Doomed to Fail - Ep 154: Off With Their Heads! - Medieval Executioner

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Today, Farz explores the life of the Medieval Executioner and the unique challenges of their profession. This role was essential in every town and was often passed down through generations, much like the modern concept of nepotism. We will investigate the various methods of execution used during this period and discuss the qualities that a local Executioner needed to possess. Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Boom. Hey, Taylor. Hi. How are you liking my newly shaven completely smooth face? I like it.

I feel like should I take our logo and just like, I don't know, figure out how to like make your face smooth out of the thing? Use some white out maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting used to it. I forgot what my face was shaped like, and I'm not happy about it. But hopefully it'll eventually grow back a beard, and I will be thankful for that. Cool.

Such as life. It'll grow back. It better. Literally better. I can't go through life like this. So how's like, where are you? You're not a home. Wait, let me introduce us first.

Oh, right. Hello. Welcome to June to Fail. For the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters at epic failures, twice a week, every week. I'm Taylor, joined by Fars. And I am in Spokane, I'm in Spokane, Washington. Oh, sweet. Why?

I have not left the house because I have a brother who, like, loves really close to here, and so he won't travel anywhere, just because he's a bum. And so we all came up here. And we're in, like, a big house, and it's nice. wait who lives in Spokane my brother Stratton oh I don't know him I don't think I've ever met him I don't think so no okay um and then my brother Decker lives like five hours from here and him and his wife went home two days early because they missed their cat cats don't care oh my god the cat doesn't care but whatever Decker if you're listening this I love cats too so I'm not belittling

that but I've had a cat before and as long as it had food and like a place to use a bathroom. It could not care if I was around. Yeah, exactly. It's fine. But whatever. But my dad's here. My sister's here. My mom's here. Everyone's here. We're having a good time. Hey, question for you. When did you go up to Spokane? Thursday. Okay. So maybe you're not seeing. Is anybody else like noticing a lot more like military stuff happening around them? I thought you would given where you live. But like there's also like an airbase near Austin and I'm like

there's a lot more stuff happening. I'm like I know that intercontinental ballistic missiles are being tested by Russia and Ukraine is like hitting bombs in Russia and we're about to have a transition of power. I'm starting to regret

all the negative things I said about the U.S. spending money on military because I'm starting to think we're going to need it. I mean I do feel like every once in a while there'll be like a ton of helicopters or like because I live so close to that base like they'll bomb the shit out of it sometimes and like the whole house my whole house will shake and then sometimes they um you don't bomb the shit out of right like the area they have like a fake village that they bomb the shit out of and they're gonna fire whoever's a planner if it's like every month they're like we have to blow up the base you know what I mean and then sometimes they'll be like a convoy with like a bunch of like cars or big tanks that are like twice the size of a car and all these things and I'll be like oh great it's starting but like I don't know.

So I started having these weird thoughts about this stuff. I think it's like a little bit of anxiety coming, but I don't generally have anxiety because I'm like, whatever happens. Like you can't control it. Why live in whatever fear? But I started having a little bit of pains of anxiety. And like the reason I recognize that this is probably really anxiety is I was doing the math

on, well, I'm in Texas. Everybody here's armed to the teeth. So I'm probably safe. And then I was like, think about it far as if everybody's armed the teeth, then you wouldn't go in and fight them. using the same weaponry, you would just nuke them and go somewhere else. I was like, maybe it's not a good thing being in Texas. I mean, do you mean like the American military is going to try to fight Texans or like Russia's going to try to fight Texans?

I'm not going to come over with like handguns. Yeah, they're going to nuke us. Okay, I mean, the anxiety is real. You just made the anxiety even more real because you just said it out loud and I hadn't actually said that out loud to myself. myself and you just said it and so now it's real cool sorry I mean you probably won't even notice it'll happen so fast no that's saving grace um so we're going to get into our fun episode today and I think I'm going to go first yes and you know what it like touches on kind of what we've been talking about here it's a little bit death oriented um maybe that's why you're

feeling anxious yeah maybe although I just came up with this topic because well no I didn't so I'm going to give Rachel a shout out because Rachel is the one who suggested it because I'm like Rachel I'm having writers block I don't know what to write about I don't know what to talk about and she was like what about this topic and I was like that's pretty good yeah I'll do that so that's what I'm going to do you do you do it I'm going to do it okay so today I'm going to cover medieval executioners oh fun isn't it fun that is fun I'm excited oh actually also Taylor speaking of like um scary things i'm probably the last person in the world who's seen barbarian but i watched it last night because rachel was like you cannot watch another movie until you watch

barbarian so like we're just going to sit here and you're going to watch it and i don't think i've seen it it's a good one you should okay so i thought you i would have assumed you've seen it i might have i think i saw part of it i need if i had to watch it again i'm not going to talk about it then it's on hulu it's free um so watch it because I also, I don't like watching movies that are hyped because I'm like, I don't want to fall the crowd. And so now, and I think you're kind of like that too. I think we're

far enough away from the hype where it's okay for us to watch it now. I agree with that. I agree that because I hate when you're like, oh, it's a scary movie ever. And then I'm like, well then I'm going to be hyped for to be the scariest movie ever. It's not going to be and I'm going to be like really disappointed. Okay, take away what I just said. It sucks. It's a whole movie, but watch it. I will. Okay.

Thank you. Anyways. Okay. Back to our topic. So, medieval executioners. So I'm going to go through a fun little history of executioners, along with things like compensation, their social status, how they got the job, and talk about kind of like one executioner in particular and like what his process was and how it all kind of worked out if you were a condemn person. It was really interesting. A lot of this stuff is something you probably assume you know because you've watched like movies, but there's details in here that I did not know that were really, really interesting.

Also, a big part of the reason why I like love the idea when Rachel brought it up is I went, I went back and looked at the oral signed book, Night in the Tower of Terror. And it's a picture of like an execution on the front of it. And I was like, did you buy them yet? You should buy them? No, no. I was going to go to IKEA later and get a bookshelf. Oh, I'm so proud of you.

I'm going to get a bookshelf first. That's incredible. That's incredible news. Thank you. Thank you. I know, Rachel, Rachel was like, you have all these self-help books that you never read. It's not working. You can't just buy them and keep on your show.

it's not working um so let's talk about how somebody becomes an executioner so one thing to note is like all this is medieval history and medieval history was like really not that greatly documented like there's no details in a lot of this stuff because a lot of people weren't uneducated were illiterate and so like something we got a piece together which is why the last where i'm going to tell about this is going to be really super interesting because it's super super detailed but even if it's not true i'll believe it Thank you. So there wasn't like a hard and fast rule. Most of the time it seems like whoever like the constable warden or whatever Lord was in that region would kind of decide who would be the executioner. And sometimes it would be like the local butcher or sometimes it would be a criminal who was supposed to be executed. But then they told they were told that if you do it, if you do it, then you won't be executed. There's a woman in Ireland named Lady Betty or yeah, Lady Betty. And she was a condemned. who became the executioner for like all of Ireland for like 50 years

which was super super interesting and it was like the first time I think a woman was the state sanctioned executioner for a country pretty pretty modern stuff actually and then the other thing that would happen is that this would be something that you would be handed down from generation to generation we talked about like the cast system in India forever ago I didn't realize this but like there kind of was a caste system in like europe too and like this was part of it like if you were part of you know a family of executioners then you were like the untouchables you were like the lowest of the low um but regardless very few people ended up doing this voluntarily which i want to get

into here in a minute or why that is so most of the time like a town executioner wouldn't actually um they wouldn't get paid like much or if they did it was like a very very modest amount What they would typically get is free or heavily discounted, lodging. They didn't have to pay taxes or tolls. And sometimes it would get this privilege that I never heard of called Havage. Have you heard of that before? Some people had this privilege in medieval time called Havage, which was entitled them to free food and drink.

So you just go into a bar and be like, just give me free beers, water, whatever. It's kind of cool. I'll let's sense. You know, what money you would save? I would save so much money. wait like you don't need to be paid that much money if you're getting all your food and shit for free in no taxes in no taxes it's great um they this one's a really fun part so a lot of times you would also get paid by the person you're killing because um you can rifle

through whatever was on that person's possess like on their person at the moment of execution or if they were like a noble person sometimes the noble person would have assistance nearby who could pay the executioner after the execution and the reason you would do this I mean sometimes these people would actually have cash on them

to go to the executioner because they didn't want you to mess it up they don't want you to sit there and hack at their neck for 20 minutes they wanted to like fast and if it was done fast like hey you can rifle through my bloody torso and pull out whatever cash you want

wow great so as far as social standing was concerned again very few people actually wanted to be executioners you were kind of a psychopath if you did um being an executioner meant you were pretty much shunned from society which is why like in the modern version of like executioners on tv they're always wearing like a mask to hide their identity so that's not really what happened like that's not what almost any of them did. So the town executioner was very well- Yeah, you knew who the town executioner was or if they were a journeyman executioner,

which was like incredibly common, like they didn't care about hiding their identity because they were in town to kill 17 people today and they were going to leave tomorrow to go to the next town. It's like being in the Rolling Stones except. You kill people. So because of all this, Being executioner was, again, like I said, it was like a not a voluntary thing or very rarely a voluntary thing.

You were typically forced to the job by virtue of family lineage. So the part of this that like makes it super bad for that individual is that if you became the town executioner or the journeyman executioner, you would be branded. So in Scandinavian, this is disgusting. In Scandinavian countries, for example, they would cut the ears of the executioners off. what so that everybody would look at their ears and be like oh that's bill he's execution I don't know if that's worth all the free food that you're talking about seriously like again like every time you think of like how bad the world is this was human beings doing this that was been terrible yeah not like guerrillas doing this like these were human beings doing this

oh my god but fun thing in other countries outside of Scandinavia they would use hot iron and brand the forehead of the town executioner. Jesus Christ. Yeah. So funny because it's like they need him, obviously. They do. They do need him. Why are they treating him like crap?

They're pretending that they don't need someone to fulfill this sentencing that they're obviously doing all the time. I don't know. Taylor, do they actually need them? Like, are we that into capital punishment? Well, aren't they? Like, why, like, is that, if that's his, like, job, I mean, he's needed. Like, if somebody steals a loaf of red, do we really need a? the guy who's going to cut their head off and rifle to their corpse?

I don't need that guy, but it sounds like they did, but they didn't want to, like, admit it. They didn't want to admit it. They made him feel weird. They made him feel weird, but, like, also there, it was, it was case by case, too, right? Like, if you were the executioner for the king, you were, like, untouchable. Like, you were living, like, this just absolutely blessed, charmed life of cutting off people's heads. Like, how often did you have to go to work? so it wasn't that common it wasn't that so executions despite the what we think about the medieval ages it wasn't that common like it wasn't it was more common than it is here in the u.s today but it wasn't like a thing where it's like every day you're killing somebody like it was you would have you would typically have another job as well in fact this is like crazy but a lot of times the way these people would side hustle is this population would go to them for medical advice because they were the only

people at that time who had to know anything about how the body worked because they had to kill you. Oh, God. Yeah. So they would side hustle with like, with medical advice. Oh my goodness. Again, yeah, with further valid, they said doctors are just crazy people back then. Yeah. Well, I think yeah. Yeah. Wild. So as you can kind of assume, given the cast concept I mentioned earlier and everything we've been saying to date, their main company was like the undesirables of society, you know, prostitutes, lepers, criminals, shit like that. When it came to methods,

this was also interesting, I didn't know this either. So when it came to methods of execution, a lot of it was determined based on, well, it was based on what was available to the execution, but it was also super dependent on what the crime was. So an axe or a sword was probably the most common way to kill someone by beheading them. And that's just because you all,

everybody had an axe and a sword in town, right? Like there was one accessible, and you don't really need anything. This one's interesting, though. They had, like, kind of like an unwritten rule of a three-stroke limit. It sounds like fucking the PGAs. But what it was is that if you can't kill the guy or woman in three strokes, then you risk the mob turning on you and killing you instead.

Right. Or you losing your job as an executioner, and then now you have no ears and you have to pay taxes and you don't have free free housing. It's like, but like nobody, did people go to them

like we think that they did? Did people go to them? Yeah. You mean like try to kill them? No, like with people like always watching the executions. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like. That point's real in movies. Yeah, watching someone just like a one shot head chopped off is a very different experience than like a 20 shot chop. I don't know, man. Ned Stark only,

it only took one it still traumatizes me to this day. Fair. So the other methods that were available, if you had the resources to make them available, was hangings, which was reserved for thieves. And then murderers, rapists, and they call them aggravated theft. So thefts committed by like battery or whatever, those were like pretty badly done. So those were those are the people that were executed by being broken at the wheel,

which is like, this is the one where I'm like, man, you really have to love this job. to do it. Yeah. You're strapped to a scaffold in a large wheel from my carriage, and I look this up, it weighs about 50 pounds typically. It's just repeatedly dropped on your body, usually starting with your shin bone and then your arm bones and, like, just shattering your body. They just drop it on you?

They just drop it on you. I think, I don't know what, turning at some of something, but no, they just drop you. They just drop it on you, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, I think what you're thinking of is the stretching thing, right? It's the one that just keeps stretching you. That's something different, which we'll actually talk about here in a moment. So they just keep dropping it on you.

And then like, if the executioner decides to kill you, they can just take it at the very end of breaking every bone in your body and just start bashing you in the head or the neck with it. And that's the way they would kill you. Oh, my God. But sometimes they don't actually kill you. But regardless, whatever they do is the way that this whole thing ends is they kind of braid your body into the wheel.

So you're kind of like just like, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because, like, you're in the spokes. There you go, you're in the spokes, yeah. But you're in your body is so broken. Yeah, your body's broken. That kind of makes me out of up. Wow. So the worst I read was this guy who was a serial killer in Germany, man, the Germans just

know how to do it. They're like nailed this shit. But this guy in Germany was kept alive for nine days on the wheel. Like, he was forced to stay alive, giving water, whatever he needed to make sure. Like, he could not succumb to his. wounds. Is that nuts? It's nuts.

You must have killed someone really important. Then you have burnings. That was typically reserved for heretics, sodomites, witches, and arsonists. Then you had drowning, which is a very, I mean, that's a fun little gender thing. So women were typically the only ones were drowned.

And that was typically for either adultery or for infanticide killing their kids. Oh, monster. I don't know. I think I would take the cut your head off, then the drowning. And then I don't know, man, it's a toss-up between burning and the wheel. I know, I know.

Such a toss-up. It really is. I guess, I mean, the head chop off, I think, is the best by far. As long as it's, like, one heck, you know, I was worried about it. So the worst, the worst is kind of what you were discussing earlier and the one that we're probably the most familiar with, which is, like, being drawn and quartered. And that was the punishment reserve for traders, basically traders of the state. So first, the person would be dragged behind a horse to the scaffolding.

That's the drawing part. They're being drawn to the scaffolding. They would then be hanged, but not like drop hanged. They didn't want to break their neck. They just wanted them to, like, suffer being hanged. So they would just do it until, like, they were going to pass out, but then drop them. Oh, my God. Then the real show starts.

So that's when they would disembowl them alive and they would put their entrails on a fire so they can watch their entrails being burned in front of them. And then at that point, they would either be beheaded or if you really wanted to continue the punishment, they would have their limbs tied to separate horses or rip the body in from end. That's the quartered part. Wow. Which they did to Mel Gibson. Yeah, they did.

That's what I was going to say it. I remember his entrails being taken out. Yeah, that was real. That was actually what they would do. It's unbelievable what we've done to each other. I know. People, man. So in the middle of all this, I like started looking up like random punishments.

And like there were so many interesting ones. People get so creative. Like we are so good at coming up with ways to like just destroy each other. It's fantastic. So one thing, okay, so this wasn't like a death punishment. Did you know that like washing someone's mouth out with soap was like a legitimate punishment for children who've used inappropriate language? I feel like yes, but like it just sounds crazy. Yeah, they literally did that.

Yeah, crazy. This one was fun. So this is a thing invented by my people, the Persians, which is called scafism, which you might have heard before. But, okay, again, this is my people, so I'm allowed to say these things. It was described by a 12th century historian, a guy named Johannes, Johannes, Zanaras, something, I don't know. It's a very old-timey guy. And he described it as, quote, the Persians out by all other barbarians in the hoard cruelty of their punishments, employing tortures that are peculiarly terrible and long drawn, namely the boat. so what this was was it would take two boats

like a little like dingy type boats so put you inside of one of them and then screw the other one on top of you with your arms legs and arms or head outside of it then they would force feed you until you vomited milk and honey and then rub milk and honey all over your limbs and it just like set you out onto like a river and then what would happen is you would just shit your brains out

and then animals insects and everything else will start eating you as you like decompose inside of this inside of this thing you'd stay alive I mean you'd stay alive a very very long time what was happening oh my god um he also described it uh something along the lines okay so he goes quote moreover his belly descended as it is with milk and honey throws off liquid extraments in these putrifying in these putrefying breed swarms of worms intestinal in all sorts thus the victim lying in the boat his flesh

rotting away in his own filth and devoured by worms dies a lingering and horrible death that is horrible like we are man we're creative so there's one guy that I found that was like super interesting so there's a guy named Franz Schmidt which as you would predict is a German executioner

who lived between 1555 and 1634 and he's unique because he was able to provide kind of like a behind the scenes insight into the whole thing and like I said a lot of times you know people were uneducated they were illiterate they couldn't read they couldn't write it's like you didn't really have a ton to go off of historically of like what was going on and so this was one of the few times where you have someone who was educated and insanely meticulous about documenting every detail he ended up documenting 361 executions that he carried out including who's

the condemned was the date the location the manner of death like every detail of this was documented it was incredible so he described um hans vogel as kind of like the typical condemned and what would happen to them so this was in his diary this is in schmidt's diary as kind of like a prototypical example what would happen hans bogel was a murder in germany that was schmidt's first execution at 18 years old and this part was gross it was like at first what they do is they start practicing on like vegetables like pumpkins and stuff then they graduate to like a puppy they would cut a dog's head off and it was like just go to the person like why would you why intermediary this thing with a dog just go straight to the person like the dog didn't do anything to serve it

um so here's kind of the day in the life so the day um the day before so this person the the condemned would be moved to relatively larger cell and the entire goal for the state of this point is to make sure that this person is healthy and as comfortable as possible. If they're ill, if they're sick or anything else, they would typically delay the execution until they're back. This is all tied to like religious doctrines around like you need to know what you did and why you're being punished and like if you're out of your mind delirious and it's not God needs to know that you know that you did a bad thing. Right, right, right. So typically on this day he would receive visitors, friends, family and the chaplain. Sometimes

they mentioned the widow of the person that this the condemned killed might show up and like a way that they would show that they forgive them is by feeding them something like bringing like some home cooked meal for the condemned to eat um and this would be around the time that they'll be given their last meal as well so at that point they're put into like a really nice white linen gown and then that's when the execution in this case smit would finally show up at the entrance to the cell and this This is crazy. That's scary. I can just imagine. So you think that, but like, listen to this part. So Chavent would document in the case of Vogel. He was like, yeah, you know, you walk in, you ask the condemn for forgiveness. And then you share a drink of St. John's drink of peace, which I looked up in, it's just wine.

So, like, sit there drinking together and, like, sharing stories. They're just like having a good time, like old friends. Like, it's not like a, it's not, it's not meant to be a scary thing. Yeah. So once they feel good about it and they're vibing, then Schmidt will tie. That's so funny. Are we vibing? No, we're not.

Yeah, we need like 17 more years. Yeah, like six more years and just open that door for a thing. So at this point, he would tie their hands and then he would take them to a thing called blood court. Sounds cool. That's basically a court that's all for show. So at this point, the person has already confessed or they're pre-crant. proclaimed guilty, whatever it is. Sometimes it's done in jail,

but there's other times when it's like a high-profile case when it's done in public, like at the location where the execution's supposed to take place where they'll do it. So what'll end up happening is that they'll be let out to this blood court where a judge will read out the offenses and they'll end it by saying, quote, which being against the laws of the Holy Roman Empire,

my lords have decreed and given sentence that he shall be condemned from life to death by, blank insert the execution type. So the prisoner would then give a final statement but mostly this was for them to basically absolve the guilt of the judge and the executioner by saying hey I get it you know

we're good we're fine like there's no issues here. I'm bad I did a bad thing yeah so from there he would be led to the execution area which in Vogel's case was to be done by beheading in this case the historical record is a little muddled on

whether he just like kneeled or exposed his neck on like a piece of a block of wood or something but regardless um in this case he was killed with one stroke of schmidt sword we know that because in his entire career 361 deaths executions he only ever had to use a second stroke twice so this guy is really good at it um from there he would turn to the judge and ask quote lord judge have i executed well question mark and he would reply quote you have executed as judgment and law have required. It's like so formal. So formal and just, again,

I think it's weird that they like need them so much. Yeah. Yeah. Immediately after this, he would direct his assistance, whoever these poor bastards were, to mop up the blood and dispose of the head and the body. Yeah,

that's not the job. But although sometimes apparently they would take the head and it was like a way to publicize like legally what happened. So they would like take the head and like stick it somewhere in public because like, like what if what if somebody like what if that guy had to had a debt he could collect and then the person who's supposed to pay him the debt doesn't know that he's debt and then like I show up and I'm like no I'm that guy I'm vocal and it's like give me the money you know like you like

publicize it for legal reasons that this is the guy we actually killed so it wasn't actually just for pure I don't know atmosphere and mood like it's like no one could read it so they're not like putting it up on in the paper they're just like showing you this head yeah yeah yeah also I'm sure around October it was like super fun to walk around and see a bunch of like spiked heads hanging around in the market so I think that's weird I think it's too much there's a scene in in the great the show about Catherine the Great that didn't happen in real life but like the he gives everyone a head of like the people that he hated and they got a party and everyone's like ooh and she's like what it's obviously that would be a fun you'd remember that party at the very least forever that's true um so So that's it. That's a little history of executioners. And I think I'm going to do a little bit of a medieval thing because I have another topic that touched on this for next week. Nice. I think I'm going to go off of because I started like, you know, you know how this is.

When you start researching one topic, it takes you in like 17 different directions. Yeah, you're like, oh, my gosh, that's other things. Yeah. It just goes to show like, we know very little about anything. I will try to learn how to spell the word medieval because it's hard. Thank you, Taylor. Thank you. I felt like an idiot.

It's so hard. It makes no sense. sense i can't even i can't even right now say how i think you would spell it it's just like not what you think i hope i did it right here it's yeah because the evil is eval not he will but you say evil yeah it's weird dumb anyways so that is my fun little topic hopefully the audience enjoyed it hopefully if you didn't you can write to us tell me i'm terrible at doom to phelpottajumel dot com reference me my name so i know that i'm the terrible one perfect perfect outro yeah thanks everyone we are on all the socials at jimed to fail pod we will see you over there sweet cool

thanks first thank you