January 6, 2022 • 27 mins
When we think of people carrying out death sentences today, we think of low-key affairs where the media is not invited. However, the Professional Public Executioner was a true showman when he carried out death sentences in front of thousands of people. But that’s not how he made most of his money. Helen and Matt explore the wild and complicated occupation of Executioner.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is jobs elete where we talk about jobs that
are long gone, and the job we're talking about in
this episode is intense, so fair warning might not be
for the faint of heart. Today we're looking at the
professional public executioner off with their heads, a sword, a
(00:23):
stick in a gallows? Did one person really kill three
thousand people? Everyone in this job is related. If you
can get away, you survive huge bloodthirsty crowds, social outcasts,
but wealthy killing in party outfits. So, Helen, what do
you know about killing people? Well? I watched all of
(00:44):
Game of Thrones. As Matt I repeatedly bring up Game
of Thrones, and there is a lot of killing people
that goes on in Game of Thrones. Yeah, there was
a lot of just chopping heads off with swords and axes. Yeah, hey,
I've been watching it. I think I'm up to episode
seven now. I'm so proud of you. And I don't
I hope that it was me peer pressuring you. I
(01:06):
do if that's all it was. Yeah, this is a
fascinating one to me. I went down a few rabbit
holes researching because I was like, oh, what about today?
And I know typically we don't talk about today until
the end of the show. But I figured it'd be
good to frame it this way because this is heavy
stuff and it still happens. Yeah, Yeah, I was gonna say,
(01:27):
it's not completely job sleet. It's very rare. They're probably
only a handful of people today that do this job,
but it still exists. Yeah, and we're talking about so
first of all, the job is executioner, and sometimes they're
just professional executioners. That's the official name, but it used
to be called a hangman. It also used to be
(01:48):
known as a headsman because typically they the way that
they killed people was hanging them or chopping off their heads.
So yeah, the person who is the official who carried
out the sentence of capital punishment, and it was the
government that was the one who carried it out. It's
(02:10):
not just like some random dude going around killing people. Also,
it was in public, and so you would have an
audience that and often a very large audience, like a
lot of people showed up to watch these things. But today, yeah,
today it's more low key. In fact, it's not something
that's we really want the public to see necessarily. One
more thing to bring up, actually is the way we
(02:32):
kill people who are sentenced to death by the state
today is most commonly lethal injection, but also electrocution is
still something that's sometimes used, and also even firing squad
or a single shot to the head in some countries.
The idea is, yeah, that is woe. But at the
same time, it's you're trying to make it as quick
(02:53):
as possible and as painless as possible, to be as
main as possible. So we were very careful about it.
Today it's like one of those things like we have
to do it, people still want it, but how can
we do it where it's not oh wow, like Game
of Thrones, Yeah, bloody and like a spectacle. Yeah, but
what we're talking about on the show today, the reason
why I brought all this up is because the job
(03:15):
was definitely about the spectacle, and we're talking about the
obsolete occupation of public executioner. Yeah. That's a really good
point because I feel like in today's world, especially in
the United States, like you don't know who these people are,
the public executioners. They probably don't want to be known.
It's not the sentences are not carried out in public,
(03:35):
but you're not in like a town square with a
big hanging gallows or anything like that. So it's all
done hush, and back in the day it wasn't like that.
It was like a show, absolutely, but also they did
so much more than just kill people, as you said
in the intro. So let's I think it's time to
happen to the time the time machine. So the sires
(04:04):
was the heyday. This is when it was more common
for this to be like an event that everybody showed
up to, and it was also like seeing as something
that was like socially acceptable. It was before this, but
it wasn't as formalized, so as formal, but also a
lot We're talking sometimes thousands would show up to watch
(04:26):
these executions. Yeah, and we're not just talking about one
particular place. We're talking about all over the world you
saw this, but our experts focuses on France. So we
spoke with Paul Freedland. He's a professor of history at
Cornell and author of Seeing Justice Done The Age of
Spectacular Capital Punishment in France. Freedland is a historian of France,
(04:51):
so much of what he will be referring to happen there.
But he also appointed us to when the heyday was
for the executioner, which often wasn't France. If crime becomes
something that is all about intentions and malice of forethought,
then punishment becomes something that is about deterring crime, dissuading
(05:13):
people from having those kind of evil thoughts and going
through with it. So there is you basically stage these
elaborate spectacles to teach people a lesson and to prevent crime.
So execution is meant to symbolize the crime itself and
teach people don't do this. So I'll just give you
(05:34):
a couple of examples of the kinds of punishments that
are cropping up right at the time they found the
Office of Public Execution or some One of these is
if you counterfeit the the usual crime for that is
boiling alive. If you commit heresy or sodomy or bestiality,
they burn you alive because it's meant to recall the
(05:55):
sort of flames of illicit passion that turn you to
toward the evil side. Highway robbery, they break you on
the wheel, just meant to symbolize the sort of the
King's road, and they actually tie you up on this
wheel and beat you up with an iron bar and
then leave you to die, and all of these spectacles
are incredibly elaborate, and you can't just have some average
(06:19):
job boiling people alive. You need a professional. And that's
why they found the office of public Executioner and why
everybody wants one either. By basically the end of the
thirteenth century. Oh so maccab these horrible ways to die.
I guess the logic of it makes sense. If you're
(06:41):
using these public executions as deterrence, you want it to
be a horrible death. So people are like, I don't
want to do that. I don't want to risk getting
caught and having that happened to me, So I guess
I won't do the crime. We're talking the Middle Ages here,
when we start to see a more formal process, where
like before the twelve hundreds, it was basically like, of course,
(07:05):
the state government with like sentence people to death and
then sentence people to be tortured and all this, but
it wouldn't happen in such a way where like everybody
would know when and where and how, and you're all invited.
And capital punishment is as old as humans, as as
old as societies. It's not the only way they punished.
(07:27):
I think people assume that, oh that it used to
be that every punishment was death, But no, there was
like you could be banished, you could be shunned, you
could have your hand cut off. That's a good old standard.
Shut your hand off. I still need to work. I
wonder if this all makes me think that there's if
(07:48):
there's something about society, especially that society like medieval times
in Europe, where there was like a thirst for gruesome violence.
If there's something in human nature that makes us watch
Game of Thrones and makes us watch these violent TV
shows where everybody gets killed and named. And the horror
movie genre, like the gory, bloody horror show genre of
(08:12):
movies is so popular and there's something about human nature
that wants to see that. But they didn't have Game
of Thrones and they didn't have saw movies back in
the day, so it's like they had to do it
for real. Yeah, they had gladiators and ancient Rome that
I think this is something that kind of continue that.
And because in ancient Rome, yeah, the oftentimes it was
(08:33):
criminals who were the ones who were forced to fight
off the lion or fight off whoever. But I think
the main thing is they wanted it to be something
that's scared the crap out of people, like you could
be next, so don't even think about it type of deal.
Do you think you could be a public execution? Do
you think you have what it takes? Absolutely one. Not
(08:54):
as much as I love Game of Thrones, I am
super squeamish. I don't even even be a nurse. Could
just no, I don't even eat red meat because of
the of my squeamishness. So forget having to like hack
up humans. No, I think that you have to be
a certain kind of person to have this job, like
a really strong stomach and a detachment to humanity a
(09:16):
little bit. You have to be right. Yeah, I was
gonna say that's absolutely true, and often a position that
people did not want and so who were stuck with
it or people that were like at the margins of society.
This is similar to that sin Eater episode, but yeah,
it was different around the world. The qualifications were different
around the world. Generally though, was people that were undesirable,
(09:38):
like at the bottom of the hierarchy. That makes sense,
So it's it's not really a job that anybody really
wants to do, or nobody's like a little kid being like,
I want to grow up to become a public executioner,
but you're forced into the job because of desperation. You're
either desperate for money, you're you're like socially an outcast,
so you're pushed into doing this job. It's not like
(10:00):
you can apply to become one a separate race of people,
a kind of a race of outcasts, and their daughters
would really only marry other executioners or into other executioner
families because nobody else would want anything to do with them,
and so all the executioners are pretty much related to
each other. Urban legends that are told about, like one
(10:22):
story is about a guy who goes to an in
and meets this really personable man sitting at the bar,
and they share drinks and they stay up until all
hours talking and only the next day does he realize
that the other guy had been an executioner. And everybody
else keeping their distance, and one of the worst things
you could do is not only be caught in the
company of an executioner, but actually dine with them. Another
(10:45):
urban legends about somebody falling in love with a beautiful woman,
only to find out that it was the daughter of
the executioner, and you can't marry the daughter of the
executioner without becoming an executioner yourself. That is so interesting
that they all were related to each other. Like that's oh,
there's something like morbidly sad about that, Like, honey, how
(11:06):
is work, dad? How is work? SAME's rolling, similar to royalty.
They're all probably getting weird diseases too because of the intermarrying.
(11:29):
But yeah, you were born into it. Often in most
societies around the world during the heyday at least, and
I did have I did look up. In particular, the
Ottoman Empire was fascinating to me. Only the Roman Romani
people could be executioners in the Ottoman Empire. Oh gypsies, right, yeah,
(11:49):
gypsies today They couldn't even share graveyards after they died
with the general public fate, and they had no inscriptions
on their tombstones after they died. So very sad. Yeah,
that makes me really sad. It's the these horrible jobs
where you have to chop up people and torture people
to death, and then after all that you can't even
be buried in a proper grave, like you don't even
(12:10):
have respect and death. Another interesting thing about the Ottoman Empire, though,
is they had like a weird tradition of if you
could escape the executioner, then you could maybe survive, meaning
if you could if you can somehow get away from
the executioner, if you could get out of your get
(12:32):
out of your wrist shackles and then just run for
your life and the executioner can't catch you. Guess what,
You're free. Yeah. No, There are documented instances of this,
and in some areas it became that became more formal
rule are like, okay, you gotta at least give them
a chance to escape, and if they can't escape, then okay,
(12:53):
you can kill them. But yeah, So anyway, it's a
worldwide trend that they were forced into it, they were
born into it, and they were cut off from the
rest of society because they're like who wants to be
with them? You are literally born into it. And there
are a bunch of examples of actual baby executioners, people
whose father die when they're at an early age. So
(13:16):
there's an example of the Jean Pettis Francois Callier who
becomes the official executioner of the town that Pontoise at
the age of one year old in seventeen forty one. Obviously,
they don't have babies going on killing people. They've got
a regent taking care of his responsibilities until he becomes
a certain age. That is bonkers. That you a one
(13:40):
year old executioner who's got like a stand and until
he gets old enough to hold up the axe. Oh gosh,
that's crazy. That's great. Can you imagine these family reunions, like,
oh gosh, horrible, this is horrible conversations happening at the
old executioner family reunion. Now it seems so far, it
(14:02):
would seem that the public executioner is one of the
worst jobs ever. Why would you ever want to do it?
Their outcasts, YadA YadA. But they were also some of
the best paid. They were incredibly well compensated for the time.
These were fairly wealthy people, and they were comparatively well educated.
Many of them were literate and could read un signed
(14:25):
their names. Some of the salary came as a kind
of per piece thing per execution. In the provinces, it
tended to pay a little bit less. In capital cities
it could be really lucrative. The reason why they were
well paid is because they were paid for all this
other stuff on top of the actual executions, and it
was basically like like revenue sharing type of deal. Like
(14:47):
everything in the markets, they got a portion of the profits,
which I don't know why. I couldn't find out why
that was, but it seems to be pretty makes sense.
If you're an employee of the state today, you get
paid by taxes, right, That's how you get paid. So
it kind of makes sense that back then this is
like the way of taxing everybody in the community to
(15:08):
then pay towards you your job, which is essential to
the community. That actually makes a lot of sense now
that you say put it that way. We've already been
talking about the skills a little bit here, but let's
continue with the skills, because they were quite skilled. Actually
kind of this is weird, But you've got to make
sure that you quickly kill them. That's a skill that
(15:29):
there are stories where if they didn't kill them immediately,
they then not only could they maybe get away like
the person they're supposed to kill, but the public might
just take them away saying you didn't do the job,
so they're free. Now you'd have your sharp sword, you'd
have your various implements for the gallows, they were in
charge of taking care of all the equipment. You've got
(15:51):
your torturing equipment too, And in trance at least the
executioner was in charge of torturing, which was a sort
of legal prece jor to try to get somebody to
confess or give up their accomplices. It's not quite a tool.
But one of the sort of interesting things about executioners
was the outfits that they were required to wear, because
(16:12):
it was really important to people that they'd be recognizable
from a distance, that they couldn't be confused with normal people.
So every different town had a different requirement for the executioners.
So in some places it was a special cloak of
a particular color. In other places they always had to
wear the insignia of the gallows. In some places they
(16:35):
had to wear party colored clothing, meaning like one pain
leg would be red and one would be yellow, to
signify that they were not like other people. But they're
all these As you go through the archives and read
about this, there's this constant game between the executioners and
the local officials trying to smart each other because the
executioner doesn't want to be recognized everywhere because people would
(16:58):
throw stuff at him or not allow him to sit
in particular places, and in some places they also had
to carry like a large stick, which as time went on,
would get bigger and bigger as people begin more anxious
about being able to recognize the executioner, so they wouldn't buy, mistake,
come anywhere near them. Oh my gosh, this is so
(17:19):
sad and twisted. These poor people had to wear outfits
so everybody could shun them. On a daily basis. Is
Oh man, even on my day off, I can't just
go to Starbucks and get a coffee because I'm wearing
these party colored clothes. Pick me out from a distance,
and they're certainly not going to let me into the
Starbucks for a coffee. They're like, hey, no executioners in here, bro.
(17:40):
People were not supposed to like them at all, And
I think that's part of the whole spectacle of it.
So there were no typical days for a public executioner,
because the is we're big days. Dr Freeland is going
(18:02):
to talk about the biggest public execution of all time.
But the biggest execution, the sort of the apogee of
payday executions, would be the execution of Dema in seventeen
fifty seven, and that was just it was the first
drawing and quartering in a hundred and fifty years, so
(18:23):
everybody wanted to see it, and people bought up windows
at exorbitant prices. They even tore off the roofs of
the houses nearby so they could construct viewing platforms, and
there must have been hundreds of thousands of people who
shut up to watch that one see. That really makes
me think there's like a segment of every human population
that is drawn to gore and violence. That's why in
(18:47):
today's era, these gore porn movies are so popular. There's
a portion of our population that is drawn to that
and wants to see blood and guts and gore for
a drawing and quartering seventeen whatever to draw hundreds of
thousands of people, and they're like paying for windows space
and they're constructing viewing platforms like they're like, oh, it's
(19:11):
a drawing and quartering, it's so gruesome, we gotta watch it.
Hundreds of thousands of people. Though I can't wrap my
head around that very well, like thinking about seventeen fifty
seven in France, But another part of a typical day
for these events was when the executioner first got there.
Like we hinted at earlier, they had the right to
(19:33):
sees a certain percentage of all goods sold in the
public marketplace, or at least sees the profits from that.
And again this was actually the bulk of their income
and one reason why they were so wealthy. The first
thing they did when they got there was like, all right, guys,
pay up, okay, before we get this party started pay
tributes or what kind of goods you got in the
marketplace for me today. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of people
(19:58):
would flock and the execution was usually by the market,
so just when things were getting busy, the executioner and
their families would show up at the market and then
they would fan out to take their due from each
of the different people. But because all of these people
were outcasts and basically untouchables, nobody wanted them anywhere near
(20:18):
what they were selling, particularly it was food, because their
touch would contaminate what was for sale, so they would
have to take everything with a tin spoon rather than
touching things directly, and they would mark the people who
they had already taken stuff from with chalk, and as
you read through the archives. People are just very upset
(20:38):
about even being touched by a piece of chalk that
the executioners holding, because that's how infamous they are. But
they would make a huge amount of money off of
the stuff, because it's basically a percentage of all goods
sold in the public marketplace. So I just can't get
over how like they can have whatever they want. They
these executioners can go around and take whatever they want,
(21:00):
but they can't even grab it with their own hands.
They have to use a spoon to get it. And
even just marking the people with chalk, which I'm assuming
they did on their arm or something, or maybe their forehead,
I don't know. You get that jog away from me.
You the executioner touched me. Gross. It's now time for
(21:21):
our notable person. I will say that this person, this executioner,
he famously killed Marie Antoinette and he killed King Louis
the sixteenth. This was during the French Revolution, of a
time of lots of executions. Probably the most famous executioner
(21:42):
is charl Vi Saint Song, who was from a long
line of executioners, and he was the executioner during the
French Revolution. The guy who executed Louis Ste Marie Antoinette,
all of the French revolutionary politicians who were killed by guillotine,
and he probably presided over the execution of two or
(22:04):
three thousand people over his over the length of his tenure,
he served the king, he served. Every single regime was
execution the Napoleonic regime, every single political regime, he was
the executioner. WHOA, I can't even imagine seeing that guy's resume. Yeah,
I've killed three thousand people, including the king and the queen.
(22:27):
What's up? What's up? Yeah, a bunch of other famous
people during the French Revolution. Towards the end of his career,
the guillotine is the most common way of killing, and
that actually marks the beginning of the end of the
public executioner. And it seems like it's going to be
a big improvement because it takes all the guests work out.
(22:47):
But what it basically does is industrialized the profession, so
you don't really need anybody who is skilled. All you
need is somebody who can pull the cord. But it
takes a while for the profession to dis year. At first,
in seventeen eighty three, they probably had a couple thousand
executioners in France, because almost every town, every major town
(23:09):
in the northern two thirds of the country, would have
had an executioner. And in seventeen ninety three they decide
they're only going to need one executioner for each of
France's eighty three departments, one executioner and one guillotine. So
you go from a few thousand to eighty three in
seventeen three, and all the other thousand executioners, some of
(23:29):
them end up taking jobs in the South where there
hadn't to be in an official executioner, but a lot
of them end up in poverty, and if you go
to the archives, you can see all these actually very
touching letters that they wrote to administrators, basically saying, I'm
an outcast. It's not like I can get a job.
I can't show up at the local tavern and asked
to be a bartender. I cannot support myself or my
(23:52):
family or even those who got the job and moved
to the South were treated horribly, even worse than they've
been treated in the North, and people through step at
them and screamed at them. And one guy I remember
wrote to the officials, I cry myself to sleep every night.
I mean, they're actually really touching. You could feel sorry
for these guys. Wow, that is typical, right, This job
(24:12):
went away because of automation and mechanization. It's very sad
what he was saying, that they were writing these tearful
letters because they couldn't support themselves. But I think there's
a lot of personal tragedy with this job going away.
But I think probably as society moving forward, it was
probably a good thing that this job went away, because
even the guillotine is a more humane way of killing
(24:34):
someone than you hoping someone hacks your head off in
the first swing. There's a lot going on here, actually,
more than technology, I think. Once you say, I definitely
think so, I think, But like I said earlier, it's
the stomach for it it went down. And also I
think because we do have movies now and TV shows
and this gory porn thing, that you don't really need
(24:56):
to do it in real life to get that to
scratch that itch for humanity. So you can take some
chocolate syrup and some film and pretend to kill someone
on film and watch that and get that violent streak out,
but you don't need to do it in real life.
So I think the stomach for it went down. It
is kind of a form of escapism, like for entertainment.
But what's interesting to me the fact that the French
(25:19):
government also at the same time the camera is in there.
They stuff the camera in there to film it, and
then they're distributing the film. The French government is embarrassed
by that. And like we said at the beginning of
this episode, today it's still pretty half and half in
terms of how many people are still okay with the
death penalty. About half of the population in most societies
(25:40):
is okay with it. But even those who are okay
with it, they don't want to see it. They just
want you to just do it quietly and keep it
out of sight. But again, it's the it's a lethal
injection execution. You're just trying to kill them as humanely
as possible. So why why would you need a public executioner.
That doesn't make sense today. Alright, so final thoughts on
(26:01):
the legacy. I think this was one of the most
complicated and sad jobs that we've covered in this series.
I didn't know how tragic the job was, and so
in that sense, I'm I'm really glad that the job
has essentially gone away, especially the public spectacle of it.
And I'm curious to see if we did make public executions,
(26:21):
modern public executions, more public, if we actually televised actual
public executions, if the job would go away entirely because
people really wouldn't have a stomach for it. Oh that's
an interesting point. Yeah. Something I thought of was this
job created so much suffering, yet the ones who performed
the job constantly suffered. I would also agree that this
(26:44):
job going away was a win win because you had
less suffering, both by the person doing it and whoever
they were doing it too. Job Slete is produced for
I Heart Radio by Zealots manufacturing hand Forge Podcast for You,
but hosted by us Helen Hong That's Me and Matt
That's Me. The show was conceived and produced by Steve Zamarky,
(27:07):
Anthony Savini, and Jason Elliott. Our editor is Tommy Nichole,
our researcher is Amelia Paulka, our production coordinator is Angie Hymes,
and theme music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. A
special thanks to our I Heart Radio team, Katrina Norvelle,
nikky E, tore Ali Cantor Carrie Lieberman, Will Pearson, Connell Byrne,
(27:31):
and Bob Pittman.
This is jobs elete where we talk about jobs that
are long gone, and the job we're talking about in
this episode is intense, so fair warning might not be
for the faint of heart. Today we're looking at the
professional public executioner off with their heads, a sword, a
(00:23):
stick in a gallows? Did one person really kill three
thousand people? Everyone in this job is related. If you
can get away, you survive huge bloodthirsty crowds, social outcasts,
but wealthy killing in party outfits. So, Helen, what do
you know about killing people? Well? I watched all of
(00:44):
Game of Thrones. As Matt I repeatedly bring up Game
of Thrones, and there is a lot of killing people
that goes on in Game of Thrones. Yeah, there was
a lot of just chopping heads off with swords and axes. Yeah, hey,
I've been watching it. I think I'm up to episode
seven now. I'm so proud of you. And I don't
I hope that it was me peer pressuring you. I
(01:06):
do if that's all it was. Yeah, this is a
fascinating one to me. I went down a few rabbit
holes researching because I was like, oh, what about today?
And I know typically we don't talk about today until
the end of the show. But I figured it'd be
good to frame it this way because this is heavy
stuff and it still happens. Yeah, Yeah, I was gonna say,
(01:27):
it's not completely job sleet. It's very rare. They're probably
only a handful of people today that do this job,
but it still exists. Yeah, and we're talking about so
first of all, the job is executioner, and sometimes they're
just professional executioners. That's the official name, but it used
to be called a hangman. It also used to be
(01:48):
known as a headsman because typically they the way that
they killed people was hanging them or chopping off their heads.
So yeah, the person who is the official who carried
out the sentence of capital punishment, and it was the
government that was the one who carried it out. It's
(02:10):
not just like some random dude going around killing people. Also,
it was in public, and so you would have an
audience that and often a very large audience, like a
lot of people showed up to watch these things. But today, yeah,
today it's more low key. In fact, it's not something
that's we really want the public to see necessarily. One
more thing to bring up, actually is the way we
(02:32):
kill people who are sentenced to death by the state
today is most commonly lethal injection, but also electrocution is
still something that's sometimes used, and also even firing squad
or a single shot to the head in some countries.
The idea is, yeah, that is woe. But at the
same time, it's you're trying to make it as quick
(02:53):
as possible and as painless as possible, to be as
main as possible. So we were very careful about it.
Today it's like one of those things like we have
to do it, people still want it, but how can
we do it where it's not oh wow, like Game
of Thrones, Yeah, bloody and like a spectacle. Yeah, but
what we're talking about on the show today, the reason
why I brought all this up is because the job
(03:15):
was definitely about the spectacle, and we're talking about the
obsolete occupation of public executioner. Yeah. That's a really good
point because I feel like in today's world, especially in
the United States, like you don't know who these people are,
the public executioners. They probably don't want to be known.
It's not the sentences are not carried out in public,
(03:35):
but you're not in like a town square with a
big hanging gallows or anything like that. So it's all
done hush, and back in the day it wasn't like that.
It was like a show, absolutely, but also they did
so much more than just kill people, as you said
in the intro. So let's I think it's time to
happen to the time the time machine. So the sires
(04:04):
was the heyday. This is when it was more common
for this to be like an event that everybody showed
up to, and it was also like seeing as something
that was like socially acceptable. It was before this, but
it wasn't as formalized, so as formal, but also a
lot We're talking sometimes thousands would show up to watch
(04:26):
these executions. Yeah, and we're not just talking about one
particular place. We're talking about all over the world you
saw this, but our experts focuses on France. So we
spoke with Paul Freedland. He's a professor of history at
Cornell and author of Seeing Justice Done The Age of
Spectacular Capital Punishment in France. Freedland is a historian of France,
(04:51):
so much of what he will be referring to happen there.
But he also appointed us to when the heyday was
for the executioner, which often wasn't France. If crime becomes
something that is all about intentions and malice of forethought,
then punishment becomes something that is about deterring crime, dissuading
(05:13):
people from having those kind of evil thoughts and going
through with it. So there is you basically stage these
elaborate spectacles to teach people a lesson and to prevent crime.
So execution is meant to symbolize the crime itself and
teach people don't do this. So I'll just give you
(05:34):
a couple of examples of the kinds of punishments that
are cropping up right at the time they found the
Office of Public Execution or some One of these is
if you counterfeit the the usual crime for that is
boiling alive. If you commit heresy or sodomy or bestiality,
they burn you alive because it's meant to recall the
(05:55):
sort of flames of illicit passion that turn you to
toward the evil side. Highway robbery, they break you on
the wheel, just meant to symbolize the sort of the
King's road, and they actually tie you up on this
wheel and beat you up with an iron bar and
then leave you to die, and all of these spectacles
are incredibly elaborate, and you can't just have some average
(06:19):
job boiling people alive. You need a professional. And that's
why they found the office of public Executioner and why
everybody wants one either. By basically the end of the
thirteenth century. Oh so maccab these horrible ways to die.
I guess the logic of it makes sense. If you're
(06:41):
using these public executions as deterrence, you want it to
be a horrible death. So people are like, I don't
want to do that. I don't want to risk getting
caught and having that happened to me, So I guess
I won't do the crime. We're talking the Middle Ages here,
when we start to see a more formal process, where
like before the twelve hundreds, it was basically like, of course,
(07:05):
the state government with like sentence people to death and
then sentence people to be tortured and all this, but
it wouldn't happen in such a way where like everybody
would know when and where and how, and you're all invited.
And capital punishment is as old as humans, as as
old as societies. It's not the only way they punished.
(07:27):
I think people assume that, oh that it used to
be that every punishment was death, But no, there was
like you could be banished, you could be shunned, you
could have your hand cut off. That's a good old standard.
Shut your hand off. I still need to work. I
wonder if this all makes me think that there's if
(07:48):
there's something about society, especially that society like medieval times
in Europe, where there was like a thirst for gruesome violence.
If there's something in human nature that makes us watch
Game of Thrones and makes us watch these violent TV
shows where everybody gets killed and named. And the horror
movie genre, like the gory, bloody horror show genre of
(08:12):
movies is so popular and there's something about human nature
that wants to see that. But they didn't have Game
of Thrones and they didn't have saw movies back in
the day, so it's like they had to do it
for real. Yeah, they had gladiators and ancient Rome that
I think this is something that kind of continue that.
And because in ancient Rome, yeah, the oftentimes it was
(08:33):
criminals who were the ones who were forced to fight
off the lion or fight off whoever. But I think
the main thing is they wanted it to be something
that's scared the crap out of people, like you could
be next, so don't even think about it type of deal.
Do you think you could be a public execution? Do
you think you have what it takes? Absolutely one. Not
(08:54):
as much as I love Game of Thrones, I am
super squeamish. I don't even even be a nurse. Could
just no, I don't even eat red meat because of
the of my squeamishness. So forget having to like hack
up humans. No, I think that you have to be
a certain kind of person to have this job, like
a really strong stomach and a detachment to humanity a
(09:16):
little bit. You have to be right. Yeah, I was
gonna say that's absolutely true, and often a position that
people did not want and so who were stuck with
it or people that were like at the margins of society.
This is similar to that sin Eater episode, but yeah,
it was different around the world. The qualifications were different
around the world. Generally though, was people that were undesirable,
(09:38):
like at the bottom of the hierarchy. That makes sense,
So it's it's not really a job that anybody really
wants to do, or nobody's like a little kid being like,
I want to grow up to become a public executioner,
but you're forced into the job because of desperation. You're
either desperate for money, you're you're like socially an outcast,
so you're pushed into doing this job. It's not like
(10:00):
you can apply to become one a separate race of people,
a kind of a race of outcasts, and their daughters
would really only marry other executioners or into other executioner
families because nobody else would want anything to do with them,
and so all the executioners are pretty much related to
each other. Urban legends that are told about, like one
(10:22):
story is about a guy who goes to an in
and meets this really personable man sitting at the bar,
and they share drinks and they stay up until all
hours talking and only the next day does he realize
that the other guy had been an executioner. And everybody
else keeping their distance, and one of the worst things
you could do is not only be caught in the
company of an executioner, but actually dine with them. Another
(10:45):
urban legends about somebody falling in love with a beautiful woman,
only to find out that it was the daughter of
the executioner, and you can't marry the daughter of the
executioner without becoming an executioner yourself. That is so interesting
that they all were related to each other. Like that's oh,
there's something like morbidly sad about that, Like, honey, how
(11:06):
is work, dad? How is work? SAME's rolling, similar to royalty.
They're all probably getting weird diseases too because of the intermarrying.
(11:29):
But yeah, you were born into it. Often in most
societies around the world during the heyday at least, and
I did have I did look up. In particular, the
Ottoman Empire was fascinating to me. Only the Roman Romani
people could be executioners in the Ottoman Empire. Oh gypsies, right, yeah,
(11:49):
gypsies today They couldn't even share graveyards after they died
with the general public fate, and they had no inscriptions
on their tombstones after they died. So very sad. Yeah,
that makes me really sad. It's the these horrible jobs
where you have to chop up people and torture people
to death, and then after all that you can't even
be buried in a proper grave, like you don't even
(12:10):
have respect and death. Another interesting thing about the Ottoman Empire, though,
is they had like a weird tradition of if you
could escape the executioner, then you could maybe survive, meaning
if you could if you can somehow get away from
the executioner, if you could get out of your get
(12:32):
out of your wrist shackles and then just run for
your life and the executioner can't catch you. Guess what,
You're free. Yeah. No, There are documented instances of this,
and in some areas it became that became more formal
rule are like, okay, you gotta at least give them
a chance to escape, and if they can't escape, then okay,
(12:53):
you can kill them. But yeah, So anyway, it's a
worldwide trend that they were forced into it, they were
born into it, and they were cut off from the
rest of society because they're like who wants to be
with them? You are literally born into it. And there
are a bunch of examples of actual baby executioners, people
whose father die when they're at an early age. So
(13:16):
there's an example of the Jean Pettis Francois Callier who
becomes the official executioner of the town that Pontoise at
the age of one year old in seventeen forty one. Obviously,
they don't have babies going on killing people. They've got
a regent taking care of his responsibilities until he becomes
a certain age. That is bonkers. That you a one
(13:40):
year old executioner who's got like a stand and until
he gets old enough to hold up the axe. Oh gosh,
that's crazy. That's great. Can you imagine these family reunions, like,
oh gosh, horrible, this is horrible conversations happening at the
old executioner family reunion. Now it seems so far, it
(14:02):
would seem that the public executioner is one of the
worst jobs ever. Why would you ever want to do it?
Their outcasts, YadA YadA. But they were also some of
the best paid. They were incredibly well compensated for the time.
These were fairly wealthy people, and they were comparatively well educated.
Many of them were literate and could read un signed
(14:25):
their names. Some of the salary came as a kind
of per piece thing per execution. In the provinces, it
tended to pay a little bit less. In capital cities
it could be really lucrative. The reason why they were
well paid is because they were paid for all this
other stuff on top of the actual executions, and it
was basically like like revenue sharing type of deal. Like
(14:47):
everything in the markets, they got a portion of the profits,
which I don't know why. I couldn't find out why
that was, but it seems to be pretty makes sense.
If you're an employee of the state today, you get
paid by taxes, right, That's how you get paid. So
it kind of makes sense that back then this is
like the way of taxing everybody in the community to
(15:08):
then pay towards you your job, which is essential to
the community. That actually makes a lot of sense now
that you say put it that way. We've already been
talking about the skills a little bit here, but let's
continue with the skills, because they were quite skilled. Actually
kind of this is weird, But you've got to make
sure that you quickly kill them. That's a skill that
(15:29):
there are stories where if they didn't kill them immediately,
they then not only could they maybe get away like
the person they're supposed to kill, but the public might
just take them away saying you didn't do the job,
so they're free. Now you'd have your sharp sword, you'd
have your various implements for the gallows, they were in
charge of taking care of all the equipment. You've got
(15:51):
your torturing equipment too, And in trance at least the
executioner was in charge of torturing, which was a sort
of legal prece jor to try to get somebody to
confess or give up their accomplices. It's not quite a tool.
But one of the sort of interesting things about executioners
was the outfits that they were required to wear, because
(16:12):
it was really important to people that they'd be recognizable
from a distance, that they couldn't be confused with normal people.
So every different town had a different requirement for the executioners.
So in some places it was a special cloak of
a particular color. In other places they always had to
wear the insignia of the gallows. In some places they
(16:35):
had to wear party colored clothing, meaning like one pain
leg would be red and one would be yellow, to
signify that they were not like other people. But they're
all these As you go through the archives and read
about this, there's this constant game between the executioners and
the local officials trying to smart each other because the
executioner doesn't want to be recognized everywhere because people would
(16:58):
throw stuff at him or not allow him to sit
in particular places, and in some places they also had
to carry like a large stick, which as time went on,
would get bigger and bigger as people begin more anxious
about being able to recognize the executioner, so they wouldn't buy, mistake,
come anywhere near them. Oh my gosh, this is so
(17:19):
sad and twisted. These poor people had to wear outfits
so everybody could shun them. On a daily basis. Is
Oh man, even on my day off, I can't just
go to Starbucks and get a coffee because I'm wearing
these party colored clothes. Pick me out from a distance,
and they're certainly not going to let me into the
Starbucks for a coffee. They're like, hey, no executioners in here, bro.
(17:40):
People were not supposed to like them at all, And
I think that's part of the whole spectacle of it.
So there were no typical days for a public executioner,
because the is we're big days. Dr Freeland is going
(18:02):
to talk about the biggest public execution of all time.
But the biggest execution, the sort of the apogee of
payday executions, would be the execution of Dema in seventeen
fifty seven, and that was just it was the first
drawing and quartering in a hundred and fifty years, so
(18:23):
everybody wanted to see it, and people bought up windows
at exorbitant prices. They even tore off the roofs of
the houses nearby so they could construct viewing platforms, and
there must have been hundreds of thousands of people who
shut up to watch that one see. That really makes
me think there's like a segment of every human population
that is drawn to gore and violence. That's why in
(18:47):
today's era, these gore porn movies are so popular. There's
a portion of our population that is drawn to that
and wants to see blood and guts and gore for
a drawing and quartering seventeen whatever to draw hundreds of
thousands of people, and they're like paying for windows space
and they're constructing viewing platforms like they're like, oh, it's
(19:11):
a drawing and quartering, it's so gruesome, we gotta watch it.
Hundreds of thousands of people. Though I can't wrap my
head around that very well, like thinking about seventeen fifty
seven in France, But another part of a typical day
for these events was when the executioner first got there.
Like we hinted at earlier, they had the right to
(19:33):
sees a certain percentage of all goods sold in the
public marketplace, or at least sees the profits from that.
And again this was actually the bulk of their income
and one reason why they were so wealthy. The first
thing they did when they got there was like, all right, guys,
pay up, okay, before we get this party started pay
tributes or what kind of goods you got in the
marketplace for me today. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of people
(19:58):
would flock and the execution was usually by the market,
so just when things were getting busy, the executioner and
their families would show up at the market and then
they would fan out to take their due from each
of the different people. But because all of these people
were outcasts and basically untouchables, nobody wanted them anywhere near
(20:18):
what they were selling, particularly it was food, because their
touch would contaminate what was for sale, so they would
have to take everything with a tin spoon rather than
touching things directly, and they would mark the people who
they had already taken stuff from with chalk, and as
you read through the archives. People are just very upset
(20:38):
about even being touched by a piece of chalk that
the executioners holding, because that's how infamous they are. But
they would make a huge amount of money off of
the stuff, because it's basically a percentage of all goods
sold in the public marketplace. So I just can't get
over how like they can have whatever they want. They
these executioners can go around and take whatever they want,
(21:00):
but they can't even grab it with their own hands.
They have to use a spoon to get it. And
even just marking the people with chalk, which I'm assuming
they did on their arm or something, or maybe their forehead,
I don't know. You get that jog away from me.
You the executioner touched me. Gross. It's now time for
(21:21):
our notable person. I will say that this person, this executioner,
he famously killed Marie Antoinette and he killed King Louis
the sixteenth. This was during the French Revolution, of a
time of lots of executions. Probably the most famous executioner
(21:42):
is charl Vi Saint Song, who was from a long
line of executioners, and he was the executioner during the
French Revolution. The guy who executed Louis Ste Marie Antoinette,
all of the French revolutionary politicians who were killed by guillotine,
and he probably presided over the execution of two or
(22:04):
three thousand people over his over the length of his tenure,
he served the king, he served. Every single regime was
execution the Napoleonic regime, every single political regime, he was
the executioner. WHOA, I can't even imagine seeing that guy's resume. Yeah,
I've killed three thousand people, including the king and the queen.
(22:27):
What's up? What's up? Yeah, a bunch of other famous
people during the French Revolution. Towards the end of his career,
the guillotine is the most common way of killing, and
that actually marks the beginning of the end of the
public executioner. And it seems like it's going to be
a big improvement because it takes all the guests work out.
(22:47):
But what it basically does is industrialized the profession, so
you don't really need anybody who is skilled. All you
need is somebody who can pull the cord. But it
takes a while for the profession to dis year. At first,
in seventeen eighty three, they probably had a couple thousand
executioners in France, because almost every town, every major town
(23:09):
in the northern two thirds of the country, would have
had an executioner. And in seventeen ninety three they decide
they're only going to need one executioner for each of
France's eighty three departments, one executioner and one guillotine. So
you go from a few thousand to eighty three in
seventeen three, and all the other thousand executioners, some of
(23:29):
them end up taking jobs in the South where there
hadn't to be in an official executioner, but a lot
of them end up in poverty, and if you go
to the archives, you can see all these actually very
touching letters that they wrote to administrators, basically saying, I'm
an outcast. It's not like I can get a job.
I can't show up at the local tavern and asked
to be a bartender. I cannot support myself or my
(23:52):
family or even those who got the job and moved
to the South were treated horribly, even worse than they've
been treated in the North, and people through step at
them and screamed at them. And one guy I remember
wrote to the officials, I cry myself to sleep every night.
I mean, they're actually really touching. You could feel sorry
for these guys. Wow, that is typical, right, This job
(24:12):
went away because of automation and mechanization. It's very sad
what he was saying, that they were writing these tearful
letters because they couldn't support themselves. But I think there's
a lot of personal tragedy with this job going away.
But I think probably as society moving forward, it was
probably a good thing that this job went away, because
even the guillotine is a more humane way of killing
(24:34):
someone than you hoping someone hacks your head off in
the first swing. There's a lot going on here, actually,
more than technology, I think. Once you say, I definitely
think so, I think, But like I said earlier, it's
the stomach for it it went down. And also I
think because we do have movies now and TV shows
and this gory porn thing, that you don't really need
(24:56):
to do it in real life to get that to
scratch that itch for humanity. So you can take some
chocolate syrup and some film and pretend to kill someone
on film and watch that and get that violent streak out,
but you don't need to do it in real life.
So I think the stomach for it went down. It
is kind of a form of escapism, like for entertainment.
But what's interesting to me the fact that the French
(25:19):
government also at the same time the camera is in there.
They stuff the camera in there to film it, and
then they're distributing the film. The French government is embarrassed
by that. And like we said at the beginning of
this episode, today it's still pretty half and half in
terms of how many people are still okay with the
death penalty. About half of the population in most societies
(25:40):
is okay with it. But even those who are okay
with it, they don't want to see it. They just
want you to just do it quietly and keep it
out of sight. But again, it's the it's a lethal
injection execution. You're just trying to kill them as humanely
as possible. So why why would you need a public executioner.
That doesn't make sense today. Alright, so final thoughts on
(26:01):
the legacy. I think this was one of the most
complicated and sad jobs that we've covered in this series.
I didn't know how tragic the job was, and so
in that sense, I'm I'm really glad that the job
has essentially gone away, especially the public spectacle of it.
And I'm curious to see if we did make public executions,
(26:21):
modern public executions, more public, if we actually televised actual
public executions, if the job would go away entirely because
people really wouldn't have a stomach for it. Oh that's
an interesting point. Yeah. Something I thought of was this
job created so much suffering, yet the ones who performed
the job constantly suffered. I would also agree that this
(26:44):
job going away was a win win because you had
less suffering, both by the person doing it and whoever
they were doing it too. Job Slete is produced for
I Heart Radio by Zealots manufacturing hand Forge Podcast for You,
but hosted by us Helen Hong That's Me and Matt
That's Me. The show was conceived and produced by Steve Zamarky,
(27:07):
Anthony Savini, and Jason Elliott. Our editor is Tommy Nichole,
our researcher is Amelia Paulka, our production coordinator is Angie Hymes,
and theme music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. A
special thanks to our I Heart Radio team, Katrina Norvelle,
nikky E, tore Ali Cantor Carrie Lieberman, Will Pearson, Connell Byrne,
(27:31):
and Bob Pittman.
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