Halifax Gibbet - Mechanism

Mechanism

It is uncertain when the Halifax Gibbet was first introduced, but it may not have been until some time in the 16th century; before then decapitation would have been carried out by an executioner using an axe or a sword. The device, which seems to have been unique in England, consisted of two 15-foot (4.6 m) tall parallel beams of wood joined at the top by a transverse beam. Running in grooves within the beams was a square wooden block 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 m) in length, into the bottom of which was fitted an axe head weighing 7 pounds 12 ounces (3.5 kg). The whole structure sat on a platform of stone blocks, 9 feet (2.7 m) square and 4 feet (1.2 m) high, which was ascended by a flight of steps. A rope attached to the top of the wooden block holding the axe ran over a pulley at the top of the structure, allowing the block to be raised. The rope was then fastened by a pin to the structure's stone base.

The gibbet could be operated by cutting the rope supporting the blade or by pulling out the pin that held the rope. If the offender was to be executed for stealing an animal, a cord was fastened to the pin and tied to either the stolen animal or one of the same species, which was then driven off, withdrawing the pin and allowing the blade to drop.

In an early contemporary account of 1586 Raphael Holinshed attests to the efficiency of the gibbet, and adds some detail about the participation of the onlookers:

In the nether end of the sliding block is an axe keyed or fastened with an iron into the wood, which being drawn up to the top of the frame is there fastened by a wooden pin ... unto the middest of which pin also there is a long rope fastened that cometh down among the people, so that when the offender hath made his confession, and hath laid his neck over the nethermost block, every man there present doth either take hold of the rope (or putteth forth his arm so near to the same as he can get, in token that he is willing to see true justice executed) and pulling out the pin in this manner, the head block wherein the axe is fastened doth fall down with such violence, that if the neck of the transgressor were so big as that of a bull, it should be cut in sunder at a stroke, and roll from the body by an huge distance.

An article in the September 1832 edition of The Imperial Magazine describes the victim's final moments:

The persons who had found the verdict, and the attending clergymen, placed themselves on the scaffold with the prisoner. The fourth psalm was then played round the scaffold on the bagpipes, after which the minister prayed with the prisoner till he received the final stroke.

In Thomas Deloney's novel Thomas of Reading (1600) the invention of the Halifax Gibbet is attributed to a friar, who proposed the device as a solution to the difficulty of finding local residents willing to act as hangmen.

Although the guillotine as a method of beheading is most closely associated in the popular imagination with late 18th-century Revolutionary France, several other decapitation devices had long been in use throughout Europe. It is uncertain whether Dr Guillotin was familiar with the Halifax Gibbet, but its design was reported to have been copied by James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, in the production of a similar device that became known as the Scottish Maiden, now on display in the National Museum of Scotland. The Maiden was rather shorter than the Halifax Gibbet, standing only 10 feet (3.0 m) tall, the same height as the French guillotine.