Gallows
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A gallows is a frame, typically wooden, used for execution by hanging.
A gallows can take several forms. The simplest (as often used in the game "Hangman") resembles an inverted "L", with a single upright and a horizontal beam to which the rope noose would be attached. In other designs, the horizontal crossbeam is supported at both ends. The infamous Tyburn gallows was triangular in plan, with three uprights and three crossbeams, allowing up to 24 criminals to be executed along all three sides. The apparatus can be permanent, as a deterrent and grim symbol of the power of high justice (indeed the French word for gallows, potence, stems from the Latin potentia, "power"). Many old prints of British and European cities show such a permanent gallows erected on a prominent hill outside the walls, or more commonly near the castle or other seat of justice. In the modern era the gallows were often installed inside a prison; freestanding on a scaffold in the yard, erected at ground level over a pit, enclosed in a small shed of stone, brick or wood, built into the gallery of a prison wing (with beam in brackets on opposite walls), or in a purpose-built execution suite of rooms within the wing and close to the condemned cell. Gallows can also be temporary. In some cases, they were even moved to the location of the crime. For example, if a crime took place inside a building, the criminal may be hanged near the front door. In some cases of multiple offenders it was not uncommon to erect multiple gallows, even one noose per condemned criminal after the trial.
Hanging people from early gallows sometimes involved fitting the noose around the person's neck while he or she was on a ladder or in a horse-drawn cart underneath. Removing the ladder or driving the cart away left the person dangling by the neck to slowly strangle. Later, a "scaffold" with a trap-door tended to be used, meaning that victims dropped down and died quickly from a broken neck rather than through strangulation, especially if extra weights were fixed to their ankles.
