The Stomach-Churning “Specialties” of Medieval Executioners

The hooded figure had arrived in town. What once felt a cozy little hamlet had the cold chill of death in the air. Hush and muttering filled the market square, as the looming figure in the hood lumbered through the crowd. Half celebrity, half disgrace – he was liable a criminal paying off his sentence – but this was “the hangman”; a dark deathly figure bringing the brutal force of the law.

No one knew the figure behind the hood, not by face, nor by name but death was his feared specialty known throughout the land. “The headsman” some called him, armed with an axe the breadth of a torso or greatsword the near height of a man. Should one be accused of the grandest trespass of treason, a looming hooded figure might get hideously creative with how they dispose of you! Welcome to History on Fleek, today we look at medieval executioners and all their stomach-churning specialties.
Executioners The executioner of medieval times held a hefty weight on his shoulders, or axe, or… noose. Any which way justice was served by an executioner, they were the responsible individual irrespective of crime or circumstance. Typically they worked under the auspices of the government, though in medieval times, this would often happen through local authorities of the town or city in question.
Strangely, executioners were held in a double helix of regard – much demanded and required, but somewhat outcast and feared. It would not be uncommon for executioners to conceal their identity by wearing a hood or mask – not all executions were by popular choice. This grizzly and dangerous job was paid but by no means handsomely.
How’d ya become an executioner? It turns out there were many paths to becoming an executioner in medieval times. Not exactly the most glamorous of legacies, but yes, executioners were sometimes from a dynasty or family of executioners. The job passed down from father to son and so on. Other executioners would have been former criminals themselves who were granted a grim chance at redemption – become an executioner or face execution yourself.
Remarkably, this system did workout to a fair degree. Many executioners of this circumstance would be granted pardons for their crimes and even exemptions from other laws as thanks for their service to the state. Yet the terms of a juxtaposed perception plagued the job. In many instances, executioners would have to acquire their own training and equipment.
Ultimately, this meant becoming an executioner wasn’t open to all and strangely a job only available to those who could afford it. Capital punishment was the way and means of broadcasting justice and its standards to medieval society – execution was widespread despite the stigma on its perpetrators. Viewed as an ugly and typically low-paid job, there was high demand for executioners and a select few who’d built their professional stock could earn a relatively comfortable living from the work. In some cases, executioners would view themselves as skilled craftsmen, honing and building their own tools for execution and taking a degree of pride in their job.
Friendly, neighborhood… axe-wielding executioner While a public execution is nothing short of repellant to today’s eyes, in medieval times it held different connotations. The public display, the ritual of the execution was as much an example to society at large as bringing a consequence to an individual.
An axe, a guillotine, a noose – these tools were as much symbols of state justice as items to take a life, they could be displayed independently of execution to keep the public reminded. The symbolism of the role and the act wasn’t lost on the practitioners, mock executions were performed in public squares to keep the weight of state justice firmly on the publics mind.
It’s fair to say, public show and spectacle were very much part of the executioner’s job. This harbinger of justice role did come with pushback and retaliation from the general public. Like any role of authority over the masses, the executioner could be guilty of using their power for personal gain. It’s been rumored that an executioner of the time could take bribes from the families of the condemned in the hope they’d make the execution as painless as possible.
Yet, irrespective of the ill will that an executioner could bring, they were seen by many as a “necessary evil” of sorts. The role had the power to preserve social stability and uphold the law, a potent factor in institutionally limited and god-fearing times.
Executioners methods Executioners could scare people, I mean really scare them. They were also known as a “hangman” or even less ambiguously a “headsman”.
It’s not all that hard to understand: the arrival of an executioner coming to one’s town or city could mean witnessing something truly grim and stomach-turning. While beheading by the axe or guillotine was far from rare and the same thing could be said for hanging, there were other methods, and they were vile.
Burning someone at the stake could be capital punishment in the medieval period. Throughout Europe in the medieval period, any person considered a heretic faced this fate. As the medieval period turned out its own inquisition across the continent, by the latter half of the 12th century – burning people to death became statutory. Forget the executioner, the civic authorities demanded this by law.
An absolutely dire way to meet one’s end, the best hope a person immolated had was being granted a fast death one of two ways; one, suffocation from a fume-damaged respiratory tract or suffocation from the burned and shrunken skin around their neck. Seesh. Without a doubt, the biggest spectacle or showpiece an executioner could perform was a drawing and quartering.
You’ve heard the phrase, “death by a thousand cuts” – this is more like “death by about 5 deaths in one”. Under the reign of King Edward III, this was the most severe punishment for the grandest possible crime – high treason… and it shows. So, to begin at the beginning – the condemned would be tied to a wooden panel or hurdle and dragged by a horse to their place of execution.
Once there, they would be hung – but only to the point of near death. Then, they would have their genitals cut off, they would be disemboweled, they would be beheaded – THEN, they would be quartered, chopped into four orderly pieces. These four pieces would likely be displayed in public to warn them off any such action themselves.
Ya – I’m sure they weren’t getting the message about the time you cut off their bits and gutted them… seesh!
Peirrepoint legacy Fascinatingly, history has managed to produce some famous and famed executioners. In contemporary times, there is probably no more famous executioner than Albert Pierrepoint.
Despite a rather Gaelic name, Pierrepoint was an English hangman and came from a family dynasty of hangmen in the country, his father and uncle presiding before him. Albert would make a deathly legacy all his own though. In just a 25-year career as an executioner of Her Majesty’s Prison Service, Albert Pierrepoint would execute as many as 600 hundred people and at least over 400.
Overseeing that many executions also meant that Albert… well, whacked a lot of fairly bad people by today’s enlightened standards: serial killers including Gordon Cummins, John Haigh, and John Christie as well as convicted war criminals. Conversely, Pierrepoint would oversee highly contentious executions across his career including Timothy Evans, Derek Bentley, and Ruth Ellis.
From 1941 to 1956 he was a lead executioner for Her Majesty’s Home Office and would finish his life running a pub up in Lancashire after. Perhaps the most interesting detail of Albert Pierrepoint’s career was the difference in public attitudes towards his career before the second world war and after.
Interviewed after his career, a man who’d spent a quarter of a decade overseeing hundreds of hangings doubted it as a deterrent. He finished his life unconvinced a guaranteed death was any way to prevent murders in the future.
The Gentleman of Paris Going back a little further in time, probably the most famed executioner before the industrial revolution and onward was the royal executioner of King Louis XVI.
Charles-Henri Sanson was the High executioner of the First French Republic from 1778 for a duration of some 40 years. The span of his death toll is quite incredible, it’s believed Sanson oversaw some 3,000 executions. The French term for executioner was “bourreau” and astoundingly, in his role as bourreau, Sanson would soon be known as “The Gentleman of Paris”.
He would be the first executioner to use the guillotine and oversaw its prototype testing in 1792. The turn in the tale of Charles-Henri Sanson was thanks to the period of history he found his career taking place in. Hired as the lead executioner during the French revolution, Sanson would end up beheading the monarch who’d initially brought him to prominence.
With an unimaginable role and pressure, Sanson was the gatekeeper to literally making the heads roll of deposed officials amid the revolution. Though, like other famed executioners, Sanson was part of a family dynasty. Just a matter of months after his execution of Louis XVI in January of 1793, Marie Antoinette would be executed by his son Henri, in October of that year.
I guess that’s one to tell the grandkids… oh no, wait- were they executioners too?!? This is History on Fleek and we’ll see you next time!