Gallows Humor - Examples

Examples

At his public execution, the murderer William Palmer is said to have looked at the trapdoor on the gallows and asked the hangman, "Are you sure it's safe?"

From William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1:

Mercutio is stabbed in a swordfight by Tybalt, Juliet's cousin:

Romeo: "Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much."
Mercutio: "No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man."

Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded in the Old Palace Yard at the Palace of Westminster on 29 October 1618. "Let us dispatch", he said to his executioner. "At this hour my ague comes upon me. I would not have my enemies think I quaked from fear." After he was allowed to see the axe that would behead him, he mused: "This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all diseases and miseries." According to many biographers – Raleigh Trevelyan in his book Sir Walter Raleigh (2002) for instance – Sir Walter's final words (as he lay ready for the axe to fall) were: "Strike, man, strike!"

As Sir Thomas More climbed a rickety scaffold where he would be executed, he said to his executioner: "I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant, see me safe up; and for my coming down, let me shift for myself."

Author and playwright Oscar Wilde was destitute and living in a cheap boarding house when he found himself on his deathbed. There are variations on what the sentence exactly was, but his reputed last words were, "Either that wallpaper goes or I do."

Murderer James French has been attributed with famous last words before his death by electric chair: "How's this for a headline? 'French Fries'." Likewise, when a Jewish mob boss George Appel was electrocuted, his last words were: "Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel."

In the conclusion to Monty Python's Life of Brian, a group of crucified criminals joyfully sing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".

In Stephen King's book The Tommyknockers, the main character reflects on a joke he "heard once". As a man is about to be executed, the firing squad leader offers the man about to be executed a cigarette. He replies, "No thanks, I'm trying to quit."

The military is full of gallows humor, as those in the services continuously live in the danger of being killed, especially in wartime. For example, the Japanese Navy Mitsubishi G4M Isshikirikkou (イッシキリッコウ) "Betty" bomber airplane was called "Hamaki" (葉巻 or はまき, meaning cigar) by the Japanese crews not only because its fuselage was cigar-shaped, but because it had a tendency to ignite on fire and burn violently when it was hit. The American nickname was "flying Zippo" - as the slogan of the cigarette lighter company was Guaranteed to light on first strike, every time. Similarly the British took to calling the M4 Sherman tank, which burnt out or exploded easily when hit, "Ronson" after the cigaret lighter whose slogan was Lights up the first time, every time!. When the survivors of HMS Sheffield, sunk in 1982 in the Falklands War, were awaiting rescue, they were reported to have sung the Monty Python song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life". Soviet pilots in WWII joked that the true meaning of the type designation of the LaGG-3 was Lakirovanny Garantirovanny Grob, "varnished guaranteed coffin".

One of the first convicts transported in Australia by the British Empire, nicknamed after the pirate Black Caesar, escaped the penal colony in 1789 and lived as a bushranger in the wilderness. He survived by raiding garden patches with a stolen gun. When he was eventually caught, according to colonial governor David Collins he was "so indifferent about meeting death, that he declared in confinement that if he should be hanged he would create a laugh before he was turned off, by playing some trick upon the executioner."