Great Moments in British Hanging

Hanging has played a key role in the Great Tradition of British Executions since the 5th Century. Only given up in 1964, the Big Dangle was a long-standing favorite of judicial executioners, beating out such other hits as drowning, burying alive, boiling alive, hurling from cliffs, shooting, and that other popular method, beheading--all punishments at one time or another for capital crimes. What follows is a list of significant moments in the Rope Arts.

In the aftermath of fifteen hundred years of hanging, some people did have trouble letting go. Hanging comebacks were staged in Malaysia, where a couple of Britons died for drug trafficking, but it never really caught on again. It was a long and historic run, the longest run in execution history. No method of execution by judicial decree will likely ever match it.