Throughout the centuries, executions have been used as a way to instil great fear into
the population.
Many executions were done in brutal ways to put a criminal to death, and some such as
hanging drawing and quartering carried ultimate shame as well as horror.
There were many instruments made to help carry out the brutal sentences, for example the
breaking wheel where a condemned victim would be strapped to and also beaten to a pulp with
clubs, breaking all their bones.
Also swords were used and were seen as a reliable way of beheading a prisoner, for example during
the Tudor period, Henry VIII brought a Swordsman over from France to England to execute his
second wife Anne Boleyn.
With this, he did not want his wife to risk the botching axeman who would use a block
and the axe which was considered less reliable.
But there was one weapon used which also was used as an execution method and it was rather
primitive and shockingly could be made by practically anyone.
The Garrote was a handheld ligature which was used by a number of countries to carry
out executions.
Join us today as we look at one of history’s most brutal execution methods, and remember
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The Garrote is a weapon which is used simply to strange someone.
It can be made from many different materials, for example a rope, scarf, fishing wire or
even chain.
There are some who used it throughout the centuries in the form of a contraption that
tightened around the neck of a condemned person.
Throughout the years they have also been used as a murder weapon, and have been historically
made also from telephone cord, guitar strings and even piano wire.
A stick sometimes can be used to tighten the garrotte, to finish someone off.
Following the Second World War, the Garrote has been used by many different soldiers in
a military setting to silently kill guards and enemy soldiers, as it was seen as a quick
and discreet killing method.
Some special forces and units are even trained on how to quickly make garrotes out of pieces
of wire of anything they can get their hands on.
A military garrotte has two wooden handles which are attached to a piece of flexible
wire, and then the wire is thrown over the head of the enemy, and then the handles are
pulled tight killing the enemy and silencing them rather quickly.
The French Foreign Legion even used a couple loop style garrotte, where a double coil was
wrapped around the neck of a victim then pulled tightly.
The weapon has been used as an assassination technique inside of different gangs also,
and was used historically in 17th and 18th century India.
They used a yellow silk or cloth scarf in these killings, and they aimed to crush the
larynx whilst pressure was put on a victim’s back with the executioners foot or knee placing
pressure on the neck.
But as an execution weapon, the Garrote has existed for centuries, and was used in Rome
during the first century BC.
A number of conspirators were strangled to death using it, and throughout the centuries
it was used continuously by different countries.
It was used during the Medieval period by the Spanish and the Portuguese and was used
during the Spanish Inquisition to execute heretics.
It’s the link to Spain where it is most famously used, and it was used during the
Spanish conquest of the americas.
One famous victim of the garrotte was the Inca Emperor Atahualpa, who was strangled
to death using the garrotte.
Then his skin was burned along with his clothes, and in great shame his remains were given
a Christian burial.
But the use of the garrotte and strangulation continued to spread, for example in the Ottoman
Empire it was seen as an execution method for the extremely high class.
Members of the royal family and government were the only ones who were executed using
the weapon, and a bowstring was used during many times inside the Ottoman Empire.
But the Spanish would face garrotting of their own soldiers during the Peninsular War of
1808-1814 when French soldiers used the weapon to strangle opponents of Napoleons’ rule.
Often the executions of people using the garrotte occurred in public.
This would involve the similar steps as a normal public execution, in which a condemned
individual would have been accompanied to the scaffold with guards and a priest who
took them from their prison cell to the site of their execution.
Once on the scaffold, a priest would give them final prayers, before they were then
strangled in front of a crowd.
The executioners would be considered rather skilled in their jobs as they could kill someone
in this method rather quickly, as the condemned were also tied to posts and stakes to ensure
they did not struggle and fight as the life was choked out of them.
In 1810, a metallic garrotte emerged in Spain and on the 28th April 1828, it was stated
that the garrotte was the only method of execution for civilians inside the country.
In May 1897 the final public parroting inside of Spain took place in Barcelona, and following
this the executions occurred in private inside of prisons.
There were accounts of famous versions of the execution method.
For example one was a chair with ropes and rings with locks for the wrists, forearms,
waists and the legs of the condemned.
The backrest of the chair had a wooden pole with a collar to shackle the prisoners neck,
and a bolt which rotated.
The bolt’s end was usually a razor blade or a sharp spike in the shape of s tar.
When the executioner tightened the device, the spikes dug into the mans neck and broke
his spinal cord.
These improvised garrets made death quicker, meaning that there was no need to wait for
asphyxiation to occur, and it was considered much more reliable.
But these garrotte machines did have some issues.
Firstly the bolt would sometimes malfunction and go through the neck without touching the
spine, causing the offender a huge amount of pain which sometimes wasn’t fatal.
In the 1800s, a witness said of a garrotting, ‘the bound person was dragged to the gallows
and made to sit on a narrow bench, back tied to a heavy post.
The executioner locks in the steel collar and fastens it to the post at the neck.
When everything was ready, he took both hands and grabbed hold of the hand-wheel waiving
to his assistant to throw a black handkerchief over the condemned mans face, covering his
face.
Then he began turning the handle.
The prisoner jerking his arms and a heaving breast were all signs that life was leaving
the thief.
Resting for a few moments the executioner peered under the handkerchief and making another
turn of the wheel pulled the veil.
Along with the dead body, the last of the well visible convulsions played out and the
mans mouth gaping and eyes bulging out.’
In terms of when this specific style of garrotte was invented, it’s believed that a Spanish
man named Garrote created the instrument of death.
He had allegedly seen a family member hanging which had gone wrong, and tried to make a
more successful method of execution.
But it’s believed in Spain that the device was a cruel part of the Spanish Inquisition
and also may have been around in the 8th century.
But the final civilian executions in Spain by parroting came in May 1959, when poisoner
Pilar Prades and serial killer Jose Maria Jarabo in July 1959 were executed in prison.
However there were more executions carried out inside the military, as these did not
cease until the 1970s.
Heinz Chez and Salvador Puig Antich in March 1974 had been sentenced to death for killing
police officers and these were the final two state sanctioned garrotting in the whole world.
Some criminals did request execution by garrotte in Spain however following these final two
executions the executions were commuted to imprisonment.
However interestingly, the final country to abolish parroting as a method of executing
criminals was Andorra who did this in 1990, but bizarrely this had not been used to execute
criminals since the late 1100s, meaning to outlaw it was rather pointless.
The Garrotte today is most closely linked to the Spanish, in a similar way that the
guillotine is a symbol of the French.
But it was an execution method which could be rather primitive, or more complex and as
time went on the machines were used to more reliably take the life of a criminal.
Those who often faced the brutal punishment were murderers, but despite some things sometimes
going wrong with the weapon, it was seen as reliable especially using the machine.
But choking the life out of a prisoner who was tied to a stake would be more complex,
and could take a lot longer.
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