March to the Noose

The Scottish woman smiled to the other matrons as the march to the noose began.Allis felt her legs shake as soon as she took the first step following the binding of her hands behind her back.The hangman used a long,leather strap,wrapping it quickly and tightly around her crossed wrists.,while a matron immobilized her upper arms with a tightly bound strap across her chest and secured it with a double buckle to her upper arms. lf she struggled,she would have scant leverage,and could be easily subdued.Miss Woodward carried a concealed length of rope,one end fashioned into a noose to draw Allis's legs together at the shins if she became wild and hysterical,and had to be subdued. A wide leather strap would then be placed on her ankles and another just above her knees,and the noose removed.Miss Woodward had resolved to noose Allis's legs quickly so that the awful punishment she was to receive would not be prolonged.It would be a more merciful thing to subdue her quickly and stand her,supporting her by the shoulders,properly mounted upon the dreaded trap,so that the hangman could perform his office efficiently.



Sometimes the prisoner could barely walk,but when supported on both sides by the matrons' firm grip as they were brought forward could remain upright enough to cross the space to the waiting noose.Allis began to moan fearfully about ten feet from the noose and her legs wouldn't support her.The two women at her side seized her shoulders tighter,and Miss Woodward leaned close to her ear,and whispered that it would soon be over,and that she needed to be brave for just a few moments more.Allis moaned and tried to twist her hands free,but the hangman,having bound the hands of so many before her,had bound her well,allowing no movement or play. The strap around her chest allowed only enough space to breathe.She could only flap her fingers and move her head.Nothing else above her hips was able to budge.She began to groan loudly and tried to lean back hard to avoid her grim destination--anything to make the procedure go slower,but her legs were pressed forward by the two women and she sobbed pitifully upon arriving before her hangman.She looked fearfully at the awful noose that would be put around her neck,and looked at the slack,placed in a coil and held in place high on the rope with two pieces of thread.Allis swallowed hard,sobbing anew and now pleading for mercy before the hangman.The Scottish woman smiled in contempt.Miss Woodward leaned close to Allis's ear and whispered that she was here to pay for her sins,and that her hanging was just.Miss Woodward said quietly,"I am sorry that you are going to hang,but l would have found you guilty and would have recommended death by hanging on the gallows had I been on the same jury.You are guilty and you must receive the wages of sin for the terrible thing you did".



Once,during the days of waiting,Miss Woodward had stroked her cheek tenderly,and whispered quietly to her that the rope that she would hang from was a very fine Italian hemp,first boiled in salt brine by the hangman,then stretched as it dried by hanging from it a weight twice that of the prisoner.During the drying period the weighted rope was dropped through the well-oiled trap,to remove any remaining slack.When fully stretched and dried,ten inches of one end was unraveled,the strands spliced onto the pear-shed metal plate to create the noose. A sliding ring would be slid down to hold the knot as the hangman placed it. Miss Woodward held her quietly as Allis began to cry,sobs wracking her body,as she thought of the harshness of death by swift judicial hanging.Miss Woodward said she would hang high for her crime,but that the hangman took great care to dispatch the guilty with mercy,and Allis had cried harder still.Miss Woodward held her tight,rocking her in her arms until she was calmer. She told Allis she had bought some good black linen,of handkerchief-weight quality,and had sewn a large black hood to be drawn over her head before the noose was put around her neck and tightened. Allis thanked her,sobbing,grateful for the efforts on her behalf.



The hangman was a man of fifty-five,about five feet,nine inches tall and,somewhat portly.He steadied Allis with his hands on her shoulders as he positioned her quickly and just-so upon the wooden trap as the prison warden read the death warrant aloud to those attending the gallows. One of the matrons in back came forward and took Allis's shoulder to allow Miss Woodward to step in front of the trembling prisoner about to hang for her sins.Allis's knees were slightly buckled as Miss Woodard took the black cloth hood in her hands,shook it open,and slipped it swiftly over Allis's head.At the same time,the hangman took the noose and started to bring it up.Allis,shaking and wide-eyed,began to speak,but was unable.She saw Miss Woodward raise the terrible black hood in one swift movement,and gasped horribly,making the Scottish woman smirk with pleasure. She turned to the matron next to her,and said,"Oh ,my God,l hope she kicks for an hour and shits in her diaper until it sags to her knees",just as Miss Woodward hooded the terrified woman before her.Allis wet herself into her diaper immediately,then farted loudly as she felt the matrons strap her legs together quickly.The hood was smoothed down,covering her head,neck and shoulders,and the uppermost part of her chest and back.Miss Woodward had fashioned a superb execution hood.Allis would see nothing more.Miss Woodward always perfumed her handkerchieves and Allis could smell it on the hood too.As Allis had requested of her,Miss Woodward remained near the side of the trap,to be able to see fully the drop and the end of the drop,missing nothing.Allis wanted to know she was near when the final gruesome moments unfolded.



An instant after the hooding ,the hangman drew the noose over her head,tightened it quickly with the metal rim of the knot snugly positioned just beneath her left jaw.An instant after that,he slid down the ring. Allis moaned loudly as he fitted the noose,shaking visibly,full of terror and panic.Her breathing became even more rapid,and globs of yellow mucous issued from both nostrils,dripping and bubbling beneath the hood.The Scottish woman licked her lips,eyes grinning as she watched the suffering prisoner,quaking on the trap.Miss Woodward,although she had participated in the hangings of well over a dozen women,from nineteen to seventy-four.,was overcome,crying softly into a huge scented ladies' handkerchief,black with burgundy roses.She shook it open as the hangman walked to the lever to spring the trap.Allis heard Miss Woodward blow her nose into her handkerchief as the hangman pulled the lever sharply.It had been only sixteen seconds since her hands had been bound and she was marched to the noose.Allis's heart hammered in her chest,sweat dripped down her sides from her armpits.Miss Woodward gasped as the trap was sprung.There was the sound of the two bolts being withdrawn from below,then the crash of the leaves as they were pulled down and to the sides by the sandbags attached to them.Allis cried,"Oh God mercy!!!" and began to drop.A gurgly sound rose from her throat as she dropped to her doom. She prayed the drop would be effective and that she would not hang in shame,kicking on the end of the stout hemp rope and suffering unimaginably for all to see.



The hangman calculated her drop very carefully so that she would suffer a striking force of a thousand foot-pounds against her beautiful neck,soft,white and guilty,begging for the salvation of the hangman's knot,upon hitting the end of the drop itself,and causing it to break and stretch beneath the hood.The drop was superbly clean,and Allis fell five feet,four inches straight down,remaining visible to everyone on the plaform,with her head at the level of the trap when it was done.She lost all control of her sphincter as soon as she felt the trap withdrawn beneath her,and drew in a last shuddering breath as she fell to receive her richly deserved neck-stretching.She emptied her bowels loudly into her diaper,causing it to sag beneath the sudden,sheer weight of the huge turd.,and farted loudly at the same time.In that awful microsecond before the breaking,when the slack is gone,the neck and head held immobile in the cruel and merciful noose,the victim knows in that instant what they will suffer in the next.The head held fixed,the body continues to fall,the neck is pulled sharply and abruptly back on a severe angle. The severe force breaks the victim's neck with the cruelest and most elegant of mercies.The second cervical vertebra,is broken in two,the sharp edges of the broken bone severs the spinal cord.If the victim has not previously emptied her bowels,she shall now,and her bladder is evacuated as well.The structure of the neck gone,the muscles and tendons are stretched and torn severely,from their anchorings and the victim's neck is hideously lengthened by four to five inches.



Allis froze in utter fear when she fell,then a moment later,felt the excruciating pain of the punishment of hanging if only for a moment.Her neck was broken severely by the well-positioned noose,crushing the second cervical vertebra,and breaking the first in two.The sharp bone fragments severed the spinal cord completely,and her neck was stretched an excruciating four inches.Her left jaw was severely broken an instant before her neck,and her drool drenched the hood on the right side.Miss Woodward winced at the sound of the woman's neck and jaw cracking,the sheer striking force crushing the bones as she hit the end of the drop.Her head,slammed sharply to the right as it was stretched. Miss Woodward's black hood rose off her shoulders to accommodate her well-stretched neck,giving the appearance of one whose neck has been wrung as severely as a chicken's.The left side of the neck was badly discolored from blood spreading under the stretched skin,but the skin itself was barely torn,and concealed the ripped and torn tendons and muscles beneath.Her hands and feet spasmed and twitched uncontrollably and a long,protracted fart slowly escaped from between her bound legs.Miss Woodward looked away,covering her nose and mouth with her black,perfumed handkerchief.As the Scottish woman had wished,Allis's diaper sagged under the weight of her evacuations and only the tight strap around her upper legs prevented it from dropping further.She had lost all control of her anal sphincter as the trap was sprung,soiled herself terribly as she suffered the drop,then the diaper performed it's function to contain even more at the end of the drop. Allis's face was unmarked and her neck broken with such harshness,that the expression on her face was of one at peace,when she was cut down twenty-four hours later,and washed by Miss Woodward who removed her black,ankle-length dress and her heavily soiled diaper,first pinning a pretty,flowered handkerchief over her face to cover her nose and mouth while she removed the diaper,then washed her well.When it was done,she put Allis in a white linen burial shroud,her hair combed and pinned.She took a large,flowered handkerchief,dampened it and cleaned Allis's nose where it had dripped and become encrusted.,then placed the handkerchief into her hands,crossing one over the other.She leaned down and kissed her cheeks tenderly before she left.She remembered Allis evermore..