@spanishguy22
A properly executed hanging breaks the neck just below the brainstem. This in turn causes rapid swelling of the spinal cord and disrupts blood flow and nerve signals in the brainstem, leading to death. May take a few seconds, but still considered a very swift death. However, hanging has gone out of favor as a form of capital punishment. Too short or too slow a drop and the victim dies by strangulation/suffocation, which can take 20 minutes or longer. Too fast or too long a drop and the victim gets decapitated. Does the job, but messy and unpleasant, even if you support capital punishment.
I have taken an interest in judicial executions for about 50 years. This isn't simply down to a ghoulish mindset - when I was a boy I had relatives who lived near to Albert Pierrepoint who was the most prolific British executioner of all time, and I had friends who were relatives of prison officers who had assisted at executions.
Then, in my late teens, I had a colleague (best way of describing him) who was sentenced to death for murder, and only narrowly escaped the rope.
Later, I took an abiding interest in the First World War, and quickly became fascinated by the then mysterious closed records on military executions in that conflict.
In the early 1970s, IIRC, Albert Pierrepoint published his memoirs, although he excluded a great deal of information which has gradually become public after many more years.
Anyway, this in brief sets out the bones of my interest.
In his memoirs, AP went to some length to describe the "humanity" of the British methods and protocols of judicial hanging. Heights and weights were taken into careful consideration, resulting in Tables of Drops published by the Home Office, and a skilled executioner would use his experience to modify these slightly depending on his observations of the muscle tone of the victim. The procedure was carried out with great speed: the execution chamber was right next to the death cell, though the prisoner didn't know this, and would be surprised when hidden connecting doors were thrown open. There were no last words, no reading of sentences - the only thing which was spoken was where the hangman asked the prisoner if he was (name). When AP and his uncle Thomas hanged GIs at the US Military Prison at Shepton Mallet in Somerset, British equipment and hangmen were employed, but the lengthy drawn out American legalistic procedure was carried out, and AP was very critical of this, feeling that it was grossly inhumane to keep a man standing on the trapdoor.
The whole effect was to show the speed of the British procedure, and it has passed into common belief that death from a broken neck was all but instantaneous, and thus humane and merciful.
HOWEVER - how I love that word - even more recent releases of previously secret documents counter this to some extent. AP was engaged by the British Military authorities in Germany after the Second World War to execute War criminals sentenced by the British Military Courts. He hanged 200 at Hameln prison. (Don't confuse with the Nuremberg trials which were carried out by an International Allied Tribunal.)
Anyway, a British style gallows was constructed at Hameln, British equipment was used, and AP was a very, very experienced executioner. All executions went as planned, and death was generally held to be instantaneous. However, it now transpires that Army Medical Officers were able to detect heartbeats up to 15 minutes after the trap had fallen, and in two cases breathing restarted, as much as 7
1/2 minutes after the hanging. It was therefore decided to inject chloroform directly into the hearts of the hanged, and this was done by Army doctors.
So much for instant death from the British long drop system.
