Talk:Gallows

What does this mean?
"Although serial execution was almost never prohibited by the number of victims, it was not uncommon to erect multiple gallows, even one noose per condemned man after the trial."

Can someone explain what this sentence is supposed to mean? It's a little unclear. MikeDockery 05:43, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that seems strangely worded--it seems to imply that it was standard to simultaneously hang multiple persons with the same noose?--76.104.178.183 21:17, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
 * No. Obviously, "serial execution" means, if you have multiple condemned, and one noose, you execute one at a time, serially. If you have a large number of condemned, however, you might want to save time by using multiple nooses, multiple gallows. 68.100.121.207 (talk) 68.100.121.207 (talk) 14:51, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Modern Usage
Maybe someone can add how hanging in modern times (at least in the U.S.) has fallen out of favor as a means of execution?

Norfolk Gallows Manufacturer a hoax
The BBC story linked in the main article about the chap in Norfolk who builds gallows and sells them to African dictators is a hoax, according to this article which appeared in The Times on 1 June 2006. Apparently this charming individual is a wack job with an obsession about capital punishment, and the dictators he claims to have supplied have all been queuing up to point out that they're perfectly capable of building their own. Should the link either be removed altogether as irrelevant (his activities don't tell us anything meaningful about the technology or history of gallows, after all), or an explanatory note added to the main article? --LDGE 13:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Scaffold with trapdoors
So called "new drop" gallows were used for short, standard and long drop hanging. In this case exuecution on this type of gallows was not always successful until the introduction of the long drop. Even then it was not an instant death only instant unconciousness with death resulting from comatose asphyxia. In addition weights were never added to the condemmned's legs although contempory accounts of friends and relatives (later the hangman in a conceled section of the gallows) pulling on the legs of the condemned to hasten strangulation. (Olaf1 02:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC))

Gallows
What was the largest gathering for a public execution using the gallows? Bugboy52.40 (talk) 20:46, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
 * wow, I have been on wikipedia for a long time now, and this question has yet to been answered.   Bugboy52.4 |  =-=  12:16, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
 * still waiting... 66.229.227.191 (talk) 00:58, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

This isn't pertinent, nor encyclopedic information, nor relevant to the article in question. If you're waiting for an answer, still, you're going to be waiting a very, very long time chum. Wikipedia is not a personal question answering service. :P &lt;!//– ☠ ʇdɯ0ɹd ɥsɐq ☠ // user // talk // twitter //–> 19:37, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

The Famous Who Have Been Hanged
It would be cool if this article had a section for some of the famous people who have been hanged. For example, kings and people like that whose hangings were a big part in history. ThePepel-Eterni (talk) 22:31, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

There's a finite amount of space on the internet. Also list pages tend to get out of hand. &lt;!//– ☠ ʇdɯ0ɹd ɥsɐq ☠ // user // talk // twitter //–> 19:39, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

What happened to the first sentence?
A gallows it does not say anything about the rope, used for execution by hanging, or by means to torture before execution, as was used when being hanged, drawn and quartered.

Looks like a commentary to me. 79.228.58.240 (talk) 06:40, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

The beginning of the American quest to minimize the suffering of persons being executed
It is commonly presumed that the American quest to minimize the suffering of persons being executed began with the electric chair and the gas chamber. However, long before the electric chair and the gas chamber, in 1862 Nathaniel Gordon was executed at The Tombs prison of New York by means of a new and novel apparatus. There was special concern in his case because he was a very special sort of criminal. He had been a Maine businessman of excellent family and social standing, owner of a seagoing ship, and had been convicted of engaging in the international slave trade. The civil war had begun, and he was the first such perpetrator ever to be hanged for such a crime. (He was the only such perpetrator ever to be refused a special Presidential pardon.)

Gordon was allowed to become thoroughly inebriated before the time set for the execution. The new apparatus that was used in his case was a system of counterweights and pulleys arranged so that instead of being dropped through the trapdoor of a platform, he would be yanked instantly straight upward -- ensuring that his neck would snap and he would not dangle and strangle.

I would like to know who designed this special gallows, whether it was patented, whether it was ever used on anyone else, and how well it worked.

It seems to me that this topic is of importance because the topic of our long American quest to find a way to minimize the suffering of persons being executed is of importance.

24.162.252.119 (talk) 21:17, 29 June 2013 (UTC)Austin Meredith, kouroo@kouroo.info

I've never heard of an American quest to minimize suffering. I believe there was the Edison quest to market a product. The industrialised beheadings of the French revolution were argued to be more humane however it was also peddled as a secondary to the fact it was an industrialised method to do away with a large portion of the population or anyone who disagreed. What I mean to say is, I don't believe such a thing occured besides obiter dictum, humane killing of human beings is euthanasia, and the discussion of painless death is conducted in that field. One could further argue given the US is the last first world country that didn't abolish the death penalty shortly after slavery (although it dragged it's feet on that one too) that it seems improbable that human rights are an issue otherwise both of those would have been abolished many, many decades past. Although I am interested in the story of the special treatment the chap you mentioned got, do you have any more information I can go by besides his name to do a little digging? Shot in the dark. &lt;!//– ☠ ʇdɯ0ɹd ɥsɐq ☠ // user // talk // twitter //–> 18:51, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Julian Gallows
I could not find any contruction note of the "Julian Gallows", s. Tom Horn, etc. Who knows details? --92.229.30.188 (talk) 09:48, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Hanging tree (United States) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 19:46, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Hanging tree listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Hanging tree. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Steel1943 (talk) 11:49, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Lead
Gallows (or scaffold) are a frame, typically wooden, from which objects can be hung or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used for public weighing scales for large objects such as sacks of grain or minerals, usually positioned in markets or toll gates. The term was also used for a framework from which a ship’s anchor might be raised so that it no longer sitting on the bottom, i.e., "weighing [the] anchor". All this is in the Lead with not one mention of any of it in the article itself, nor references. Davidships (talk) 12:30, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

I couldn't find any source for the use of a gallows for an anchor. The The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea  apparently defines gallows as:

''1 A raised wooden frame consisting of two uprights and a cross-piece on which the skid booms of a square-rigged ship rested. See also booms.''

2 A temporary wooden structure, also known as a boom crutch, erected on the counter of small fore-and-aft-rigged sailing craft on which the main boom is stowed and secured when the vessel is at anchor or lying on a mooring.

''3 Inverted U-shaped iron or steel frames fitted in pairs on one or both sides of a trawler and carrying a large sheave to take the trawl warps. They were colloquially known as the ‘the galluses’. ''

Those trawler galluses sound similar, though.

There are plenty of descriptions of boom gallowses, eg https://www.pamwall.com/pam-says-what-is-a-boom-gallows-why-a-boom-gallows-2/.

--149.14.21.6 (talk) 15:03, 18 May 2022 (UTC) Tom Anderson 2022-05-18