People did not survive a quick drop of the blade under the guillotine, but plenty of people did survive their hanging. This was mostly because inexperienced hangmen did not know that the noose knot had to go under the left ear for a quick, clean snap. Most people hung were choked to death.
1. Determined to Live
Inetta de Balsham was strung up and hung from Monday morning until Thursday morning in 1264. After she was cut down, she came to. Henry III granted her a pardon after her ordeal.
2. A Deep Sleep
Servant girl, Anna Green, was hanged in 1650 for child murder. After she was cut down, her body was handed over to doctors who revived her.
When she was asked about what it was like to be hanged, she said she remembered nothing. When she was revived, it was like awakening from a deep sleep.
3. Half Hanged Maggie Dickson
Margaret Dickson was hanged on September 2, 1724. After being cut down and while she was being carried to her grave, she recovered. She went on to live for a number of years afterward and was called Half Hanged Maggie Dickson.
4. He Got Well
In 1767, a Cork man was hanged for street theft. After the man was cut down, a doctor took him to surgery, made an incision in his windpipe, and revived him. Later that night the same man went to the theater.
5. Half Hanged Smith
John Smith, also called half-hanged Smith, was another person who survived after being hanged in 1882.
“The gaping crowd had assembled, the rope was around John’s neck, his hands pinioned behind him, the cap tied over his face, the priest had finished his prayer, Jack Ketch had turned him off, when, breathless with haste, a messenger arrived from the King with a pardon.”
What luck! (Or half luck.) John was cut down and revived.
Of course, everyone wanted to know exactly what it was like to be hanged.
John said:
“When I was first turned off I was sensible of very great pain occasioned by the weight of my body, and felt my spirits in strange commotion, violently pressing upward, that having forced their way to my head, I, as it were, saw a great blaze or glaring light, which seemed to go out of my eyes with a flash; then I lost all sense of pain. After I was cut down and began to come to myself, the blood and spirits forced themselves into their former channels and put me in a sort of pricking or smarting to such intolerable pain that I could have wished those hanged who cut me down.” [1]
