The Faithful Executioner part 2 (nsfw)

LINK

Link to part 1.

Laws in the early modern period were about trust. Behavior that showed you could not be trusted were the most harshly punished. If you proved yourself to be untrustworthy, you were punished. If your family showed themselves to not hold up to society’s trust, they were ostracized.

Consistently, it was bandits that were most harshly punished as they showed themselves to be completely untrustworthy of society.

This is often seen in the legal records of criminals of the day. Their career was the first thing listed about them.
Fred the baker
John the knacker

But of interesting note, once someone had established themselves of being an evildoer, their criminal careers were listed next to their other careers. Showing their role to society.
George the archer and thief
Anna the maid and whore.
It was truly the evil characters that were just listed by their criminal careers.
James the thief and murderer
Ryan the robber

Often times, society played an important role in influencing crime and punishment. The poor were almost always treated worse as they didn’t have anyone who could vouch for them. If they did, they could get a quicker death or even have sentence reduced drastically.

Recidivism was as high back then as it is now. There are many stories of people being let go many times before they were finally executed.

Execution of people under 18 was rare and was supposed to be for those who showed themselves to be fully evil. Again, we find that only after consistent recidivism would people under 18 be executed.

Much of the time, executioners would kill someone secretly before the execution as an act of mercy. Sometimes this didn’t work, and sometimes this made things worse. Franz Schmitt (our protagonist) once tried to strangle someone sentenced to die by burning and tied gunpowder around their throat only for them not to die and for the gunpowder to blow up in his face before the fire even started.

Executioners could be killed by the crowd for having s bad execution. The crowd actively rooted for criminals to show repentance and to show a good death and hated executioners who didn’t provide.


Hanging was the most common form of execution and it was considered vulgar.

Women weren’t allowed to be hung because perverts might look up their skirts. So instead, drowning and burying alive were deemed much more acceptable for women.

One woman they tried to drown once but after half an hour, she had escaped her sack and was still ok. She said it was because she was so drunk that no more liquid could be taken into her body. So, at a loss, some tried to pardon her, but instead, she was immediately sentenced to be buried alive (the way this was written in the book made this story sound funny but instead when I type it out, that’s so fricked up and horrifying)

Being broken on the wheel was the worst way to go. Ripped apart by red hot pincers and then systemically broken from the feet on up. Legally ordained how many times to be struck by metal bars.

For as much of a bad reputation that executioners have, they were considered supernaturally gifted healers and most had side careers as healers. Our protagonist supposedly, while executing 300 people, claimed to have healed over 15,000 and got a pardon from being forced to be an executioner. He was listed as a physician on his grave stone.

Alas, as I feel I’m forgetting ma y interesting things, there will not be a part 3.