Why G*llows E*ecution Vict*ms Had Legs Pulled

In accounts of historical executions, there is sometimes a particularly disturbing detail. After a condemned person had been dropped from the gallows, another person might grab hold of their legs and then pull downwards. Occasionally, someone would even hang from the victim’s legs. As brutal as this sounds, the intention was often to bring about death more quickly.

For much of history, hanging was very different from the carefully calculated executions that developed in the 19th century. Early gallows were relatively simple devices. The condemned prisoner might stand on a cart, ladder, stool, or platform with a noose around their neck. The support was then removed, leaving them suspended.

There was often very little actual drop. This mattered because these early hangings did not normally produce the dramatic neck injury associated with the later long drop method. Instead, the condemned person could remain suspended while the rope compressed the structures of the neck. Death was therefore not necessarily instantaneous.

A prisoner might continue struggling even after their stool was removed. Unconsciousness could occur relatively quickly in some cases, but in others, the process could be visibly prolonged. Historical spectators could consequently witness movements and convulsions after the condemned person had been suspended.

This was where pulling on the legs came in. By pulling downwards on the body, additional force was placed upon the rope and neck. The grim intention was to quicken up unconsciousness and then death. An execution assistant might do this, but there are also accounts of friends or relatives attempting to have shortened the condemned person’s suffering.

One remarkable example involved Anne Green, a young woman who was hanged at Oxford in December 1650. Green had been convicted of murdering her newborn child, although she maintained that the baby had been stillborn. She was taken to the gallows and hanged. According to accounts of the extraordinary incident, people pulled on her body in an attempt to make certain their death came quickly.

After hanging for around half an hour, Green was cut down and placed in a coffin. But then something extraordinary happened. She was discovered to be alive. Doctors attempted to revive her and against the odds, she recovered. Her survival became famous throughout England and she was eventually pardoned. She even went on to live for many more years.

Her case illustrates an important fact about early modern hanging. Simply suspending someone from a rope did not guarantee an immediate death. Another famous example occurred at Tyburn in London in 1705. A man named John Smith, original, was hanged for burglary. Smith remained suspended for approximately 50 minutes before a reprieve arrived and he was cut cut down.

Remarkably, he survived and became known as Half-hanged Smith. Such incidents help demonstrate the unpredictability of hanging. During the 19th century, British executioners increasingly attempted to make hanging faster and more reliable. Instead of simply suspending the condemned person, they began using longer drops.

Eventually, calculations involving the prisoner’s weight and the length of the rope were introduced. The objective was to reduce rapid unconsciousness through severe injury to the neck rather than a prolonged death through suspension. This explains the otherwise bizarre historical practice of pulling on a hanged person’s legs. It was not usually intended as an additional punishment, quite the opposite.

In many cases, it was a crude attempt to shorten execution that was taking far too long. Before the development of the calculated long drop, hanging could be unpredictable and prolonged. When a condemned prisoner continued struggling at the end of the rope, pulling downwards on their legs was one grim method people used in the hope of bringing the execution to a quicker end.