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One for the road Chaps?

Chas

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Many words and phrases have crept into common usage courtesy of the underworld.
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Start off with the dreaded Tyburn, the site of London’s premier public entertainment, public executions. Condemned prisoners were held in the ‘Condemned Hold’ at Newgate, where their legal status was technically speaking, neither alive nor yet dead. Hence, according to the jargon of the time, they were ‘In Limbo.’
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Having been taken from ‘Limbo’ they would be shackled and the hangman’s rope placed around their necks. They were then transported aboard a cart also containing their own coffins which they often used to sit on. Along the way it was customary for them to stop at a tavern or two for a final drink, known in the trade as ‘One for the road.’
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Having had their ‘One for the road’ they were put back on the cart and continued on to Tyburn. Now, having taken the last drink they’d ever be having, they were officially ‘On the wagon.’
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Tyburn (Marble Arch nowadays) was West of Newgate Prison, so any inmate executed there had, in convict jargon, ‘Gone West.’
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In the days before purpose-built gallows it was common for a condemned prisoner to be placed on a ladder resting against a tree and the ladder would then be turned so they fell and slowly strangled. Hence, a condemned inmate in those days would be thoroughly justified in feeling somewhat ‘Turned off.’ which is also the origin of the old wives’ tale that it’s unlucky to walk under a ladder.
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With purpose-built scaffolds there were often thirteen steps between the ground and the scaffold itself and thirteen turns of the rope made up the original hangman’s knot. Hence, thirteen has historically proven extremely ‘Unlucky for some.’
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Once atop the ‘scaffold’ (yes, this is where the word for today’s builder’s scaffolding comes from) the hangman was, in those days, publicly nicknamed ‘Jack Ketch’ after a particularly notorious, clumsy, wretched executioner. ‘Jack Ketch’ is also the hangman who appears in puppet show ‘Punch and Judy.’
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Pulling your leg’? At Tyburn, death was by a standard drop for every prisoner. In order to avoid seeing a prisoner suffer unduly from slow strangulation a prisoner’s friends would grab his ankles and pull, tightening the noose and either strangling them faster or breaking their neck. Hence, if somebody’s ‘Pulling your leg’, what they’ve said or done might seem spiteful but it’s meant in the nicest of ways.
 
I had the privilege of an unofficial guided tour of some "off limits" areas of the Old Bailey in London about 12 years ago, they still had the condemned man's cell on the night before his hanging (was a cleaning storeroom when I saw it)

There was a door at the rear of the cell which took you outside and down a marble lined "corridor" (essentially a posh trench), every few yards it had sort of doorway with no door, these doorways got progressively lower and narrower and was a way of the guards being able to control the prisoner as he got closer to the gallows in case the fight or flight response kicked in.

There is also a piece of glass embedded in the concrete wall inside the foyer which has been kept as a historical reminder of the IRA bombing.
 
it had sort of doorway with no door, these doorways got progressively lower and narrower and was a way of the guards being able to control the prisoner as he got closer to the gallows in case the fight or flight response kicked in.
Yes I have heard of those narrowing 'doorways' before.
When I worked for a theatrical firm before the Opera House one of our contracts was with Madame Tussauds and I was doing some display lighting in The Chamber of Horrors where they had a gallows set up with a genuine hangman's noose supplied be a hangman, I think his name was Pierrepoint or something like that, so I took the opportunity of putting the noose round my neck and standing on the gallows, first making sure it was firmly chocked. Some have said I should have taken the chocks out, but we won't go into that here.
 
Albert Pierrepoint hung over 200 Nazi war criminals after the Nuremberg trials as well as hundreds of others from civil cases. He stated at one point that he didn't think that capital punishment acted as a deterrent and was more an act of revenge.
 
A hangman's skill and closely guarded secret was deducing how much weight to tie at the convicts ankles , too little and death might be a long drawn out affair - too much and his head would come off .

For the same reason women often avoided the same fate because fat asses and scrawny necks was very likely to result in the head coming off and who wants to clean that up . A different species and difficult to the end . Strangely i never seen this complained about on a banner at an equal rights protest :lol:
 
A hangman's skill and closely guarded secret was deducing how much weight to tie at the convicts ankles , too little and death might be a long drawn out affair - too much and his head would come off .
I always thought it was the length of drop that was the deciding factor.
 
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Albert Pierrepoint hung over 200 Nazi war criminals after the Nuremberg trials as well as hundreds of others from civil cases. He stated at one point that he didn't think that capital punishment acted as a deterrent and was more an act of revenge.

I believe the statistics back that up - for example in the US, states with the death penalty/capital punishment do not show lower crime/murder rates than states without. Similarly, states that have abolished the death death penalty/capital punishment do not show any significant change to crime/murder rates.

So I'd probably agree with Pierrepoint that it is all mostly about revenge. I must admit, I do find the concept conflicting - we find a person guilty of murder, something so we think is so heinous, that is deserves to be punished by....

Anyway, enough of my ramblings - don't want to open a can of worms (oooops :icon-rolleyes: )
 
I always thought it was the length of drop that was the deciding factor.
Same difference a closely guarded secret a skill earned from experience - anyone can hang someone but pay me well if you want it done right and proper .
 
Touchy subject but personally i don't think of it a revenge or a deterrent , those unequivocally guilty of crimes nobody can defend should be put down full stop .

Miscarriages of justice result from a determined effort to convict regardless of the truth hence the typical a stay of execution and retrials in America .

Unequivocally guilty = A maliciously shot B dead on live tv and in doing so knowingly surrendered his own right to a life so make him dead . Society will not pay for his crime so if you can get it done before dinner time that would be good .
 
A maliciously shot B dead on live tv and in doing so knowingly surrendered his own right to a life so make him dead
if only it was ever so crystal clear.
Miscarriages of justice result from a determined effort to convict regardless of the truth hence the typical a stay of execution and retrials in America .
it's well documented the amount of wrongful convictions in the USA but people still are executed whist innocent . The question is , surely , what are we trying to achieve with the justice system ? Even in the darkest days of Nazi Germany there was still resistance from some German citizens who knowingly faced torture and execution.Prevention is always better than the cure .
 
as well as all the underword sayings our language , at lest those of us born before T'internet we have plenty of saying related to seafaring.A shot across the bows , by and large , chock a block , are all explained here as are a surprising amount of other phrases that i learnt and still use .
 
The only thing between the devil and the deep blue sea is this lump of wood your standing on so take care of it and you might live to face the devil again . The devil being whatever challenge lay ahead be it a storm or battle or something else of potentially fatal consequence .
 
Jack Ketch was supposed to be pissed as a fart when doing his last ? hexy que shun and swung the axe every where but the neck the poor old soul suffered a lot but eventually died whether from blood loss injuries or a successful execution now in saying that did they have tomato sauce back then and how did Ketchup get its name for those who remember Ketchup in glass bottles before the event of clean squeezeys twas it not a right bar starred to get out the bottle give the bottle a good smack and it was all over the place
 
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