Included in the tour of the gaol in Shrewsbury, now turned into a museum and open to visitors, was one part of the gaol which we could visit but those of a tender disposition were excused this part of the visit if they wanted. We were taken to a special room constructed atop a flight of steep iron steps which was the room where executions took place. Evidently, the noose and the gallows were all in position but the trap door upon which the prisoner would have stood had been removed so one could view the height to the bottom of the building. \u00a0The technology of hanging was detailed for us by our guide who was himself an ex-prison warder. The condemned person (typically male) upon being led into the room would have a hood placed on his head, his hands would be manacled behind him and his legs would be strapped together once he was in position. Then the trap door would be released and the execution would be over very rapidly. The length of the rope used had to be quite carefully calibrated to the weight of the prisoner – evidently, if the rope was too long, then the prisoner could just walk away once they had ‘landed’ whereas if the rope was too short, then the vertebrae that cut through the spinal cord would not be displaced and the execution would have ben a botched one. Now I happened to know some of this information already because a professor of Economics at Leicester University used hanging as an ‘amusing’ illustration of a statistical principle. This particular professor, Ronald Meek felt that the whole quantitative revolution in Economics had passed him by so he taught himself the necessary statistics and then wrote an amusing and somewhat off-beat introductory text in statistics. Meek wanted to illustrate the principle that lay behind regression which is what occurs when one has two sets of data about a case (say, age and height) and this data is then plotted. It is possible to draw \u00a0a line through the data (called the ‘least squares line’) in which the sum of the squares formed by dropping a perpendicular onto the fitted line is at a minimum and the line through the data becomes ‘the line of best fit’ and is can be described mathematically as a regression line and takes the form of y = a + bx. The whole point of doing this is to be able to make sensible predictions given a data set – for example given the predicted temperature for the following day and other information on the level of economic activities, then those responsible for generating electricity for us will know how much electricity to be generated for the needs of the following day by utilising a set of regression equations. Evidently, it is economically important to get this right as if too much electricity is generated than precious fuel such as gas is wasted whereas if not enough electricity is generated, then we have ‘brownouts’ (reduced voltage) or even disconnections. To illustrate his statistics book and to teach the principles of regression, Meek discovered some carefully calculated tables in which a hangman of bygone days had assiduously calculated the exact length of rope of rope needed for a variety of body weights in order to perform the ‘perfect’ execution. Evidently, this was intended to be an amusing rather than a macabre example but it has helped to reinforce the principles of regression equations in my mind in any case. Nowadays, we would not rely upon looking up a series of tables but we would rely upon a regression table in which we plug in the body weight of the intended victim as one variable and the equation would give us the exact length of rope required. So this explains why I know a little about the calculations that lay behind the hangman’s art (or science) Now we come to the bit of information that I found fascinating. We are perhaps accustomed to reports of terrible deaths in which inmates put to death in the electric chair in the USA can sometimes be seen to be writhing in agony for up to half an hour whilst they endure the most agonising of deaths, typically witnessed by the near relatives of the murdered person. Now the prison authorities in this country have realised that a condemned person must be in a state of absolute terror upon being led into the execution chamber so we were asked to estimate the amount of time that the condemned person would be in a mental torment before the actual moment of their death. After we had given our estimates which was generally of the order of 5 minutes, our guide (himself an ex-prison officer) gave us the answer – a well conducted execution could be performed in a total of 12 seconds which would minimise the amount of distress to an absolute minimum. Our guide quite then surprised us by telling us that most prison officers were opposed to capital punishments. They had seen too many cases in which a person had been hanged who was subsequently found to be innocent. As a case in point, the last person to be hanged in Shrewsbury gaol was in 1961. A well-known drunkard of very limited intelligence was discovered near the scene of a murder, and he had blood on hisface probably as a result of his own bar room brawling. The police followed the directions of the man’s neighbours and easily secured a conviction for murder, but it transpired later than the murder had actually been committed by the man’s brother. So the prison warders know that mistakes can, and are, made particularly if the police are under massive pressure to obtain a conviction but of course the death penalty cannot be reversed after the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After I returned home pretty exhausted in the early evening. I watched the Channel 4 news and then managed to catch on the BBC iPlayer the edited highlights of ‘Today at the Test ‘ being the last in the series of England vs. Pakistan. The English bowling was superb and the visitors were dismissed for about 133 runs. England made 453 in reply so have built up a commanding lead and Pakistan were 52 before rain stopped play, probably for the day. The Pakistan touring team are troubled by all kinds of internal dissensions but they have discover a young fast bowler who managed in his first over in Test cricket to dismiss the England captain Joe Root. I may not be able to watch the highlights of the second day of play until later as a Curry night beckons in a local Indian restaurant to which I have committed myself so I am hopeful that I happen to find myself seated next to some conducive dining companions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Included in the tour of the gaol in Shrewsbury, now turned into a museum and open to visitors, was one part of the gaol which we could visit but those of a tender disposition were excused this part of the visit if they wanted. We were taken to a special room constructed atop a flight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8558"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8562,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8558\/revisions\/8562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}