Hanged by the neck until dead!
The processes and physiology of judicial hanging.

Contents please click on the blue hyper links below to navigate round this page.

How hanging causes death

The processes of judicial hanging

&

Modern hangings described.

Measured or "long drop"

Hanging versus Lethal Injection.

Please note! As this page contains graphic images of real executions which some may find disturbing they must be accessed manually by clicking on the links.

Introduction.
Hanging is the oldest but most widely used method of execution in the world today. In 2018, at least 412 men and 7 women were hanged in ten countries, down from 737 men and 9 women in twelve countries during 2017.These executions took place in Afghanistan, Botswana, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Pakistan Singapore, Sudan and Syria.Iran also carried out a number of public hangings of men.See Overview of 2018 for more details.

Hanging remains the standard method of execution in many retentionist countries, notably Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, several African countries, including Botswana, Kenya and Zimbabwe, and some Middle Eastern countries including Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon and Syria and in most Caribbean states.It is also a lawful method, as an option to lethal injection, in the American state of Washington which has carried out two hangings since the re-introduction of the death penalty in 1976.
It was used extensively in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and continues to be the lawful method there under the new government which carried out 43 executions during 2018 according to official figures. Iraq uses short drop hanging.

Hanging originated as a method of execution in Persia (now Iran) about 2500 years ago for male criminals only, (women were strangled at the stake for the sake of decency!) It was the method of choice in many countries as it produced a highly visible deterrent without the blood and gore of beheading. In early times, it was considered ideal because it was the simplest method to carry out, did not give the condemned person a particularly cruel death (by the standards of the day), made a good public spectacle as the prisoner was above the level of the viewers and because the equipment was easy to come by - a tree, a piece of rope and a ladder or cart, being available everywhere. Unlike beheading there was no requirement for a skilled executioner.  Beheading was the other most common form of execution, adopted as the sole means by some countries.

There is no means of knowing how many people have hanged worldwide in the last 2,000 years but it is probably at least half a million. From 1800 and 1964, over 5,000 people suffered death by hanging in Britain. In America it is estimated that some 9,300 people including up to 356 women were hanged from the early 1600's up to 1996. Hanging was the normal form of execution in many countries up to the end of the 19th century when there was a general trend to abolition or to use supposedly more humane methods than the type of hanging used at that time (short drop). It was the standard method in Britain and its colonies and was widely used in France prior to the French Revolution and also in Germany and pre-communist Russia. It was the lawful method in all states of America up to 1890 and continued in some until suspension of the death penalty in 1968. Hanging was also used by many other countries that have since abolished capital punishment such as Australia, Austria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand, Poland and South Africa. Hitler reintroduced it to Nazi Germany and very large numbers of prisoners were executed by this method in prisons, concentration camps and in the "field" by German soldiers between 1937 and 1945 (see The execution of women by the Nazis during World War II).

The processes of judicial hanging.

There are four main forms of hanging.

Short drop hanging where the prisoner drops just a few inches, and their suspended body weight and physical struggling causes the noose to tighten, normally resulting in death by strangulation or carotid or Vagal reflex.Pole hanging is a variation on this method.