The ideal lesion produced by judicial hanging / by Frederic Wood-Jones.

  • Jones, F. Wood (Frederic Wood), 1879-1954.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The ideal lesion produced by judicial hanging / by Frederic Wood-Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    “distinctly remembers that the criminal’s head lay over towards the left shoulder ” after the drop. Such a knot is termed subaural, and for some reason— probably because there is little fear of it slipping—it is the favourite with hangmen ; and yet from its very frequent failure to produce any lesion of the neck and to cause instantaneous death it can only be described as a very bad one. Death by fracture of the base of the skull, or, falling short of this, death by strangulation, is not an ideal method of execution ; and from the evidence that has accumulated it seems to me just to say that, short of decapitation, death by subaural knot is uncertain in its rapidity, and in its mode of production. Turning now to the second series, we have five sets of cervical vertebrae all showing an identical lesion—i.e., the fracture dislocation of the axis vertebra shown in Fig. 2. It Fig. 2. The lesion present in Captain C. F. Fraser’s series of judicial hangings. Separation of the arch of the axis from the body ; effect of a submental knot. is to be noted that the odontoid process plays no part in producing death, but that the posterior arch of the axis is snapped clean off and remains fixed to the third vertebra, while the atlas, the odontoid process, and the anterior arch of the axis remain fixed to the skull. This lesion is produced by the violent jerk which throws the man’s head suddenly backwards and snaps his axis vertebra. Death in this series of cases was uniformly instantaneous, for the spinal cord was cleanly severed by the fracture of the neck. In every instance the knot was jolaced ‘ ‘ a little to the left of the chin”—i.e., was a submental knot, or as near sub- mental as the circumstances allowed. No more instructive illustration of the action of the submental knot could be furnished than that given in this series of Captain Fraser. For a long while the facts here mentioned have been known in an indefinite way. The submental knot was strongly advocated to, and apparently approved by, the Committee on Capital Sentences in 1886, but it was not made a recommendation in its resolutions. It is used by medical officers upon whom the duty devolves in outlying stations, but it is not the English official judicial method. The reason for this, I think, is clear. Men were at one time hanged by the neck until they were dead—i. e., strangled ; and at that time, as many old prints depict, the knot was suboccipital. With the introduction of the “ drop ” in 1818 this knot was found unsuitable, and a subaural knot was used. I imagine that these series of lesions will show clearly what many have advocated for years, that the submental knot should now supersede the subaural knot in our English judicial hangings.