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Authors: Simon Webb
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the industry there from around AD 1150. The reason for this is that the soil in this area is not very fertile and the town needed to find another source of income, besides farming. An industry based upon sheep farming, common elsewhere in the county, fitted the bill perfectly.
In 1286 the manorial court of the area, which included the town of Halifax, was granted the right to execute anybody found guilty of stealing woollen cloth. This became known as the Halifax Gibbet Law. It was in this year that the first person was supposedly executed by means of the ‘Halifax Gibbet’. The Halifax Gibbet was, in fact, the prototype for all mechanical devices for decapitating people.
We do not know who invented the Halifax Gibbet, although legends exist about its origins. A long ballad by Thomas Deloney called ‘Thomas of Reading’, contains a detailed account of the supposed circumstances which led to the construction of the gibbet. The poem, published in 1600, tells of a group of local clothiers who obtained permission from the Crown to execute those who stole cloth in this area. Unfortunately, nobody was prepared to act as hangman, this being a post which was traditionally of very low status. A travelling friar arrived in the town and devised a machine which would take off the heads of ‘valiant rogues’, without anybody having to be solely responsible for the act. In other words, executions could take place without anybody getting their hands dirty. This was because of the way that the gibbet was made; it meant that everybody present would take hold of the rope which released the blade and no one person could be said to be responsible.
In appearance, the Halifax Gibbet looked almost exactly like the guillotine. Two tall uprights were capped with a crossbar. At the base was a semi-circular hole in which the victim’s neck could lay snugly. A heavy block of wood, with a metal blade attached to it, slid up and down and could be hoisted to the top of the uprights and then secured in position with a pin. The condemned man knelt and placed his head beneath the blade, which was then released. Its mode of operation was thus precisely similar to that of the later French guillotine. There were two minor differences, one of which was very significant and allowed at least several people to escape execution at the last moment.
The most obvious difference between the Halifax Gibbet and the guillotine was in the design of the blade. The blade of the guillotine was set at an angle, giving it the appearance of a triangle, whereas that of the Halifax Gibbet was, in effect, a standard, crescent-shaped axe blade, which was embedded in a stout block of wood. This, in turn, was surmounted by a mass of lead to increase its weight and effectiveness. Although this seemed to accomplish the job well enough (there are no references in history to anybody’s head not being severed at once), it was probably not as neat and surgical an operation as when Madame Guillotine went to work. There is reason to suppose that heads removed by this method was more squashed off at the neck, rather than being cleanly cut, as was the case with the guillotine.
Although we are all familiar with the final version of the guillotine, with its iconic, angled blade, the first prototypes lacked this refinement. A German harpsichord maker, called Tobias Schmidt, constructed the first French beheading machine in 1791. He used an ordinary axe blade at first, but this proved not to be up to the job. The new machine decapitated a number of live sheep successfully and then two human corpses. The third corpse to be tested had tough neck muscles, and it took three attempts to sever the head. There is a story that King Louis XVI, a keen amateur locksmith, suggested the refinement of having the blade set at an acute angle. If true, this would have been ironic in the extreme, as he was later to become one of the most famous victims of this new method of execution.
The other difference
In 1286 the manorial court of the area, which included the town of Halifax, was granted the right to execute anybody found guilty of stealing woollen cloth. This became known as the Halifax Gibbet Law. It was in this year that the first person was supposedly executed by means of the ‘Halifax Gibbet’. The Halifax Gibbet was, in fact, the prototype for all mechanical devices for decapitating people.
We do not know who invented the Halifax Gibbet, although legends exist about its origins. A long ballad by Thomas Deloney called ‘Thomas of Reading’, contains a detailed account of the supposed circumstances which led to the construction of the gibbet. The poem, published in 1600, tells of a group of local clothiers who obtained permission from the Crown to execute those who stole cloth in this area. Unfortunately, nobody was prepared to act as hangman, this being a post which was traditionally of very low status. A travelling friar arrived in the town and devised a machine which would take off the heads of ‘valiant rogues’, without anybody having to be solely responsible for the act. In other words, executions could take place without anybody getting their hands dirty. This was because of the way that the gibbet was made; it meant that everybody present would take hold of the rope which released the blade and no one person could be said to be responsible.
In appearance, the Halifax Gibbet looked almost exactly like the guillotine. Two tall uprights were capped with a crossbar. At the base was a semi-circular hole in which the victim’s neck could lay snugly. A heavy block of wood, with a metal blade attached to it, slid up and down and could be hoisted to the top of the uprights and then secured in position with a pin. The condemned man knelt and placed his head beneath the blade, which was then released. Its mode of operation was thus precisely similar to that of the later French guillotine. There were two minor differences, one of which was very significant and allowed at least several people to escape execution at the last moment.
The most obvious difference between the Halifax Gibbet and the guillotine was in the design of the blade. The blade of the guillotine was set at an angle, giving it the appearance of a triangle, whereas that of the Halifax Gibbet was, in effect, a standard, crescent-shaped axe blade, which was embedded in a stout block of wood. This, in turn, was surmounted by a mass of lead to increase its weight and effectiveness. Although this seemed to accomplish the job well enough (there are no references in history to anybody’s head not being severed at once), it was probably not as neat and surgical an operation as when Madame Guillotine went to work. There is reason to suppose that heads removed by this method was more squashed off at the neck, rather than being cleanly cut, as was the case with the guillotine.
Although we are all familiar with the final version of the guillotine, with its iconic, angled blade, the first prototypes lacked this refinement. A German harpsichord maker, called Tobias Schmidt, constructed the first French beheading machine in 1791. He used an ordinary axe blade at first, but this proved not to be up to the job. The new machine decapitated a number of live sheep successfully and then two human corpses. The third corpse to be tested had tough neck muscles, and it took three attempts to sever the head. There is a story that King Louis XVI, a keen amateur locksmith, suggested the refinement of having the blade set at an acute angle. If true, this would have been ironic in the extreme, as he was later to become one of the most famous victims of this new method of execution.
The other difference
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