Survivors after hanging. People who survived the death penalty - TOP10

1. Elizabeth Proctor was unlucky, she was considered a witch and was arrested in 1692. Despite the testimony of her friends, she was sentenced to death. Elizabeth was pregnant at the time and gave birth to a child in prison. When a rope was thrown around her neck and the hatch of the scaffold was opened, she fell through the hatch, but did not die.

2. John Henry George Lee was arrested as an accomplice in the murder of a woman named Emma Casey. John was sentenced to be hanged, he was thrown into a hatch with a rope around his neck three times, but he survived all three times.

3. William Duell was hanged along with 4 other criminals after being charged with the rape and murder of a child in London. At that time, in the UK, the corpses of criminals were used for medical purposes. When William's body was on the surgical table, the student who was to dissect the corpse noticed signs of breathing!

4. Zoleikhad Kadhoda, a married woman, was arrested on charges of treason and love affairs with a man. As is customary in the east, such a woman was sentenced to death by stoning. It looks like this: a person is buried to the waist in the ground and stones are thrown at his head. Zoleikhad was quickly stoned, but after she was taken to the morgue, she was alive.

5. Vinselao Miguel was arrested during the revolution in Mexico. He was sentenced to death by firing squad. After 9 shots, Miguel managed to survive. He escaped and lived a long life.

6. John Smith was arrested after robbing several houses and banks. He was hanged by being dropped with a rope through the hatch, but he survived and lived a full life for some time.

7. Anna Green got pregnant by her employer, whom she is believed to have seduced. After the due date, she had a child, but the baby died immediately after birth. Anna tried to hide the body and was charged with murder, for which she was sentenced to death. Anna Green was hanged, thrown down the stairs with a rope around her neck, but during the funeral her coffin was opened and signs of breathing were found, after which she was sent to the hospital.

8. Joseph Samuel committed several robberies and murders in 1801. He was part of a gang, all of whose members were sentenced to death. On the day of the execution, Joseph was hanged three times and he managed to survive three times, first his rope broke, then the rope fell off. Joseph Samuel was pardoned and sentenced to life imprisonment.

9. Maggie Dixon cohabited with the innkeeper after the death of her husband and gave birth to his child, who died shortly after giving birth. She threw the child's body into the river, but it was found, and she was sentenced to death. After the execution, the coffin with her body was transferred to the cemetery, but there was a knock on the way. Maggie survived and lived for another 40 years!

10. Willie Francis killed the owner of the pharmacy when he was 16 years old. He confessed and was sentenced to death in the electric chair. When he was electrocuted, Willie Francis shouted and shuddered, however, after the power outage, he survived. He was executed again exactly one year later.

The death penalty implies the inevitability of parting with life. This measure is applied to people, we will commit the most monstrous atrocities against other living beings. However, if a person survived, they will never be judged again. After all, few people are lucky enough to survive their own death. We have collected ten of the most interesting stories about people who managed to defeat the very bony one with a scythe.

This story took place at the end of the nineteenth century on the island of Fiji. The unreality of everything that was happening for a long time caused ridicule in society over the island's law enforcement agencies.

The killer Frank or as he was called the man Frank was convicted of a number of murders. Hanging was chosen as a preventive measure. But then a number of events occurred that led to a completely different outcome of the death penalty:

• the execution was postponed by the decision of the sheriff;
• the downpour started wetting the prepared rope, and it had to be dried over the fire;
• since the rope lost its ability to slide, the knot on the killer's neck was not tightened tightly enough;
• as a result, Frank did not choke and, belching curses, fell to the ground.

Nobody dared to carry out a second execution, and the killer was imprisoned for life.

The poor girl was sentenced to death by hanging at the end of the seventeenth century. Her only fault was pregnancy, which she did not know about. The miscarriage made her situation known to everyone, and she was convicted of concealing the pregnancy. The execution was successful, the doctors ascertained Anna's death. She was taken to the anatomical theater as a material for teaching students, but they noticed signs of life and managed to revive the woman.

Half-hanged Maggie

In the late seventeenth century, a simple girl, Maggie Dixon, became pregnant while awaiting her husband's voyage. Hiding such an unpleasant fact led to Maggie getting into the dock. Strict judges sentenced her to be hanged, which was done. During the funeral, the girl's relatives heard a faint knock on the lid of the coffin, which was taken as a sign of heaven. After these events, Maggie lived for more than forty years.

In the middle of the thirteenth century, according to harsh laws, Inetta de Balsham was sentenced to be hanged for assisting a gang of thieves. In the early morning they hanged her and left her body for the edification of the rest of the people for a day. When the girl was pulled out of the noose twenty-four hours later, she was alive. As a result, she was pardoned and released in peace.

The United States has found a humane alternative to the electric chair and other forms of execution. Until recently, an injection of a lethal drug was considered one hundred percent guarantee of a prisoner's death. But Romel Broome was the only person to survive the fatal injection.

Convicted of a combination of brutal murders, Broom was sentenced to death. But on the appointed day, the performers could not supply him with a dropper with the drug, since they did not find the required vein. After trying several times to insert the needle, they suffered the execution. But to this day, Romel Broome is imprisoned.

This story does not have such a rosy ending as the previous ones. Condemned to death by hanging, Evan MacDonald was executed in Newcastle with no signs of life. His body was sent to the anatomical theater for study. But the doctor who came in saw a man sitting on a wooden table instead of a corpse. What motivated the doctor is unknown, but he finished off Evan and calmly began to study his body.

Witch Proctor

Elizabeth Proctor received a death sentence on charges of witchcraft. In the seventeenth century, such charges always guaranteed the death penalty. The process was carried out according to all the rules, but the girl remained alive. After which she was pardoned, considering the resurrection proof of innocence.

An eastern woman should be a model of chastity and loyalty, but Zoleikhad managed to cheat on her husband and was sentenced to death. Unfaithful women in the East were stoned to death. The same was done with Zoleikhad, burying her in the ground up to her waist. But to the surprise of the doctors, the body brought to the morgue showed signs of life.

A sixteen-year-old teenager was convicted of murdering a man, and the electric chair was chosen as a preventive measure. The execution took place according to all the rules, but the young man survived. Whole year he was awaiting a pardon in the cell, but after this period Willie was executed again.

Vinselao was an active participant in the Mexican revolution, sentenced to death. As a result of the execution of the sentence in young man fired nine rifle volleys. Surprisingly, Vinselao survived and even managed to escape.

Video: 10 people who survived the death penalty

Usually, the survivor of the execution of the offender is not subjected to a second procedure. It is not for nothing that the key word in the sentence is “mortal,” which means the inevitability of the onset of reckoning and the inevitability of the execution of the sentenced punishment.

In the past, the very fact that the offender managed to survive after the execution of capital punishment was considered nothing other than God's providence, that is, it was considered a proof of innocence sent from above. Below are six real-life stories of people who were able to survive against the law, even if only for a short time.

1. Man Franks

This is a photo of another execution, 1896. This guy is probably much less fortunate than Franks.

One of the Australian newspapers published a note in 1872 about how the killer named "Man Franks" survived his own execution thanks to the monstrous incompetence of the performers.

At first, the execution itself was delayed by several hours, as the sheriff found the scheduled time inconvenient. During the waiting time, it rained and the wet rope prepared for execution was taken to dry over the fire.

Because of this, the rope stopped sliding. Before putting the noose around the convict's neck, the executioner had to stick his leg into the noose and pull with all his might in order to move the tightly stuck knot. Then the would-be executioner tried to fix the stranglehold on Frank's neck, but, despite all his efforts, he could not do it as tightly as the rules require.

In the end, a support was knocked out from under Frank, but after three minutes of unsuccessfully trying to suffocate, he began to twitch, asking to end his suffering and finish him off at last. And since his hands were as “tightly” tied as his neck, it was not difficult for him to pull himself up and, sliding the rope from his throat, curse the organizers of the execution for their “hack”. Finally, one of the officers cut the rope, and the long-suffering victim of justice met the hard ground with a thud, as no one thought to spread something soft on him.

Needless to say, after all that they saw, no one wanted to bring the matter to the end, and Franks had the sentence commuted, replacing him with imprisonment, and the executive power of the new monarchical elite of Fiji became the subject of ridicule all over the world.

2. Anna Green

In 1650, twenty-two-year-old Anne Green was a servant in the home of Sir Thomas Reid. She became pregnant with his grandson, but did not know that she was carrying a child in her womb. After 18 weeks, while Anna was grinding malt, she suddenly became ill. She had a miscarriage in the toilet. In horror, the girl hid the corpse.

At that time, there was a law that any unmarried woman who hid a pregnancy or a newborn was considered infanticide. Despite the fact that the midwives' fetus was declared stillborn, Green was sentenced to death by hanging in the courtyard of Oxford castle.

During her last words, she asked to condemn "the debauchery in the family in which she lived." She asked her friends to hang on her body in order to hasten the demise, and they did not refuse.

After the execution, the supposedly lifeless body was removed and taken to the anatomical theater to train students. But when the coffin was opened, the doctors discovered that the chest of the “corpse” was making subtle breathing movements. They forgot their original purpose and began to perform resuscitation actions using bloodletting, stimulation of respiratory reflexes and applying warm heating pads.

The public saw this as a sign from above and Green was pardoned. Taking the coffin with her as a souvenir, she settled in another town, got married and gave birth to a child.

3. Half-hanged Maggie

Cover of Alison Butler's "The Hanging of Margaret Dixon"

Maggie Dixon became pregnant while waiting for the return of her sailor husband, which was not at all a rosy situation for a woman in 1724. She, of course, tried to hide the pregnancy (concealment was punishable by law), but she failed and she was sentenced to death by hanging.

After the execution, her family managed to take the body without giving it to the butchers from medicine for dissection. As they accompanied Maggie to her last journey to the cemetery, they heard a knock from inside the closed coffin. The resurrection of Maggie was perceived only as the will of God. So she became a celebrity and acquired the nickname "Half-Hanging Maggie". She lived for another 40 years and to this day, not far from the place of her execution, there is a tavern named in her honor.

4. Inetta de Balsham

For harboring thieves, she was sentenced to death in August 1264. Sources say she was hanged at 9 am on Monday 16 August and left hanging out until the next morning. When the rope was cut, it turned out that she was still alive. Her windpipe was deformed in such a way that the knot was unable to completely restrict air access. Intta's miraculous salvation attracted the attention of King Henry III, who bestowed upon her the monarch's grace.

5. Romel Broome

Lethal injection was created as a humane, quick, painless and guaranteed means to take a person's life. However, Romel Broome proved that this is not entirely true.

In 2009, Romel was convicted of kidnapping, rape, murder and became the first criminal to survive a lethal injection.

The performers spent two hours trying to find a suitable vein for the IV. Having searched Brum's entire body, they never found a vein, which is why the effect of the drug was not guaranteed. In the end, he was sent back to his cell with a death sentence suspended for a week.

During this time, Romel's lawyers began to argue that their ward experienced cruel and unusual treatment for prisoners during an unsuccessful execution. They managed to initiate a major movement aimed at changing the US lethal injection law, and Romel in this case is the main witness who cannot be executed. Broome is still alive and awaiting amnesty.

6. Evan MacDonald

In 1752, Evan MacDonald had a falling out with Robert Parker and cut his throat, which caused the latter to die. Macdonald was convicted of murder, sentenced to execution by hanging on the city wall in English city Newcastle.

His "corpse" was sent to the same place as the bodies of the rest of the tortured criminals - to the anatomical theater of a local medical institution. In those days, doctors almost specifically hunted for such corpses, since they were the only practical "manuals" by which it was possible to legally study human anatomy.

This is probably why MacDonald was not destined to survive: when the surgeon who entered saw the dumbfounded convict sitting on the operating table, he, without thinking twice, grabbed a surgical hammer and completed the executioner's work, cutting the skull open to the criminal. They say that divine punishment overtook this doctor when his own horse mortally wounded him in the head with a hoof.

TOP 10 - People who survived the death penalty 1. Elizabeth Proctor, who was not lucky enough to be known as a witch. In 1692, a woman was arrested on charges of witchcraft. The court sentenced Elizabeth to death despite all the testimonies of friends and relatives in defense of the accused. By the time the sentence was executed, the woman managed to give birth to a child in prison, as she got there already pregnant. The execution was ordered by hanging. Elizabeth threw a noose around her neck and opened the hatch, but thanks to some miracle, the woman survived. 2. John Henry George Lee went to jail on charges of complicity in the murder of a woman - Emma Casey. For such a crime, criminals are hanged. So John was hanged ... More precisely, they tried to do it three times, but the man survived after all three drops into the hatch with a noose around his neck. 3. William Duell and four of his accomplices were executed by hanging for having raped and killed a child in London. According to the rules of that time, all the corpses of criminals were given for medical research. When the turn came to dissect the body of William Duell, the student who was supposed to perform the operation noticed that the man was breathing! 4. Zoleikhad Kadhoda is an eastern married woman who risked having a lover. According to the harsh laws of the East, a woman convicted of adultery is sentenced to death - she must be stoned. It happens as follows: a woman is buried to the waist in the ground and stones are thrown at her head. Zoleikhad did not escape her fate - she was pelted with stones, but when the mutilated body was brought to the morgue, it turned out that the woman was alive. 5. Vinselao Miguel, a prisoner during the Mexican Revolution. The prisoner was sentenced to death - by shooting. 9 shots were fired at Miguel, all of them reached the goal, but the man survived, managed to escape and lived for many more years. 6. John Smith is a robber. He was captured by the police after robbing several banks and private houses. The verdict that he was sentenced was hanging, by throwing him into a hatch with a noose around his neck. Smith turned out to be incredibly tenacious and having survived this death penalty, he lived for more than one year ordinary life a full-fledged person. 7. Anna Green, conceived a child from her own employer. They say that it was she who seduced him. The child was born on time, but died shortly after birth. While trying to hide the little body, Anna was arrested and accused of killing the baby, and the court sentenced her to death by hanging. A woman with a noose around her neck was thrown down the stairs. At the funeral, when the coffin was opened, it turned out that the woman was still breathing, after which Anna was transported to the hospital. 8. Joseph Samuel, who committed a number of murders and robberies in 1801 as part of a whole gang. All participants in the crimes were sentenced to death. On the day the execution began, Samuel managed to avoid death on the gallows three times - once the rope broke, and the other time it simply jumped off. This turn of events did not go unnoticed by the judges and Joseph Samuel was replaced by the death penalty with life imprisonment. 9. Maggie Dixon is a cohabitant of one innkeeper. From an illegal relationship, a child was born who died immediately after birth. Maggie Dixon couldn't think of anything better than throwing a baby's body into the river. But the corpse of the child was found and the woman was arrested on charges of murder. The verdict of the court was unequivocal - death. The woman was executed, they were going to bury, but on the way to the cemetery, there was a knock from the coffin - Maggie was alive! After the "resurrection" she lived for another forty years! 10. Willie Francis, at the age of 16, killed the owner of the pharmacy. The young man confessed to the crime, but was nevertheless sentenced to death by electric chair. The execution took place traditionally, the criminal screamed and writhed, but after the voltage was turned off, it turned out that the young man survived. However, what happened did not bring Willie a long and happy life- he was executed again, exactly one year later.

This is hardly the worst thing - to hear your death sentence. This means the end, after these words the timer is started, and the count goes sometimes for days, and sometimes for hours. No one even thinks of surviving after being shot or hanged or lethal injection. However, miracles do happen. Mathematical probability sometimes very funny. There is always a tiny fraction of the percentage that the sentenced person will live after the execution.

Today's collection is just about such people. They were literally born in shirts. Or maybe they, like cats, were given not one life, but several, well, or at least two.

Maggie Dixon

In 1724 Maggie of Edinburgh accompanied her fisherman husband to long voyage... Then such events lasted for years. And, unfortunately for Maggie, she was not faithful. The girl realized that she got pregnant while her husband was swimming. The situation is very bad.

Maggie gave birth to a baby in the forest, who either was dead immediately or died shortly after birth. She could not throw a small corpse into the river and wrapped it in her handkerchief. Soon the little body was found, and by the handkerchief they identified Maggie as a murderous mother. For such was the only punishment - the death penalty by hanging. For some incredible reason, Maggie's vertebrae did not break while she was hanging with a noose around her neck. However, everyone was sure that she was dead.

When the relatives took the girl's corpse to the cemetery, they were horrified, as there was a knock from the coffin. Maggie Dixon survived the death penalty. Since then, she has been dubbed "the half-hanged Maggie." Today Edinburgh even has a pub named after Maggie Dixon.

Shimon Srebrnik

In 1945, Shimon was a 15-year-old Jewish boy of Polish descent who had already had a lot to go through. He had to see how his father was killed in the Lodz ghetto. He had to live with the thought that his mother was killed in the gas chamber. He had to go through the Holocaust.

Shimon was imprisoned in one of the death camps called "Chelmno", which was located in occupied Poland. There Shimon was forced to work at the crematorium, where the bodies of the killed people were destroyed around the clock.

January 18, 1945 Soviet troops fought for the territory where Chelmno was located. The camp leadership decided to get rid of the witnesses of their atrocities and crimes. All prisoners were sentenced to death, they began to be shot. Shimon, saying goodbye to life, received his bullet in the back of the head. He fell on other prisoners. The Nazis continued to shoot. Shimon discovered that his mouth was bleeding, he was in pain, he could move, which means that he is quite alive. Bullet somehow miraculously passed without touching either the spinal cord or the brain, it came out through the mouth, even there was a little blood.

Srebrnik lived until 2006, he testified a lot against the Nazis, his testimony became almost the main one against the leadership of the Chelmno camp.

Today, few people know these first and last names, even in the territories of the post-Soviet space. And in honor of Constantine, one of the craters is named on the Moon, however, on its back side, but still. Feoktistov was an astronaut and an outstanding space engineer. At the age of 16, he fought with the Nazis as part of the Soviet troops.

During the Nazi occupation of Voronezh, Kostya carried out reconnaissance missions for the Voronezh Front. Unfortunately, the guy was captured by a Waffen-SS army patrol. The conversation with the young intelligence officer was short - the death penalty on the spot through execution. A Wehrmacht soldier aimed at the head and fired. The bullet hit where it should, and the guy fell on his back. There was no time to check whether the scout was dead or not, and it was obvious from everything that he was dead. However, Kostya realized almost immediately that they don't die like that. Death should be dark and nonexistent. But she is hot, angry and gushing right out of her throat, because this is not death - this is blood, this is life. Kostya crawled to his own.

As it turned out later, the bullet passed through the neck and chin, but did not touch the brain and large arteries. Constantine was destined to leave a significant mark in the history of mankind. He lived until 2009 and died at the age of 83.

Another "bulletproof" survivor of his own execution. The sentence was carried out during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917. Some of the nine shots he received severely disfigured the guy's face. But he survived, left the place of his execution on his own, and found people who helped him. There are a lot of memories, and Miguel was forced to look like a World War I veteran all his life, to whom part of his face was blown off by a splinter.

Willie Francis

Willie Francis' case is very resonant, because he became the first person to survive after being electrocuted. Willie was 16 years old when he was sentenced to capital punishment for the murder of his employer, the owner of the pharmacy. In May 1946, Willie sat down in the electric chair. But when it started working, he shouted: "I am not dying, I am frying, turn it off." The chair was turned off, and then it turned out that it was defective.

Willie Francis in his cell on the eve of the execution

The incident gave Willie another year of life. Lawyers fought for him as best they could, they asked to replace the execution with life imprisonment. However, their efforts were in vain, and the guy was executed in May 1947 in the electric chair.

This is a disgusting person, he kidnapped, raped, and killed. He definitely deserved to die. In 2009, he was sentenced to her, and lethal injection was chosen as an instrument of execution - as a humane means.

Romel became the first and only person to survive after her. The fact is that the executioner could not find a vein on Romel's body for a very long time. And after vain attempts, the injection was injected into the place where the vein should be approximately. This allowed Broome to survive.

This incident saved the man's life. Since he witnessed that the death penalty by injection is actually not humane and terrible. His lawyers managed to initiate a whole movement against this type of execution.

Evan McDonald

In 1752, in an ordinary scuffle, this man cut a comrade's throat. For this he was sentenced to death by hanging. But something went wrong, and Evan did not die completely (hanging in general is some kind of unreliable way). He was sent to the dead, as it seemed from everything that the man was dead.

When, a few hours later, a surgeon entered, who was going to cut and thoroughly examine the body of the criminal, he was dumbfounded. Evan sat on the table and looked around very surprised. The surgeon was a guy not a mistake and decided to stand up for his life in front of the revived dead. He grabbed a hammer for operations and hit MacDonald in the head. This finished off the man completely, and the surgeon began to carry out his plan.

Amerigo Dumini was born in St. Louis, USA to Italian and British immigrants and moved to Italy. In 1913, he joined the military and renounced his US citizenship. During the First World War, he was a stormtrooper, was seriously wounded and awarded. Then he became an ardent supporter of Benito Mussolini, participated in contract political killings. In general, he was a bright figure. During World War II, he served in Derna, Libya, where he was captured by British soldiers. He was quite rightly mistaken for a spy and, according to the laws of wartime, they decided to shoot Amerigo. The 17 bullets fired by the firing squad did not reach their target.

When Dumini returned to Italy, he was surprised to receive and offered a generous pension. He went into business as a carrier and bought a villa in a residential area of ​​Florence. He lived to be 73 years old, having successfully freed himself after life imprisonment for serving the fascist regime, after serving eight years.

Philip Fabritius

This is also the case for a long time days gone by... Philip was included in this compilation because of unusual kind execution, to which he was quickly sentenced during the Protestant uprising in Prague on May 23, 1618. He was present in the Chancellery of the Bohemian courtier at Prague Castle, along with the Catholic Regents during the meeting. At that moment, armed Protestant lords burst into the hall and rebelled against the Catholic king. The rebels decided to inflict reprisals on the spot. Those sentenced to death flew from the windows of the palace down from a height of 20 meters (approximately the seventh floor of a classic panel nine-story building).

Apparently, the fall somewhat softened, and therefore the execution failed. Everyone who was thrown out of windows escaped with injuries varying degrees severity, and Philip is generally a couple of bruises and abrasions. Fabrice immediately fled to Vienna and talked about the uprising there. There he lived out his life, successfully moving up the career ladder. Philip died 13 years after surviving his own execution.

"Man Franks"

In 1872, an incredible incident occurred in Australia, which was even written about in the newspapers. The killer, known to everyone by the nickname Man Franks, survived his own hanging, because he was executed by incompetent simpletons.

At first, the rope on which the condemned was to be hung was soaked by the rain, as it was left on the street. Then the executioners decided to dry it, but quickly, so they lit a fire. The rope was dry, but it stopped sliding completely. It was not even possible to fix it properly on Frank's neck. When this happened at the very least, a support was knocked out from under him, and he began to dangle, trying in vain to suffocate. He wheezed, spat and asked to be finished. Finally he was able to free his hands, which were as badly tied as the noose around his neck. Frank pulled himself up on them, which caused a wave of laughter. He rudely cursed the useless organization of the execution, and the rope on which he was hanging was cut.

No one had a desire to complete what they had begun, and the sentence to the failed gallows was changed to a more benign one.