28 The Rev. S. Haughton on Hanging, considered from 



chus and his assistants must have used in order to hold up the 

 free end of the funicular polygon ; and since X is real, the value 

 of T 1 will always be greater than the weight of six of the hand- 

 maids, and will be considerably greater, unless the heights of the 

 points of suspension be very great compared with the span of the 

 polygon. We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the 

 hanging of Penelope's handmaids in a funicular polygon was 

 mechanically impossible, unless pulley-blocks or some other con- 

 trivances were employed, which are not mentioned in the text. 

 We must therefore suppose that in this, the earliest execution 

 by hanging on record, the rope was passed around the vaulted 

 dome, and that separate nooses suspended from this rope were 

 attached to the necks of the women. 



In modern times hanging was a favourite mode of execution 

 among the Anglo-Saxons; and I am indebted to Dr. Ingram, 

 Professor of English Literature in the University of Dublin, and 

 to J. E. Walshe, Q.C., for the following brief notice of its history 

 in connexion with England, which will serve as a suitable intro- 

 duction to my proposal for its improvement and perfection, 

 founded on mechanical and physiological principles. 



Hanging was only one of the capital punishments in use 

 among our ancestors — women being often burned for offences 

 for which men were hanged, and both were burned for holding 

 heretical opinions. Marrying a Jew or committing sodomy was 

 at one time punishable by burying both parties alive ; and be- 

 heading with an axe was, and theoretically still is, allowable in 

 some cases. The punishment for high treason, and at one 

 time extended to certain cases of murder, was the elaborate and 

 brutal process of hanging, drawing, and quartering. 



In "Beowulf/' which Kemble believed to be a modernized 

 form of a poem which the invaders of Britain had brought with 

 them from their continental homes, the gallows (galga) figures 

 as an old-established institution of the Teutonic races of North- 

 ern Europe. 



It is mentioned by Blackstone as a somewhat singular fact, 

 that the only warrant the sheriff has for a capital execution is 

 the signature of the judge to the calendar, or list of all the pri- 

 soners' names, with their respective judgments in the margin. 



" As for a capital felony, it is written opposite to the prisoner's 

 name ' hanged by the neck/ formerly in the days of Latin and 

 abbreviation c sus. per col/ for ' suspendatur per collum.' " 



Originally there was a formal precept to the sheriff under the 

 hand and seal of the judge ; but the form of it is not given in the 

 law books, nor is it certain how long the formula now employed 

 in sentencing a criminal ("hanged by the neck till you are 

 dead") has been employed. 



