On Hanging

If life is full of interest, death is not less so in history. The death-bed scenes that are familiar both to doctors and to the friends of the dying patients constitute a harrowing chapter of the life of most people. The horror of death is felt more by those that witness it’s slow on-set than by those that submit to it. It is very much like the feeling created in the minds of the public in respect of people who wear Khaddar or go to jails. Friends and even sympathisers feel infinite pity for the delicately nurtured politicians who wear this sorry stuff called Khaddar and frequent those unspeakable places called jails. We cannot, however, say whether the dying person feels the same joy and satisfaction in his impending dissolution as the patriot that wears Khaddar or the Non-co-operator that rushes to the jail. Be that as it may, death itself admits of study in two aspects–one natural, and the other artificial. And undoubtedly there is a world of difference between the feelings generated in the two cases in the victim thereof on the eve of his passage from this world to the Great Unknown beyond.

Hanging has been a subject of perennial interest, more so on account of the intense feeling that has been recently rising in the minds of the public against capital punishment. You have only to raise the question in a public body, notably of Congressmen, in order to elicit a volley of opposition to it. It is almost a fashion to condemn hanging, not that people want a substitute in electrocution or shooting, but that capital punishment itself is considered as abhorrent to modern civilization. Hanging, therefore, has to be studied both as a means of punishing the murderer and as a final scene in a criminal's life. In other words, the subject of hanging presents aspects which constitute both a science and an art.

There is a common belief that electrocution is a quick method of disposing of life. But this is entirely untrue. The ghastly appearance of a man through whom a current of electricity is made to pass has only to be imagined in order to feel the horrors which the electrocuted person experiences. His body is seared. It goes into contortions of a horrifying kind. It looks as though the man had suffered from the agonies of death for minutes together before life was extinguished. Really the spectacle of electrocution has only to be witnessed once in order to discourage what has come forward as a humane substitute for hanging. It would be no exaggeration to say that beheading,–the punishment meted out to King Charles I, in the middle of the 17th century–would be far more generous and comforting to the victim condemned to death than putting him in the electrocution chair. It does not take a second to sever the head from the body. Of course, there is a gush of blood and the sight is horrifying. Nevertheless, one turn of the wheel brings the knife with a thud and the head is severed from the body, and too the body and the soul are apart; there is no agony, no struggle, no torture, no tossing, no contortions, nothing of the kind.

Hanging, however, is entirely different. It is a momentary process, and momentary can only mean instantaneous. No one knows what a moment is. As a time-measure, metaphorically, it may mean an instant, a day, a week or even a month. But when measured in terms of hanging, a moment is possibly less than 1/100 of a second. The man is full of life and vivacity when the news of his plight is carried to him. He is quite conscious and devotionally inclined when the resting board upon which he stands is released and he takes his seven-feet drop. When he actually drops to the lowest point in the body from the platform, he is still alive. There isno suffocation, no sense of tightness of the rope over the neck, no suffering whatever, no trouble, no worry of any kind. At that point, however, at which the rope is tied and the pressure applied to the nape of the neck and the spinal cord is broken in twain, that moment, that second, that one-hundredth of a second, the head is twisted. The nervous connection between the brain and the spinal cord is broken. The centres of respiration and circulation no longer operate and that very momentthe man is dead. The spectator, who has been expecting to see a ghastly scene and is gathering up strength for courage, finds the man simply disappears. The stages are simple and swift. The man is taken to and placed upon the board. One man ties up his legs, another puts a black cap on his face. In the meantime the noose of the rope is adjusted round the neck, a hand is raised by one of the officers to indicate that all is ready and when the chief officer passes the sign, the trigger is pulled, the board gives way, the man drops invisible, drops as it were into the bosom of the earth and is already dead. We do not see the man himself. He is gone into the depth of a subterranean room and you can reach him the next moment if you like by a stair-case, only to find that there is neither movement, nor struggle, nor suffering. Perhaps the pulse continues to beat for a couple of minutes or even five; that is only the action of the muscles by a reflex process or is mere inertia. Whatever that may be, hanging is doubtless the most humane form of capital punishment.

There is a little ceremony that always precedes the actual event of hanging. A man is informed about his fate the previous evening. He is taken to the last of the condemned cells, so that there may be no mistake about the identity of the person who has to be removed next morning in the early hours to the execution room. He is taken great care of during the period of waiting and it covers some weeks after receiving the sentence of death. The orders, if of the District Judge, are confirmed by the High Court, then the mercy petition to the Local and Central Governments would take some weeks and finally when the man's doom is fixed, a few weeks will have passed since the original condemnation. During all these weeks of waiting, care is taken to see that the man does not commit suicide, for, it is decreed that judicial homicide should be the end. During this period, he is allowed to write such letters and make such communications to his family as he may deem fit; not seldom do his wife and children or parents visit him on the eve of the great tragedy ahead. He spends his time while awaiting his doom, in hearing stories from the epics, in meditation, and in most cases in a sincere contrition of heart.

Most people really become devotional towards this pre- mature end of their lives. In the early hours of the morning he is bathed and given his own clothing, (nowadays he is not given his own dress), and he is allowed to perform such worship as he may think fit. Finally his hands are tied behind him by a rope and he isled to the jail gate behind the great door that opens into the open ground that leads to the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The Superintendent, the Jailor, the Deputy Jailor, the Doctor and the Sub-Magistrate meet him behind the jail gates. It is explained to him how his appeals have failed and his petitions for mercy have proved in vain, and he is asked to state what his last wishes are. Oftentimes he is not able to answer because he is stunned and stupefied, and he cannot think of his relationship to others, the obligations he owes to society or owing to him by his friends and relatives. When we are going to jails as ordinary prisoners, we feel a sense of void and the realities of the world cease to interest us though for the time being; but when the man condemned to death is about to meet his doom, it is hardly thinkable that he should be able to entertain thoughts or affections for any one whom he leaves behind, or ifby chance he says aught, he may say that his body may be delivered up to his family or that his clothes should be sent to his people, or he may merely ask the Superintendent himself to suggest what he should ask. Marks of identification are forthwith verified and the man is marched to the execution room outside the gate accompanied by the persons of the jail, the Magistrate and a posse of warders. Of course, adequate precautions are taken to see that no disturbance takes place around, though none is to be expected in the case of common criminals, and in less than a minute all the processes of hanging are gone through.

What is the state of mind of this man who is meeting death deliberately and in the fullest enjoyment of life? Many people are firm but a few become nervous. Only in a recent case a man had to be carried shoulder high and made to stand on the board with effort until the processes and preparations were completed. He lost his head and was weeping and wailing and it was a job to the officers, who always detest this function of theirs, to carry him through this ugly feat. Ordinarily people are firm in mind, devout in spirit, and say their prayers and offer exhortations to the Almighty, asking for salvation and forgiveness. Even as the words are flowing from the man's lips, down goes the body with a thud and out goes his life in less than a second.

We have now to address ourselves to the question whether, apart from the processes of hanging, the punishment itself is compatible with modern civilization. The ready answer of young enthusiasts would be that it should be terminated forthwith. So do we all think ordinarily. But when we study the case of a criminal and learn to distinguish between the accidental and the vicious elements in the perpetration of crime, when we realise by actual experience the spirit of vengeance that still animates the convict; after years of detention, when we understand the horrors committed out of lust and greed which have brought the victim to his doom, when we are confronted now and again with men who have been brought a second time to the jail for a murder committed on the morrow of their release after 20 years' detention for their first crime, when we measure the intensity of the feelings of vengeance and vindictiveness which certain passionate criminals feel without allowing time to soften their vendetta, we are inclined to revise the generous sentiments of our youth and the hasty judgment of our inexperience. It is not claimed that hanging, especially when it is carried out in the secret manner as it now is, acts directly as a deterrent on society. But there is no doubt that the prospect and fear of it do act as deterrents. At any rate, the converse is true, that if there is not such fear or prospect, people will not hesitate to commit murders in greater profusion than before. A life sentence, after all, is a fourteen-year sentence, and in these fourteen years one can get another three-year remission. For a youthful adventurer of 25 who devastates society, a ten-year detention is not much of a hardship, for he can return in the very prime of life to the scene of his exploits. And when we further realise how a long-term prisoner may in two years become a night watcher or a maistry, an overseer and a convict-warder, the last earning 10 days of remission a month, including the two days' commutation for the eight annas that he is paid monthly, we can understand how short a life sentence is. There is moreover the system of examining the case sheets of convicts who are sentenced to periods of between 3 and 10 years, by which when a man completes three- fourths of his term including remission, he is recommended to Government for release if his conduct is satisfactory, and the officers of the place from which he comes send up a good report about him. Of course, this does not apply to life convicts. But, when once hanging is eliminated the punishment for murder or homicide may vary between a few months' sentence and sentence for any term running up to fourteen years, and except in the last case the other cases have a chance of having their period of detention curtailed by this process of revision by a Board composed of the Inspector-General of Prisons, the District Judge and the Superintendent of the jail. All this is mentioned in order to show how, when you once eliminate hanging, you put a premium upon murder. These are thoughts that strike those who have been actually in jails and spent some time in the company of the convicts. They maybe useful as affording grounds for a revision and a re-valuation of our ideals and ideas of penology and are offered to the public in this view, in the hope that an intelligent exchange of thoughts on the subject may lead to a balanced decision on this problem of perennial interest.