The Headman’s Sword

Beheading by sword or axe, a public entertainment in central and northern Europe until a hundred and fifty years ago, but in many extra-European countries to this very day, is done with a horizontal slash. The axe was preferred in Gallic and Mediterranean Europe; it, too, remains in use today. A long apprenticeship is needed for perfecting aim and force; executioners kept in trim by practicing on animals in slaughter houses, and on dummies fitted with pumpkin heads.

Beheading, an “easy” death if carried out with skill, was reserved exclusively for condemned nobles or people of importance ...plebeians were executed –and we are speaking now only of those executions that did not intentionally prescribe painful methods– in ways that caused prolonged agonies. The most common of these was, and still is, ordinary hanging, by which the victim is pulled up and left to strangle (as compared to the so-called “English drop”, which lets the victim fall to the end of the slack in the rope so that his neck and spinal cord will be severed, most of the time).
A head cut off with a swift and neat slash is fully aware of its fate as it rolls along the ground or falls into the basket. Perception is extinguished only after a few seconds.

Information and photographs in this virtual exhibition proceed from the book Torture instruments; a bilingual guide to the exhibition Torture Instruments form the Middle Ages to the Industrial Era presented in various cities in the world in 1983-2000.