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Diary of a Hangman

Diary of a Hangman

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Originally published more than eighty years ago, A Hangman’s Diary gives a year-by-year breakdown on all of Master Schmidt’s executions, which include hangings, beheadings, and other methods of murder, as well as explanations of each crime and the reason for the punishment. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. If, however, you are after a rare piece of source material from the sixteenth century, then this is excellent. As part of the commemorations the museum wishes to honour the service of the police officers in the Greater Manchester.

I thought it was going to be slightly different and offer a look into the executioner and not just a chronological listing of the people he killed. A bit disappointed as I had expected a diary where Master Franz Schmidt detailed not only the morbid deeds of his job as an executioner, but - more interesting - any moral conflict he felt at doing what he had to do (after all, some of the crimes for which an execution were handed out were beyond paltry by today's standards - small-time theft, infidelity). Others were more interesting, going into great depth about the criminals, their nicknames, the crimes they committed, and how they went to their deaths. Some entries go straight to the point (one of the most common entries being "a thief hanged") and others much longer like entry 237 concerning a privy councillor named Nicholas von Gilgen.A Hangman's Diary is not only a collection of detailed writings by Schmidt about his work, but also an account of criminal procedure in Germany during the Middle Ages. Steffan Hötzelein, alias der Lauffenhöltzer, a wire-drawer at Lauff, who accused Georg Schwindel, a councillor there, saying he had seen him commit lewdness with four women; his father, Hans Hötzelein, whose fingers were struck off, bore witness in the matter, the father saying it happened under an oak-tree, the son, on the contrary, under a fir-tree.

All three beheaded with the sword as murderesses and their heads nailed above the great scaffold, no woman having been beheaded before this at Nuremberg. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.Thief beheaded as a favor" is a line that comes up a lot in this book, as the thieves were normally hung and being hung was shameful in itself. I started off last year with another book about Franz Schmidt, The Faithful Executioner, which I enjoyed to no end. They shot the miller dead, did violence to the miller’s wife and the maid, obliged them to fry some eggs in fat and laid these on the dead miller’s body, then forced the miller’s wife to join in eating them. Written by the man who served as Britain's hangman in the early part of the twentieth century, this book provides far more insight into the the criminals with whom John Ellis came into contact than into the life and mindset of an executioner. Wolff Weber, of Guntzendorff, and Barthel Dochendte, of Weisterfelss, both executed at Statt Kronach; Wolff, who was a thief, was hanged; Barthel, who was a murderer and had committed three murders, was executed on the wheel.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

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