Free Public Executions: From Ancient Rome to the Present Day by Nigel Cawthorne Page B

middle of the place, one behind the other, kneeling, their shoulders uncovered and their hands tied behind their backs. Each had his executioner standing by him, the one a tanner, for tanners in this country do the office of executioners, the other his best friend and comrade, who he earnestly desired as is the custom in this country, by doing him this piece of service, to confirm the friendship he had always had for him. The spectators stood around as promiscuously as they pleased, but I, with my Japanese servant, crowded as near one of the malefactors as we could. The minute the Dutch were all assembled at the place of execution, a signal was given and, in that instant, both executioners cut off the criminal's head with a short scymitar, in such a manner that their bodies fell forward to the ground. The bodies were wrapped up, each in a coarse rush mat, and both their heads put together in a third, and so carried away to a field not far from Nagasaki where, it was said, young people tried their strength and the sharpness of their scymitars upon the dead bodies by hacking them into small pieces. Both heads were fixed on a pole, according to custom, and exposed for view for seven days.'
    Thomas Taylor Meadows, the interpreter to the British Consulate in China, witnessed a mass beheading during the Taiping Rebellion of 1851. Back in London, he told the Royal Asiatic Society that some 400 people had been put to death in the same place over the last eight months and that a fire of fragrant sandalwood was burning near where the mandarins who were superintending the executions sat to conceal the stench of the decomposing heads.
    Chinese peasants, converts to Catholicism, are executed during China's nineteenth-century Boxer Rebellion
    'The criminals were brought in, the greater number walking, but many carried in large baskets of bamboo, each of which was attached to a pole and borne by two men. We observed that the strength of the men so carried was altogether gone, either from excess of fear or from the treatment they had met with during their imprisonment and trial. They fell powerless together as they were tumbled out on the spots where they were to die, and were immediately raised up to a kneeling position and supported thus by the man who stands behind them. The following is the manner of decapitation. There is no block, the criminal simply kneels with his face parallel to the earth, thus leaving his neck exposed in a horizontal position. His hands, crossed and tied behind his back, are grasped by the man behind who, by tilting them up, is enabled in some degree to keep the neck at the proper level. Sometimes, though very rarely, the criminal resists to the last by throwing back his head. In such cases, a second assistant goes in front and, taking the long Chinese tail or queue, normally kept rolled in a knot on top of the head, by dragging it, pulls the head out horizontally.
    'The sword usually employed is only about three feet long, inclusive of a six-inch handle, and the blade is not broader than an inch and a half at the hilt, narrowing and slightly curving towards the point. It is not thick and is in fact the short and by no means heavy sabre worn by the Chinese military officers when on duty.
    'The executioners, who are taken from the ranks of the army, are indeed very frequently asked by the officers to “flesh their maiden swords” for them. This is called “kae kow”, opening the edge, and is supposed to endow the weapon with a certain power of killing.
    'The sabre is firmly held with both hands, the right hand in front, with the thumbs projecting over and grasping the hilt. The executioner, with his feet planted some distance apart to brace himself, holds the sabre for an instant at the right angle to the neck, about a foot above it, in order to take aim at a joint in the vertebrae; then, with a sharp order to the criminal of “Don't Move!” he raises it straight before him, as high as his head, and brings it