The Executioner Always Chops Twice
Ghastly Blunders on the Scaffold
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A morbidly fascinating mixture of bungled executions, strange last requests, and classic final one-liners from medieval times to the present day.
Sometimes it's hard to be an executioner, trying to keep someone from popping up to make a quip when they should have spectacularly sunk without a trace. Or to be told that the condemned to the guillotine won't have a last drink for fear of "completely losing his head." The business of death can be absurd, and nothing illustrates this better than these tales of the gruesome and frankly ridiculous ways in which a number of ill-fated unfortunates met (or failed to meet) their maker.
Did you know:
When Sir Thomas More was ordered to position his head on the block, he said "though you have warrant to cut off my head, you have none to cut off my beard?"
When the guillotine took three strokes to sever the neck of Isabeau Herman, the mob attempted to stone the executioner to death for cruelty?
After the English hanged the pirate Captain Kidd they chained his body to a stake on the Thames River as a warning to seafarers?
From the strange to the gruesome, from the weird to the completely unbelievable, The Executioner Always Chops Twice is popular history at its best: witty, lively, and wonderfully bizarre.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A former Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London and author of numerous books on torture and the death penalty, Abbott offers a front row seat to more than 80 bungled executions in his latest volume (originally published by Summersdale in 2002), which comes complete with illustrations, famous last words and a crash course in modes of execution. The grisly tales range from botched decapitations in the mid-1500s to messy electrocutions in the late 20th century. Readers with strong stomachs should be able to get past the gory detail of these stories to root out the morbidly comedic tone Abbott often employs when relating famous last words, such as the flirty admonishments that Mary, Queen of Scots, gave to her executioners, or Sir Thomas More's demand that the guillotine cut off his head but not clip his beard. Such anecdotes show how the condemned maintained their dignity in the face of death. Though not for the faint of heart--or for readers who may feel that the death penalty deserves a more serious consideration--this book offers ghastly trivia and a good chill.
