Free Once a Jolly Hangman by Alan Shadrake Page B

he is an expert with many years experience. This attitude may be his way a easing that terrible, compounded burden. He told me he so convinced 18 men convicted of murder arising from the Pulau Senang penal colony riots of 1963 that being hanged by him would be painless and all over in a split-second that they actually wanted only him to hang them. On occasions when he was not sure if a prisoner would struggle on the way to the gallows a prison doctor prescribes a relaxant to help him - or her - stay as calm as possible. The drug is usually slipped into a last drink the night before. But there is often very little chance of anything really violent happening. An assistant or guard usually stands by while preparations are completed. The prisoners' arms are quickly pinioned behind their backs with handcuffs and straps rendering them virtually helpless. Then Darshan Singh hastens them into the execution chamber via a connecting door and before they know what is happening, they are on the twin trapdoors. To prevent the prisoner kicking out as the doors spring open and breaking their fall, their legs are tightly strapped together.
    Darshan Singh, as in the usual tradition of the British way of hanging, then places the noose around the neck, ensuring always that the knot is in the correct position behind the right ear and to thus break the spinal cord instantly at the end of the drop. The white cap is then produced as if out of thin air like a conjurer's trick and placed over the head in one deft movement. In true Singapore tradition timing also has to be perfect. Whether it is just one prisoner or three - the maximum Changi's modern scaffold can handle at one time - the trapdoor or doors now mechanically connected to one lever will open simultaneously at precisely 6.00 a.m. give or take a second or two. Why this final, grotesque ritual takes place just as the sun rises has never been clearly explained to me. Perhaps it is to do with the date on which the execution has been ordered - to ensure the condemned will never see the light of another day or even a fraction of one beyond his or her legally-determined lifespan. The body - or bodies - will plunge down a distance gauged by his or her weight, height and muscularity and the length of the rope. This method prevents decapitation or strangulation but no method of execution is without its faults. Despite Darshan Singh's claim, no one can be sure that every one will be perfect. No hangman is infallible no matter how many times he has carried out a hanging but he will never admit committing any kind of blunder.
    The body will be left suspended for at least 20 minutes to ensure death has taken place or while it stops writhing. The face will be purple, engorged with blood, the neck covered with lacerations, the tongue swollen and protruding from the mouth, eyes nightmarishly bulging. And, as always happens, involuntary ejections of urine and faeces will stain the clothing. Such has been the lot of Darshan Singh who has done this, although he cannot be sure, around 900 to 1,000 times since 1959. He has kept his sanity by lightening his load, repeating his half dozen or so jokes, conversational set pieces for the dinner table or over a glass of beer in one of his favourite haunts in Singapore's Little India.
    Sigmund Freud had a theory about gallows humour. In his 1927 essay 'Der Humor', he wrote: "The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let it be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure'. Some other sociologists elaborate this insight further. Paul Lewis, for example, says that this 'liberating' aspect of all kinds of gallows humour depends on the context of the joke: whether the joke is being told by the threatened person themselves or by someone else. 'Stress is the condition that results when person-environment