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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;+VGO.DVCKS, post: 5678411, member: 110504&quot;]Thank you, [USER=88227]@jb_depew[/USER]!&nbsp; That&#039;s Just Brilliant.&nbsp; No, All of it.&nbsp; Wow.</p><p>...The only Salem witch I have any known connection to was Susannah Martin, the stepmother of someone in the direct line.&nbsp; She also protested her innocence, in memorably emphatic terms.&nbsp; ...Thank you, didn&#039;t help very much.</p><p>But the story of your ancestor Thomas&#039;s, um, critical participation in the execution is fantastic. </p><p>Beheading was already considered a much more humane form of execution than hanging, especially before the invention of modern nooses and gallows.&nbsp; Which was the alternative punishment for treason (...and, what, everything down to petty theft), where the culprit would be near-literally &#039;strung up.&#039;&nbsp; No fun at all.&nbsp; ...With (insufficient) apologies, the guillotine was invented out of comparable humanitarian motives; the ruthless efficiency served to ensure that death would be instantaneous.</p><p>...Of course, a good axeman could do the same job <i>nearly </i>as quickly, but real skill was involved.&nbsp; Modern hanging, and the guillotine, were mostly about leaving less to chance.&nbsp; ...Although, if memory serves, when the surviving conspirators in the assassination of Lincoln were hung, all in a row, from a specially-constructed gallows, one of them didn&#039;t have an instanteous broken neck, and strangled, in front of God and the assembled audience.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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