New York who had murdered his wife with a hatchet. And when, on an early August morning, he stepped into the death chamber at Auburn Prison, he knew full well that he wouldn't be walking back out. To quote the newspaper from the time, Kemler easily settled back into the chair, turned calmly to the warden and in such tones as one might speak to a barber who was shaving him, said calmly, Now take your time and do it right, Warden. There is no rush. I don't want to take any chances on this thing. Meanwhile, citizens outside the prison sc,aled trees and telegraph poles eager to catch a glimpse of the strange spectacle. Some even perched on nearby rooftops as if watching a parade, but what they were about to see would be about as far from a parade as you could get. Snap went the straps, tying Kemmler's arms and legs and torso to the chair. Even his face was buckled in. Finally, though, he was secure, and then the chair was turned on. Kemmler con vulsed. He went rigid, and then the electricity was turned back off. It was done. Or so they thought. Because then to everyone's horror, Kemmler began to drool. He foamed at the mouth and made odd noises while his chest heaved with clear evidence of breathing. There was no doubt the man was still alive . On went the chair again, and this time the capillaries in Kemmler's face began to burst. An awful smell filled the room, singed hair and flesh. One full excruciating minute passed as the chair continued to fizz and rattle, until at long last it was over. Kemler was dead. The next day, a furious article scorched the front page of the New York Times. Far worse than hanging, read the headline, a disgrace to civilization . Later, an autopsy noted that Kemmler's muscles underneath where the electrodes were placed were, and I quote, cooked like overdone beef. So much for a more humane punishment, right? But did Kemmler's botched death spell the end of the electric chair? Of course not. In fact, not only did New York go right on using the thing, but soon other states hopped on the bandwagon as well. And this was the world in which Philip Jackson was executed on a spring day in 1928. Jackson, a black man, had been accused of raping and assaulting a white woman, right on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. The woman, Daisy Welling, described her attacker as a light-skinned black man around 30 years old. Which is vague, to say the least, but police were more than happy to round up any and all men fitting that profile, including Philip Jackson. So who was Jackson? Well, he was indeed a light-skinned black man, he was also illiterate and may have had intellectual disabilities. In short, he was an easy scapegoat. After two days of violent interrogation, Jackson confessed to the crime. He later recanted that confession, and his lawyers even produced an alibi, but it didn't matter. It took only an hour for the all-white jury to seal his fate. On May 29th, 1928, Jackson was led to DC's brand new electric chair. Accompanied by a reverend, Jackson muttered the Lord's Prayer , continuing to pray even as his words were muffled by a leather mask. The electricity surged to life, Jackson shuddered, and the chair was turned off. And then, just like Hemmler, Jackson continued to breathe. It took six total tries before Philip Jackson was finally dead. One man who had been present for nearly sixty executions by hanging pronounced it and I quote the, most horrible death he had ever seen a man die. And the story repeated itself over and over again. A corrupt justice system, the false promise of a humane death for a marginalized person who may or may not be guilty in the first place, a defective torture machine straight out of a horror movie, and still the electric chair, has remained in use for over a century. In December of 1955, two black brothers, Willie and Clay Daniels, were executed via electric chair in South Carolina. Willie's death went as planned, Clay's not so much. Again, the articles that followed cried for reform , for humanity and mercy, and one newspaper in particular believed that it had the answer to painless executions. South Carolina, the headline read, needs a gas chamber. On the surface it seemed like a progressive move, but you know what they say. Be careful what you wish for . In ancient Greek the word Numa means breath, but it also refers to the spirit. The word spirit itself comes from Latin spiritus, literally meaning breath. In short, for thousands of years, we have believed that breathing is intrically linked to the human soul. Which begs the question: what happens when that bre sacredath of life is poisoned? As far as we know, the first instance of state execution via lethal gas took place way back in the late seventeen hundreds, and surprise, surprise, it is not a pleasant story. In a nutshell, a group of enslaved people in what's now the Dominican Republic had rebelled against their captors, retaliating French officials packed black prisoners into the hold of a ship and then sealed the exits. And then they lit a stockpile of sulfur aflame. The sulfur burned through the night, releasing toxic gas all the while. By dawn, the prisoners were dead. Of course, these days when we think of gas chambers, we tend to think of the Holocaust. And it's true that the modern incarnation of the gas chamber was indeed a product of the 20th century, despite its early start, but it wasn't the Nazis who developed it. No, who we really have to thank for execution by gas is none other than the good ol' US of A. That's right, during World War I, the U.S. Army did a bunch of research on chemical warfare, and a direct byproduct of that research was the gas chamber. In 1921, Nevada became the first U.S. state to adopt it as a form of capital punishment. And in 1924, the first execution took place. Clouds of hydrogen cyanide were pumped into an enclosed chamber. Within minutes, the prisoner was dead. As simple as that. Honestly, things couldn't have gone any better from a technical standpoint. And okay, it probably would have been better if the now very dead man, a Chinese immigrant named Guy Jan, had actually been guilty. Unfortunately, he was almost certain ly innocent, sentenced not due to evidence, but rather a surge in anti-Chinese prejudice at the time. But as for the gas itself, well, it seemed to have worked like a dream. After that, what happened in Vegas was With the Gee John case deemed a success, gas chambers popped up all across America. Could it be that after thousands of years and countless torments, humanity had finally discovered a painless ethical means of executing someone? Well, go ahead, take a wild guess. I think you know the answer. It's a story that will sound chillingly familiar by now. A white woman is assaulted, a black man with intellectual disabilities is arrested for the crime. In this case, a black teenager, the 19 year old Alan Foster. In Alan's own words, I didn't know what I was arrested for, and they beat me till I was all bloody and then made me tell them what I did. Hardly grounds for conviction, but young Alan received a death sentence nonetheless. His mother begged for mercy, pleading for life imprisonment instead, but her pleas fell on deaf ears, and on january twenty fourth, nineteen forty six, Alan Foster stepped into a North Carolina gas chamber. Now you might think that the room would have been stifling and warm, but the chamber was literally freezing, kept at around 32 degrees Fahrenheit. As if that weren't bad enough, Foster was nearly naked and his head had been shaved bare. You see, authorities were afraid that the deadly gas might permeate his clothes and hair, hurting the officials who would later remove the body. And so it all had to go. I can only imagine how terrif ied young Alan was as he was strapped into a high-backed oak chair. Maybe hymns still echoed in his head from the night prior, when his fellow inmates had tried to comfort the frightened young man by singing to him. The soul can be ready, Alan told a reporter, but the flesh ain't, and I'm worried. Leather straps tightened around him. Through a window, Alan mouthed goodbye with a forced smile, and then the dreaded fog began to rise. It swirled in silver clouds at his feet. It clawed up his legs and then his torso. Alan waited until the gas had reached his face, and then he inhaled deeply. In the words of one witness, he exhaled the grayish vapor as if it had been cigarette smoke. But it wasn't, of course, it was something far worse. And within moments, Alan Foster began to shake. And then he kept on shaking. Whatever peaceful, painless death Ghee John had experienced back in Nevada, this was not it. Before thirty horrified witnesses, including doctors and reporters, Alan retched and jerked. His eyes glazed and his head tossed. And beyond a doubt, one thing was devastatingly clear . The young man was suffering. It took eleven minutes for Alan Foster to die in the chamber that day. 11 minutes. In the words of one witness, this was one of the most terrible and horrible things I And for the record, that particular witness was no stranger to death. He was none other than the county coroner. Alan Foster was the first prisoner ever executed by lethal gas in the state of North Carolina. This case was to set the precedent for all those to come, but while outrage poured in, the state of North Carolina didn't have time to deal with criticism of their fancy new facility. Why? Because they had another condemned man to execute, of course, in just a week's time. On January 31st, 1936, Ed Jenkins was executed in the same manner. This time his death took an excruciating seven and a half minutes, which, compared to Allen's, was celebrated as a success. The director of the state's penal division was ready to make a formal statement. Lethal Gas, he declared, is here to stay . We tend to think of ourselves today as more advanced than the Romans. After all, we don't stuff people into sacks to be flung into the sea. We certainly don't watch from the sidelines while helpless naked people are thrown into an arena to be mauled by lions. But then that image of Alan Foster resurfaces: a helpless naked teenager thrown into a chamber to be choked by gas. And I can't help but feel that we really haven't changed at all. The last gas chamber execution in America took place in 1999, and the state of Arizona, but nine states still have lethal gas on the books as authorized methods of putting a prisoner to death. Of course, the death penalty in the United States remains alive and well, with capital punishment still very much legal in 27 states. At the time of writing this, more than 2,000 prisoners currently await execution. These days, lethal injection is the primary method of choice, and you'll recognize the argument its proponents make. It's more humane, they say, it's less painful. After all, when implemented correctly, this cocktail of barbiturates, paralytics, and potassium make the victim fall unconscious before the real poison sets in. Yes, when implemented correctly. But it turns out the prize for most drawn-out botched execution in American history goes to none other than the most modern form, lethal injection. The duration? Three hours. And it took place in 2022. And speaking of statistics, regarding those 2,000 plus prisoners currently on death row, according to a National Academy of Sciences study, roughly one out of every 25 of them is actually innocent . I hope you learned something on this journey through history's most badly botched executions. Clearly, even the best laid plans can go horribly wrong. But according to one last story, while most of these accidents led to more suffering for the condemned, some have occasionally led to salvation. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it . This episode was made possible by Gusto. Right now, everyone is trying to run leaner, tighter budgets, smaller teams, higher expectations. The last thing you have time to waste on is manual payroll or chasing down an HR form. Gusto is how small business owners get back time when every hour counts. 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