Tower Of London

The Tower of London is a fortress on the Thames bank to the east of the city of London. The castle was founded in 1066.

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The White Tower was built by William the Conqueror in 1078 to intimidate the citizens of London. This later became part of the Tower of London. It is said that he ordered bull's blood to be mixed with the mortar symbolizing strength and a royal power that would last forever. 

An English royal collection of animals were housed in the Tower of London from the thirteenth century until 1834, when the last animals were moved to a new zoo in Regent's Park.

The castle was used as a prison from 1100 until 1952, but predominantly served as a royal residence. Below is a depiction of the imprisonment of Charles, Duke of Orléans, in the Tower of London during the Hundred Years War from a 15th-century manuscript.

Among the prisoners who were executed at the Tower of London were Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Archbishop William Laud and The Duke of Monmouth.

The first person to be imprisoned in the Tower of London was a bishop, Ranulf Flambard, in 1100. He escaped using a rope smuggled inside a wine barrel.

Corporal Josef Jacobs was the last person to be executed at the Tower of London on August 15, 1941.  Jakobs was a German spy who was selected for a mission to parachute into Britain and gather intelligence. Jakobs landed in Kent, England, on the night of July 19, 1941 and was quickly captured by the British Home Guard. Jakobs was tried by a military court and found guilty of espionage. He was convicted of being a German spy 

Josef Jakobs's execution took place at the miniature rifle range in the grounds of the Tower of London. He was tied and blindfolded in a brown Windsor chair. Eight soldiers from the Holding battalion of the Scots Guards, armed with .303 Lee-Enfield rifles, fired a volley of shots at him. He was pronounced dead at 7:15 am.

Chair in which Jakobs sat when he was executed. By Hu Nhu 

The notorious Nazi, Rudolf Hess was the last prisoner kept in the Tower of London.

In the latter half of the 19th century, the Tower was restored to what was felt to be its medieval appearance and many post-medieval structures were cleared out. 

Today the Tower of London is a barracks, armory and museum. It is one of the United Kingdom's most popular tourist attractions. 

Under the ceremonial charge of the Constable of the Tower, the Tower of London is cared for by the charity Historic Royal Palaces and is protected as a World Heritage Site.

The Tower of London is guarded by 37 Yeoman Warders, who were originally formed in 1485 by Henry VII. Their Beefeater nickname may have derived from their meat diet.  In 1813, the daily ration for 30 men on duty was 24lb of beef, 18lb of mutton and 16lb of veal.

The Warders of the Tower of London were specifically named Yeomen Extraordinary of the Guard in the 16th century. 

Sources Daily Express, Hutchinson Encyclopedia

Torture

Torture (from Latin tortus: to twist, to torment) is the inflection of bodily pain, especially to extort evidence or confession.

Medieval tortures were usually physical, such as the thumbscrew, the boot (which crushed the foot), heavy weights (that crushed the whole body) and the iron maiden (a metal cage shaped like a human being with spikes inside to spear the occupant).

A variety of torture instruments, including the large Iron Maiden of Nuremberg By epbechthold

Many so-called "medieval torture devices" are considered to be historically inaccurate, and were likely created and popularized by hoaxers, showmen, and con artists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These devices were often used as props in traveling shows or exhibitions, and were presented as authentic historical artifacts, but many are considered to be fictional creations.

The brazen bull, a medieval torture device that cooked it's victims, was invented in Athens between 570 and 554 BC during the reign of Phalaris, tyrant of Acragas, Sicily. The first test subject was the person that built it.

A form of medieval torture was covering the victims feet in salt water and then a goat would start licking them. Sometimes the laughter and stress from the intense tickling resulted in a heart attack or a brain hemorrhage.

Torture was authorized by the Catholic Church during the Inquisition from 1252 to 1816. The methods used included the chevalet, in which an accused witch sat on a pointed metal horse with weights strung from her feet; to be forced to swallow gallons of water; and the rack (to stretch affecting joints to breaking point). The latter was the instrument of torture used most frequently.

A rack in the Tower of London. By David Bjorgen 

The first reported use of official torture in England occurred in 1310 against the Templars after the Pope put pressure on England and other countries to allow the Inquisitors to use "their" methods, namely "torture", and reluctant approval was given by the King of England.

The 16th century Spanish Dominican missionary Bartolomé de las Casas campaigned on behalf of the Indians enslaved by the Spanish colonization of America. De las Casas wrote a book, A Very Short Account of the Destruction of the West Indies, in which he recounted numerous incidents of torture and genocide he'd witnessed in the New World. For instance he told how native pearl fishers were thrown into the water with stones tied around their necks so they'd sink to the very bottom where the biggest pearls were. The slaves were pushed to the limits of their endurance and in due course their lungs burst.

Tarring and feathering was a form of public torture used in feudal Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, as well as the early American frontier. The victim would be stripped naked, or stripped to the waist. Hot wood tar was then either poured or painted onto the person while they were immobilized. The victim then either had feathers thrown on them or was rolled around on a pile of feathers so that they stuck to the tar. 

Anton Praetorius (1560 in Lippstadt –December 6, 1613) was a German Calvinist pastor, theologian and writer. In 1597 Praetorius had to witness the torture of four women accused of witchcraft. He wrote the book Thorough Report about Witchcraft and Witches to protest against torture of witches, which was published the following year. Praetorius was one of the first to protest against all means of torture, and to publicly object to the prevailing attitude in the church on the torture and burning of witches.

Medieval torture rack

Vlad the Impaler, was a ruler of Wallachia (present-day southern Romania) in the 15th century. He became notorious for the extremely cruel punishments that he dealt to his enemies, his favorite form of torture being impaling his victims, then mocking them. He is perhaps best known for being the inspiration for Dracula.

In 81 year old man called Giles Corey, accused of being a wizard in 1692, was the only man in American history to be subjected to death by pressing in an attempt to get him to submit to trial by jury. It is said that his response to the torture was to tell them to add 'more weight.'

Torture was legally abolished in England in around 1640 but was allowed in Scotland until 1708. William Carstares (1649–1715) was the last man in Britain to be given the thumbscrew. As torture was illegal in England, he had to be taken to Edinburgh.

Modern torture techniques include brainwashing, developed by the KGB and other, communist interrogators from the 1950s.

From the early 1960s a technique used in the West replaced isolation by severe sensory deprivation. For example IRA guerrillas were prevented from seeing by a hood, from feeling by being swathed in a loose fitting garment, and from hearing by continuous loud noise at about 85 decibels, while being forced to maintain themselves in a 'search' position against the wall by their fingertips.

American prisoner of war Jeremiah Denton, blinked a message in Morse code whilst on Vietnamese television, spelling the word "torture." This informed the CIA of conditions in Vietnamese captivity.

The make-up process for the 2000 movie The Grinch was so grueling, the lead Jim Carrey had to meet with an expert who trained CIA operatives to deal with torture.

Almost all countries agree that torture is a violation of human rights. On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Article 5 states, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".

Article 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union  proclaimed on December 7, 2000 by the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the European Commission prohibits torture. 

By Trounce - Own work 

White torture is a type of psychological torture which involves putting the prisoner in a completely white, soundproof room, often leading the prisoner to madness.

Throughout British history, just 84 royal warrants for torture were ever issued. Of these, 53 were authorised by Elizabeth I. 

Amnesty International, the leading non-governmental organisation against the use of torture states on its website: "Over the last five years, Amnesty has reported torture in at least three quarters of the world - 141 countries".

Source Hutchinson Encyclopedia

Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition was originally established in 1478 when Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile requested a papal bull establishing an inquisition in Spain in response to the Marrano Jewish population who had converted to Catholicism but returned to Judaism.

In 1483, Ferdinand and Isabella established a state council to administer the inquisition with the Dominican Friar Tomás de Torquemada (1420 – September 16, 1498) acting as its president. This branch of the inquisition was an organization of men with the authority to punish or even execute Spanish heretics.

Torquemada quickly established procedures for the Inquisition. A new court would be announced with a thirty-day grace period for confessions and the gathering of accusations by neighbors. Soon anyone who was not loyal to the Roman Catholic church was in danger of being called a heretic and being put to death by being burnt at the stake. The Inquisition swiftly became the only institution that held authority across all the realms of the Spanish monarchy.

One of the ways in which the Inquisition operated was by sending letters, known as "Edict of Grace," to people who were suspected of heresy or other offenses against the Catholic Church. These letters gave the accused 30 days' notice to present themselves to the Inquisition for questioning and possible punishment.

The Edicts of Grace were read out during Sunday Mass in local churches, ensuring that the entire community was aware of who was being targeted by the Inquisition. This public shaming was intended to deter others from committing similar offenses and to create a climate of fear and suspicion.

Inquisition Scene by Francisco Goya. 

Torquemada developed an oppressive network of spies and secret police. His courts summoned thousands of individuals, most of whom were completely at a loss as to what they were supposed to have done. One third were tortured. The methods most used were to be hung by the arms until they were pulled from their sockets; to be forced to swallow gallons of water; and to be racked. The latter, in which the limbs were slowly pulled apart, was the instrument of torture used most frequently.

During the Spanish Inquisition all torture instruments were ironically regularly dowsed with holy water.

As part of the Spanish Inquisition, close to 200,000 Jews, who refused to be baptized, were driven out of Spain. This was inspired by Ferdinand and Isabella interpreting the January 1492 fall of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold on the Iberian peninsular, as a sign that Christ's second coming was imminent; the removal of the Jews being required before Jesus returned. The Alhambra Decree was issued on March 31, 1492, by the royal pair ordering the expulsion of practicing Jews from the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon and its territories and possessions by July 31st of that year. Their departure brought great economic distress to Spain for in turning out their most talented and industrious citizens, Spain became speedily crippled economically.

Jews who refused to convert or leave Spain were called heretics and could be burned to death on a stake. A ceremony at which heretics were burnt was called an auto-da-fé.

By http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/

It was an offence under the Spanish Inquisition for believers to read the Bible. Thousands were given the choice of either confessing their heretical ways and denouncing others as a result of which they would only have to do penance which would involve the paying of fines and/or beating themselves, or denying their heresy and being burnt at the stake. It only required one denouncer for a particular "heretic" to be charged.

The Inquisition of the Netherlands was an extension of the Spanish Inquisition in the Spanish Netherlands, established during the reign of Charles V. With the rapid spread of Calvinism in the early years of the reign of his son Phillip II, a champion of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation, its scope widened vastly. In 1567 Philip II's Council of the Troubles set up the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands to crush Calvinism. This has lead to the execution of 18,000 people and another 100,000 were driven into exile.

The burning of a 16th-century Dutch Anabaptist, Anneken Hendriks

An author and former monk writing under the name Reginaldus Gonsalvius Montanus wrote one of the most influential books ever published about the Spanish Inquisition. The book, titled Sanctae Inquisitionis Hispanicae Artes aliquot detectae, ac palam traductae (The Arts of the Holy Spanish Inquisition Plainly Discovered and Laid Open), was published in Heidelberg in 1567. It described in vivid detail the use of secret witnesses, psychological manipulation, and the horrors of the auto-da-fé (the public ritual of penance and execution). Because it was written by a former monk who had intimate knowledge of the institution, it was seen as highly credible at the time and was quickly translated into English, French, Dutch, and German, fueling anti-Spanish sentiment across Protestant Europe.

The Spanish Inquisition was still in force in the late eighteenth century, but much reduced in power. A schoolmaster, Cayetano Ripoll, was the last person to be executed by the Spanish Inquisition in 1826. He was strangled to death for allegedly teaching Deist principles in Valencia.

It has been estimated that from 1480 to 1826 around 150,000 were prosecuted for various offenses during the duration of the Spanish Inquisition, out of which between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed.

The Queen Mother Cristina officially closed down the Tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition in 1834 when she declared "that the Tribunal of the Inquisition is definitely suppressed."

Source Christianity

Prison

HISTORY 

Imprisonment as a penalty was used initially by the Ancient Greeks for those who could not afford to pay their fines. The prison in Ancient Athens was known as the desmoterion ("place of chains").

The Romans were among the first to use prisons as a form of punishment, rather than simply for detention. One of the most notable Roman prisons was the Mamertine Prison, established around 640 B.C. by Ancus Marcius,

A 13th century prison just south of the Thames in London was known as The Clink. Although situated in Surrey the liberty was exempt from the jurisdiction of the county's high sheriff and was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester.

The Clink was notorious for its brutal punishments. Prison inmates could be crushed under weights, burned with boiling oil or forced to stand in cold water until their feet rotted. The Bishop of Winchester earned good money from desperate prisoners who made payments to church coffers in order to buy their freedom.

Prison in 17th century Britain was indescribably harsh. Prisoners were shackled, sometimes hand and foot, and slept on bare stone and filthy straw in total darkness, 24 hours a day with no sanitation. They were regularly beaten, and if they were released they had to pay for their accommodation during their time in prison.

Until the late 18th century criminals were commonly sentenced to death, mutilation or transportation rather than imprisonment, so the growth of criminal prisons as opposed to places of detention for those awaiting trial was a late development.

William Hogarth A Rake's Progress prison scene 1732-33

The Non-conformist High Sheriff of Bedfordshire, John Howard, was shocked by the prison conditions throughout the UK, so he published in 1777 The State of the Prisons, a book which attracted attention and helps push reform forward.

The State of the Prisons was instrumental in obtaining the passage through Parliament of two penal reform acts that improve sanitary conditions and health care in prison.

The Prison Act of 1778 established in the UK the principle of separate confinement combined with work in an attempt at reform (it was eventually carried out when Pentonville prison was built in 1842).

After visiting a prison, Howard had to ride alone on a horseback as the prisons made his clothes smell too offensive to allow him to use a public carriage.

King George III's son Prince George was given land from his estates to build a prison for captives from the Napoleonic Wars. In 1806 this became known as Dartmoor Prison and its nearest town, Princetown was named after him.

Dartmoor Prison in Princetown. By Nilfanion Wikipedia

In 1813 the Quaker Elizabeth Fry visited Newgate Prison in London to see what she could do for its female convicts. The sight of the women herded together in filthy conditions, with their children clinging to their mothers and watching as they hang from the gallows stunned her. She devoted the rest of her life to campaigning against the appalling conditions in prisons.

In 1828, Eastern State Penitentiary opened with a ground breaking agenda to rehabilitate prisoners. Prisoners had a cell each, and were comforted with central heating and flush toilets, something which even the White House didn't have at that time.

One of the most brutal prisons in the US was Angola, Louisiana, which was run like a plantation. In the 1930s, hardened prisoners broke down upon learning of their sentence there. At one point, 10% of Angola prisoners were stabbed.

A borstal was a corrective institution introduced in 1902 as an alternative to prison for young offenders (aged 15–20). The name derives from the first of the kind, at Borstal in Kent.

The borstal corrective institutions were used throughout the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. However. the Criminal Justice Act 1982 officially abolished the borstal system in the UK, introducing detention centers, which were subsequently renamed young offender institutions.

In India, such young offender corrective institutions are  known as borstal schools. As of 31 December 2014, there were 20 functioning borstal schools in India, with a combined total capacity of 2,108 inmates.

The first US federal penitentiary building was completed at Leavenworth, Kansas in 1906. Prior to its construction, federal prisoners were held at state prisons.

United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth. By Americasroof  Wikipedia

Alcatraz was the first US Federal prison to offer hot showers to inmates – on the logic that they'd get used to the hot water and wouldn't be able to handle the freezing swim off the island when attempting to escape.

During the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, there was a prison camp, named S-21 that had a death rate of 99.96%. S-21 was directed by a former mathematics teacher who ordered "living autopsies," had prisoners' blood completely drained for use in hospitals, and used a "baby-smashing tree" to kill children.

La Catedral was a prison overlooking the city of Medellín, in Colombia. The prison was built to specifications ordered by drug lord Pablo Escobar, under a 1991 agreement with the Colombian government in which Escobar would surrender to authorities and serve a maximum term of five years, and the Colombian government would not extradite him to the United State. The prison featured a soccer field, a giant doll house, a bar, a jacuzzi and a waterfall.

FUN PRISON FACTS

The U.S. prison population surpassed 1 million for the first time in 1994. The number of incarcerated people in the United States has been growing rapidly for decades, and it reached an all-time high of 2.2 million in 2020. This represents a 500% increase since 1970.

World map showing number of prisoners per 100,000 citizens, by country

Prisons in Brazil offer their inmates the chance to reduce their prison sentence by four days (up to a maximum of 48 days per year) for every book they read and write a report on.

The phrase "To send someone up the river," meaning to imprison, originally referred to SingSing Prison, on the Hudson River, 30 miles north of New York City.

The Muhanga Prison in Rwanda has been described as "the worst prison in the world"—it has a capacity of 500, but houses 7,000 people.

Thailand used to have a prison built in the late 1800s called "Khuk Khi Kai," or "Chicken poop prison." The first floor of the prison contained Thai rebels of Chanthaburi who rebelled against the French occupation, and the second floor was a large chicken coop. The grated floor ensured that prisoners were constantly subjected to chicken poop.

The world's smallest prison was designed for two people and is located on Sark Island, in the Channel Islands between Great Britain and France. It was built in 1856 and the first prisoner was a maid who stole a handkerchief from a woman in the family where she worked. She spent three days there, 

The country with the smallest prison population is San Marino, a tiny state on the Italian peninsula—It has just one jail with six cells.

The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio, the abandoned prison where The Shawshank Redemption was filmed, was purchased for $1 and converted into a tourist attraction that nets $16 million annually.

In 2001, Brazil’s Dutra Ladeira prison became the first jail to run a pizza delivery service.

Hanging

Between 1196 and 1783 at Tyburn tree near London’s present-day Marble Arch, 40,000 - 60,000 people were hanged, often in batches. Stands were built for the crowds who came to watch. John Austin, a highwayman, was the last person to be publicly hanged at Tyburn gallows on November 3, 1783.

"The Manner of Execution at Tyburn", 17th century

In 1724 Margaret Dickson was hanged for murdering her illegitimate baby shortly after birth. She was later found still alive and was allowed to go free because under Scots Law her punishment had been carried out. Only later were the words "until dead" added to the sentence of hanging.

Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers, was the last peer to be hanged on May 5, 1760, after being convicted of murdering his steward, John Johnson. He killed his servant after being given bad oysters.

Ferrers was the first felon to be killed by the ‘hangman’s drop’ technique of execution — where the condemned dies instantly from a broken neck rather than being slowly throttled.

One of the earliest excursions organised on Britain's railway system was to see a public hanging at Bodmin jail.

In 1885, British Criminal John "Babbacombe" Lee survived three attempts of execution by hanging. He was dubbed 'The Man Who Could Not Be Hung'. His sentence was changed to 'Life in prison' and was released 22 years later.

The Last Public Hanging in the U.S.took place on August 14, 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky when Rainey Bethea was executed. Bethea was convicted of robbing, raping and strangling to death a wealthy white woman, 70-year-old Elza Edwards. Approximately 20,000 people gathered around the gallows to witness the execution.  Mistakes in performing the hanging and the surrounding media circus contributed to the end of public executions in the United States.

John Woods, an Army private who lied his way into becoming the Army's hangman and an officer. He carried out 60-70 executions in two years, several of which he bungled by building the gallows too short, including all ten of the Nuremberg Executions of the Nazi high command.

Wilhelm Keitel was a German field marshal who served as chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, the OKW) for most of World War II. The Americans botched the hanging of Keital on October 16, 1946. The trapdoor was too small and he smashed his head going down, and the force didn't break his neck so it took a full 24 minutes for him to suffocate.

Wilhelm Keitel's detention report from June 1945

Hangings took place in public in Britain until 1868 and thereafter within prison walls, until the abolition of capital punishment in 1965.

Albert Pierrepoint  (March 30, 1905 –  July 10, 1992) was the most prolific UK hangman of the 20th century (435 executions) and became a celebrity. Yet he concluded in his memoirs that hanging was "not a deterrent."

Albert Pierrepoint Wikipedia Commons

Names that Pierrepoint executed included  William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") and more than 200 Nazi war criminals. Only on one occasion did he actually know the condemned — murderer James Corbitt, who he hanged on November 28, 1950; Corbitt was a regular in his pub, Help The Poor Struggler, and had sung "Danny Boy" as a duet with Pierrepoint on the night he murdered his girlfriend in a fit of jealousy because she would not give up a second boyfriend.

A gallows for hangings was kept in working order at London's Wandsworth Prison after 1965 until the death penalty was totally abolished in 1998.

Grover Cleveland was the only American president in history to hold the job of a hangman. He was once the sheriff of Erie County, New York, and twice had to spring the trap at a hanging.

Australian Ronald Ryan was found guilty of shooting and killing prison officer George Hodson during an escape from Pentridge Prison, Victoria. He was executed by hanging in Melbourne on February 3, 1967.

Ryan's hanging was met with some of the largest public protests in Australian and led to the end of capital punishment. No-one was executed in Australia after Ryan.

Convicted murderer Billy Bailey was the last person to be hanged in the USA. He was executed by the state of Delaware on January 25, 1996. Although the method of execution in Delaware had been changed to lethal injection, he had the option of choosing to be hanged instead, which he selected.

The phrase 'Pulling My Leg' refers to anyone speeding up the demise of the condemned at the gallows by doing just that.

Japanese death row inmates are executed by hanging. To minimize the psychological burden on any single executioner, Japan uses a system where multiple prison officers (typically three) simultaneously press buttons to activate the trapdoor. This ensures anonymity for who actually triggered the execution.

Guillotine

On October 10, 1789, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French physician, stood before the National Assembly and proposed an apparatus designed for carrying out executions by beheading be adopted as the official means of capital punishment.

The device, a decapitation piece of equipment incorporating a vertically-descending blade was originally called a louisette. It was later named after Guillotin, however his family were unhappy at having their name attached to such a device.

Before the guillotine was adopted, executions in France were by axe or sword for the nobility and by hanging for commoners. One of the selling points for introducing the guillotine was equality - commoners could now enjoy the comparatively quick and painless death of decapitation just like the nobility, and would no longer have to endure brutal deaths such as those caused by hanging.

Guillotin was actually against the death penalty but thought that if it was imposed, "a machine that beheads painlessly" was the best way to do it.

A replica of the Halifax Gibbet, an early guillotine, or decapitating machine. By Paul Glazzard, 

While the guillotine was being prototyped, King Louis XVI of France "recommended that an oblique blade be used instead of a crescent blade, lest the blade not fit all necks". His own was "offered up discreetly as an example". He was later beheaded in 1793 during the French Revolution.

The French National Assembly approved the adoption of the guillotine as a humane method of execution for the poor on March 20, 1792.

The first guillotine was made by Antoine Louis and German harpsichord maker Tobias Schmidt.

The first execution by guillotine was performed on highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier at 3.30 in the afternoon on April 25, 1792. He was beheaded in front of what is now the city hall of Paris. Pelletier was instantly decapitated, which did not please the crowd They felt it was too swift and clinical to provide proper entertainment, as compared to previous execution methods, such as hanging, death-by-sword, or breaking at the wheel.

Miniature two-foot tall guillotine toys that decapitated dolls were popular with children during the French Revolution.

Charles-Henri Sanson who, as Master Executioner under King Louis XVI, was responsible for executing 2,918 people. Less than a year after Sanson became the first executioner to use the guillotine, he would use it on King Louis XVI himself.

Charlotte Corday, a young Girondin sympathizer, assassinated Jean-Paul Marat during the French Revolution. Marat was a prominent figure and a leader of the radical Jacobin faction.  After Charlotte Corday was executed by guillotine on July 17, 1793, a man named Legros lifted her head and slapped it on the cheeks. An expression of "unequivocal indignation" then appeared on Corday's face suggesting that victims of the guillotine may retain consciousness for a short while.

Estimates of the number of people guillotined during the French Revolution vary between 20,000 and over 40,000.

Marie Antoinette's execution on October 16, 1793

The last public guillotining in France was of Eugen Weidmann, who was convicted of six murders. He was beheaded on June 17, 1939 in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison. The "hysterical behaviour" by spectators was so scandalous that French president Albert Lebrun immediately banned all future public executions. Executions by guillotine continued in private until Hamida Djandoubi's execution on September 10, 1977.

The guillotine was used extensively by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. As many were killed with it in Nazi Germany as were killed during the French Reign of Terror, including 10,000 people between 1944 and 1945 alone.

The murderer Claude Buffet and his accomplice Roger Bontems were the last two people to be guillotined in Paris. They were executed at La Santé Prison on November 28, 1972. Bontems had been found innocent of murder, but as Buffet's accomplice was condemned to death anyway.

Torturer-murderer Hamida Djandoubi was the last person to be guillotined in France. He was executed on September 10, 1977 in Marseilles. Djandoubi was a Tunisian agricultural worker who was sentenced to death for the torture and murder of 21-year-old Élisabeth Bousquet.

The guillotine remained the only legal method of execution until President François Mitterrand  finally abolished the death penalty in 1981.

The metal blade of a guillotine weighed about 40kg (88lb).

It takes four seconds for a person to lose consciousness after being decapitated.

Sources The Independent,. Daily Express

Gas Chamber

Nevada was the first US state to sanction the use of the gas chamber.

Gee Jon was the first person to be executed in US in the gas chamber. An unsuccessful attempt to pump poison gas directly into his cell led to the development of the first makeshift gas chamber to carry out Gee's death on February 8, 1924. Hydrocyanic gas was used and the procedure took six minutes.

The former gas chamber at New Mexico State Penitentiary. By Shelka04 at en.wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, Wikipedia Commons

Evelita Juanita Spinnelli became the first woman to be enter the gas chamber in California on November 21, 1941. She was also the first woman ever to be officially executed in that state.

During the Holocaust, large-scale mobile gas chambers designed for mass killing were used by Nazi Germany as part of their genocide program.

Nazi commander Walter Rauff escaped justice for the deaths of nearly 100,000 people during World War II. He was instrumental in the implementation of the Nazis' genocide by gas chamber. Rauff died in 1984 from a heart attack as a free man in Chile. His MI5 file said he never showed any remorse.

The last person to be executed in the gas chamber was German national Walter LaGrand. Sentenced to death for killing a man during a bungled bank robbery in Marana, Arizona, he was executed on March 3, 1999.

Fine

In Ancient Britain the fine for insulting the king’s bard was six cows and eight pence.

In the 9th century, King Henry I of Saxony decreed that the fine for killing a cat should be sixty bushels of corn.

Geoffrey Chaucer was fined in his youth for beating up a Franciscan monk in London's Strand.

Queen Elizabeth I sanctioned a law in 1571 obliging everybody over the age of seven to wear a a "cap of wool knit" on Sundays and holidays. This was to help out the ailing wool trade. Non cap wearers were fined 3s 4d for each day of neglect. It was repealed in 1597 as unworkable.

William Shakespeare's Protestant father was fined by the authorities for non-attendance at church.

Christmas was banned in 1659 in Boston. Anyone found guilty of observing Yuletide or any other religious holiday was made liable to pay a fine of five shillings. The ban lasted for over 20 years before being repealed

The colony of South Carolina required "all persons whatsoever" to attend church each Sunday and refrain from skilled labor and travel. Violators of the "Sunday Law" could be fined 10 shillings or locked in the stocks for two hours.

In 1772 Scotland became the first country to make left-hand travel a national law, applying to all city traffic. (Offenders were fined 20 shillings, a substantial amount then.)

The Great Western Railway Bill of the 1840s made the company liable for a £20 fine for every locomotive or carriage discovered using the tracks on the Lord’s Day.

In June 1842 the inventor of the pedal bicycle, Kirkpatrick Macmillan decided to visit his brother in Glasgow on his contraption, a distance of 68 miles. However when he reached the Gorbals he knocked down a little girl who ran across his path and he was fined 5 Scots shillings for speeding at 8 mph. The magistrate initially declared that the highways of Britain had to be kept free of speedsters of his kind but later modified his opinions after the young inventor had shown him his bicycle and is said to have slipped him the money for the fine.

The first "officially recorded" baseball game between two different teams was played on June 19, 1846 at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken. The umpire fined one player six cents for swearing.

On January 28, 1896 Mr Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent became the first person to be fined for breaking the speed limit. He was fined one shilling plus nine shillings costs for driving his car at 8mph when the speed limit was 2mph.

When George Smith drove his taxi into a building in London's Bond Street in 1897 he became history’s first convicted drunk driver. Smith claimed he’d had only two or three beers but was fined £1.

Britain’s first holiday camp was Dodd’s socialist Holiday Camp at Caister-on-Sea in Norfolk, which opened in 1906. Accommodation was under canvas and anyone failing to keep his or her tent tidy was liable to a 6d fine for each offense.

Ray Charles had his first hit in 1949 with, "Confession Blues." The recording session for the song was noteworthy for another reason - Charles recorded it while there was a musicians' strike. The union fined him $600 - his life savings at that point - for the infraction.

The largest fine ever levied for an overdue library book was $345.14 (£203.29) for the poetry book Days And Deeds. It had been checked out of Kewanee Public Library in Illinois in the U.S. in 1955 by Emily Canellos-Simms, who returned it 47 years later after discovering it in her mother’s house.

History's most overdue library book, Dr. J. Currie's Febrile Diseases, was returned to the University of Cincinnati Medical Library in 1968. It had been checked out 145 years earlier by Mr. M. Dodd and was returned by his great-grandson, Richard Dodd. The fine, estimated at $2,264, was waived.

In 1970 John Lennon paid all of the fines for 96 people who had been arrested for protesting against the apartheid South Africa rugby team playing in Britain.

When the Skylab space station burned up in Earth's atmosphere  in 1979, the government of Western Australia fined Nasa $400 for littering. It was eventually paid in 2009.

In 1984, a U.S. library accused Michael Jackson of owing it over $1 million in overdue book fines. Officials said they would scrap the fines if he returned the books autographed.

In 2012 GlaxoSmithKline pleaded guilty to criminal charges of health care fraud and was fined a record US$3 billion.

Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch was threatened in January 2015 with a $500,000 fine by the NFL, if he didn't make himself available for Super Bowl Media Day. He showed up, set a timer on his phone, answered 29 questions with some variation of "I'm here so I won't get fined," and left the podium within 5 minutes.

Feeding the Barbary apes in Gibraltar is punishable under Gibraltar law by a fine of up to £4,000.

Finland has a  "Day-fine" system where most infractions are fined based on what you could spend in a day based on your income. The more severe the infraction the more "day-fines" you have to pay, which can cause millionaires to receive speeding tickets of  over $100,000.

In Holland, you can be fined for not using a shopping basket at a grocery store.

Execution

When statesman Shang Yang fell out of favour among the Chinese nobility in 338 BC, his punishment was to be dismembered by being tied to five horse or ox-drawn chariots and torn to pieces when they were sent in different directions. Much of his family were also executed.

A brutal form of execution in ancient China, the Waist Chop, was outlawed in 1734 after a victim survived long enough to write the Chinese symbol for "miserable" seven times in his own blood.  As its name implies, it involved the condemned being sliced into two at the waist by an executioner.

During times when people were burnt at the stake, bags of gunpowder were sometimes tied around the victim's necks to shorten their suffering.

Heinrich Schmidt  was originally a woodsman in the north-eastern Bavarian town Hof. Once, when the notoriously tyrannical margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach, Albrecht II (r. 1527–1553), wanted three men hanged, he picked out Heinrich from the crowd and forced him to perform the execution. Due to the severe social stigma attached to executioners he couldn't return to his job as a woodcutter, and he was condemned to carry on as an executioner as was his son, Franz.

Franz Schmidt, the executioner of Nuremberg, carried out 361 state - sanctioned killings during his time in office between 1573 and 1617, detailing each in a diary. His methods for putting prisoners to death included hanging, beheading, burning, drowning and the breaking wheel.

Like much else in Britain, execution has had class distinctions. Aristocrats were beheaded, usually with an axe but for women sometimes with a sword. Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, was the last man in Britain to be executed by beheading on April 9, 1747 for high treason (supporting the Stuarts’ claim to the Crown),

Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat

The Swedes beheaded Scottish-born adventurer Alexander Blackwell on July 29, 1747 for meddling with their line of succession. Blackwell's last words, “I’m sorry for the mistake but this is the first time I’ve been beheaded,” were spoken after he laid his head on the wrong side of the chopping block and was corrected by the executioner.

Louis XV of France survived an assassination attempt by Robert-François Damiens. Fetched from his prison cell on the morning of March 28, 1757, Damiens said "La journée sera rude" ("The day will be hard.") He then became the last person to be executed in the country by the dreadful punishment of drawing and quartering.

Damiens before his judges

Leopold II of Habsburg-Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany, promulgated a penal reform on November 30, 1786, making Tuscany the first modern state to abolish the death penalty. Consequently, November 30 is commemorated by 300 cities around the world as Cities for Life Day.

Leopold as Grand Duke of Tuscany together with his family

Hannah Ocuish was a 12-year-old Pequot Native American girl who was hanged in New London, Connecticut, on December 20, 1786 for the murder of a 6-year-old girl. She is believed to be the youngest person ever executed in the United States.

Ocuish's case was highly controversial at the time, as many people believed that she was mentally incompetent and should not have been held responsible for her actions. Her execution was also criticized by many abolitionists, who saw it as an example of the harsh treatment of Native Americans and people with disabilities.

Edward Despard  was the last executed criminal in 1803 to be hanged drawn and quartered in England.

Michel "Marshal" Ney, the military commander during the Napoleonic Wars, refused to wear a blindfold and was allowed the right to give the order to fire at his own execution.

When Napoleon Bonaparte met Charles-Henri Sanson, the French executioner who killed nearly 3000 people in his career, he asked him how he could sleep at night. Sanson joked: "If kings, emperors, dictators can sleep well, why shouldn't an executioner?"

James Cook was a bookbinder convicted of the murder of his creditor Paas, a manufacturer of brass instruments. He was executed in front of Leicester prison on August 10, 1832. and his body was left in a specially made metal cage in a public place as a warning to others. Thousands gathered in Leicester to see the gruesome spectacle.

On December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota, 38 Dakota men were hanged in a mass execution. This event occurred in the aftermath of the Dakota War of 1862, a conflict between the Dakota Sioux and white settlers in Minnesota.  The war began over long-standing grievances, including broken treaties, unfair treatment, and food shortages. After weeks of fighting, hundreds of Dakota were captured, and military tribunals were quickly set up to try them. President Abraham Lincoln personally reviewed the trial records and approved the execution of 38 individuals by the Army. It remains the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

The first woman executed by the federal U.S. government was American boarding house owner Mary Surratt. She was hanged July 7, 1865 along with three men for conspiracy in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Surratt was the mother of John H. Surratt, Jr., who was later tried but was not convicted of involvement in the assassination.

Execution of Mary Surratt,and 3 others in the courtyard of Washington Arsenal (now Fort McNair).

Wenseslao Moguel (c. 1890 – c. 1975) was captured on March 18, 1915, suspected of taking part in the Mexican Revolution. He was sentenced to death without a trial, and was shot 8–9 times by a firing squad in the body, and received one final shot to the head point-blank range to ensure death. He survived his execution, (stories differ as to how he survived) and lived to the age of 85.

After Rainey Bethea confessed to the rape and murder of a 70-year-old white woman named Lischia Edwards, he was publicly hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky on August 14, 1936. He was the last person to be publicly executed in the United States.

Eugene Weidmann, a convicted thief, kidnapper, and murderer, was the last person to be publicly executed in France on June 17, 1939. After his arrest, Weidmann confessed to murdering five people and was sentenced to death. Shortly thereafter, he was beheaded by guillotine. The "hysterical
behavior" of spectators at the event was so scandalous that French President Albert Lebrun immediately banned all future public executions.

Corporal Josef Jakobs was executed by firing squad at the Tower of London on August 15, 1941 making him the last person to be executed at the Tower. He had been convicted of being a German spy.

Julius Rosenberg was an electrical engineer, and Ethel Rosenberg was his wife. The couple was arrested in 1950 and charged with conspiring to commit espionage. They were found guilty of being part of a Soviet spy ring that aimed to provide the Soviet Union with sensitive information about nuclear weapons technology and sentenced to death. When the Rosenbergs were killed by electric chair on June 19, 1953, they were the first husband-and-wife team to be executed in the US. They had been charged with espionage and spying.

The last two executions in Britain took place on August 13, 1964. Peter Anthony Allen and Gwynne Owen Evans were hanged at Walton Prison in Liverpool and Strangeways Prison in Manchester respectively, for the murder of John Alan West on April 7 that year.

Capital punishment had been in decline in Britain for many years before the executions of Allen and Evans. The last woman to be hanged in Britain was Ruth Ellis in 1955, and the last execution in Scotland was in 1963. The executions of Allen and Evans were widely seen as a sign that the death penalty was on its way out in Britain.

Ronald Ryan was the last person to be legally executed in Australia on February 3, 1967. Ryan was hanged after being found guilty of shooting and killing prison officer George Hodson during an escape from Pentridge Prison, Victoria, in 1965. His killing was met with some of the largest public protests in the history of Australia and led to the end of executions in the country.

Luis Monge was executed in the gas chamber, Colorado State Penitentiary, Cannon City on June 2 1967 having murdered his wife and 3 of his 10 children. His was the last US execution until 1977, when the death penalty was reinstated.

Gary Gilmore was the first American to be executed after restoration of US death penalty in 1976. (He was executed by firing squad.) His last meal consisted of hamburger, eggs, potatoes, and two mini bottles of contraband Bourbon.

Convicted 40-year-old Texas murderer Charlie Brooks became the first American to be executed by lethal injection on December 7, 1982. The execution took place at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas.

In 1984 Velma (Margie) Barfield became the first woman to be executed in the US since the restoration of death penalty in 1976. (She had poisoned her fiancée.)

In his last week before being executed in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 21, 2011, Troy Davis was put on ‘death watch’, to stop him taking his own life.

Twitter recorded 7671 tweets per second in the moments before word of Davis's execution, making his death the second most active Twitter event in 2011.

Troy Davis Wikipedia

It took nearly two hours to execute convicted murderer Joseph Wood on July 23, 2014. An hour after being injected with midazolam and hydromorphone (15 times the lethal dose), the prisoner was still alive. Lawyers filed an emergency appeal to halt the execution. Ten minutes after he died, the appeal was denied.

There were 28 executions in the US in 2015. The number has been on the decrease following a high of 98 in 1999. 

China executes far more convicts than every other country combined -- about 5,000 in a year. Precise numbers are a "state secret".

Japan does not inform inmates of their execution date, instead notifying them about an hour before.

Prisoners waiting to be executed on Death Row in America are given a physical beforehand, in order to ensure they are fit enough to die.