i'm writing a poem through the eyes of a scaffolding used to hang witches in the salem witch trials... and i wanted to know if people died abruptly when hung this way? or did they suffocate? i've come to believe that a scaffold had a trap door or a floor that would fall out of place and thus the 'witch' would hang.. so did the fall break their necks? or did they slowly suffocate?
I read once that in Salem, the witches were simply made to climb a ladder which was leaned against a tree. The noose was affixed around their neck and they were then pushed off the ladder. It seems they choked to death over a few minutes. Not a pretty picture.
it was designed to break a persons neck, but some people werent so lucky and had to hang there till they suffocated.
In that era, it was suffocation or strangulation. By the time the old west rolled around, it was a matter of pride for the hangmen to drop them clean and break their necks. If they didn't break their necks immediately, they sometimes did it again. At least one hangman added weights to the victims' feet to ensure a clean break. They didn't like hanging women because they were usually too light. Suicide by hanging is almost always strangulation. People just don't know how to do it.
I believe in the time of the witch trials the condemned stood on a stool which was knocked out from under them the trap door came later I believe but the idea was the same to break the neck. In this case there might have been more suffications due to the lack of the sudden extreme drop.
Some of all of the above. It would depend on how hard they jerked when their feet went out from under them. Also, it would depend on how their body jerked. It could break a neck, but I have heard of people hanging so long that they finally just gagged to death. One interesting fact that I read about hangings just the other day, was that during those times of hangings, sometimes the friends of the person being hanged would lie under the scaffold. When the person being hanged dropped down, the friends would YANK on the hanged persons feet to make the process quicker and supposedly less painless. I found that interesting. Hope I helped.
