King Charles I had been found guilty of high treason, tyranny, and defeat and betrayal. He was sentenced to death, his execution to take place on January 30 1649. He spent most of that day with his kids and his most trusted companion, William Juxon. Juxon convinced the king to have a piece of bread and drink a glass of claret before the big event.
Charles asked for an extra shirt and, according to some, had a posset (a hot milk-based drink mixed with wine, ale, or spices). This was to avoid shivering from the cold – a reaction that he didn’t want mistaken with quaking in fear. At 2 pm, he walked the gauntlet through masses of belligerent people who had been drinking since morning. Beer and alcohol vendors had kept them well-lubed. The King was almost certainly pelted a few times with rubbish or bad fruit as he made his final walk. He laid his head on the block and the executioner took his head off with one clean blow. He then raised it up and bypassed the words ‘behold the head of a traitor’ because he didn’t want to be recognized. He was wearing a hood and a mask.
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Executioners in early Europe existed as outcasts and often lived outside of town, consorting with lepers and prostitutes. They often doubled as torturers in their off-time, so they were feared and reviled. And the methods of execution they carried out were not for the weak-stomached – literally. Most of the condemned were hanged, nobles and royalty were granted beheadings, but if you were particularly disagreeable, you were drawn, hanged, and quartered. This consisted of being dragged to the site on a hurdle, then hanged – but not until death. You were cut down, disemboweled, castrated, and cut into four pieces. Your head was put up on a spike.
So you can say that executioners had some job-related tension. And that’s before they actually had to do it. Separating a head from a body with one blow with a heavy axe is not exactly easy. Let’s take into account the person isn’t sleeping, there are 150 drunk people watching, oh, and you were probably really drunk. Because executioners drank. They had bad jobs, they were outcasts, and, if they screwed up, a very drunken crowd would boo them, throw trash at them, or, if it really went off the rails, demand that your head get snipped off. So yeah, they drank.
One executioner recounted seeing 7 necks and not knowing which one to swing at. This brings me a spot of trouble, as I really want to feel empathy for these executioners, but this empathy doesn’t surpass that which I feel for a person with his neck on a block and a guy standing above him wondering why there are 7 axes and 7 necks. So many awful stories of botched beheadings exist in the historical record that you have to imagine the executioners’ motto was ‘fifth time’s the charm’ . . . unless you were Mary, Queen of Scots. And though many times the executioner’s drunkenness could be the source of his inexactitude, it wasn’t always the case. James Scott asked his executioner for a clean blow, going on to mention the man’s previous killing work in a disparaging manner. Scott, evidently not having learned that all important life lesson that you don’t piss off someone who’s getting paid to bring you food, cut your hair, or cut your head off, was probably surprised when it took the man eight blows and then a knife to separate Scott’s body from Scott’s big fat mouth.
Anyway, drunken executioners don’t disappear after the middle-ages. Hangman Henry Pierrepont was fired for drunkenness when he beat up his assistant for suggesting he stop drinking so much before hanging people. Bartholomew Binns was also fired for screwing up hangings when he was drunk. One hangman was so tipsy, he tried to hang an innocent bystander.
Then there were the executed. People being executed in pre-modern Europe were offered a ‘special drink’ which consisted of a strong wine or liquor mixed with some opiates or other herbs that had analgesic properties. This, obviously, was meant to numb and calm, offering a small glass of mercy to someone about to get their head lopped off by a drunken outcast who hangs out with lepers. Throughout history the condemned are always offered a ‘last refreshment in life’. This drink offered small solace, mercy, a numbing agent for what was to come. Symbolically, it offers the condemned one last choice in life, one last small thing under their control – because everything else was in the hands of someone else. And that guy had been drinking since noon.
With Socrates, the last drink was the execution. Depending on whose account you go by, but the hemlock famously swigged by Socrates either numbed his legs and carried him off to sleep or he spasmed and foamed at the mouth before heading off to his dreamless sleep. At times, the hemlock would be mixed with an opiate to make it more tranquil. A last drink before execution is famously depicted at the crucifixion. Jesus is offered wine mixed with myrrh, a spice that brought on mild euphoria or numbing of pain. Doubtful it would have relieved a person of the keen awareness that giant nails were being driven into his wrists, but still, it’s the thought that counts. It occurs to me that Jesus was offered myrrh at least twice in his life – at his birth and at his death. There must be some significance there, but I am left wondering why Balthazar the Wise Man was trying to get baby Jesus all fucked up on drugs. Maybe he saw things to come. He was, after all, wise.
To this day, the last drink has a place in our executions. We call the mix of drugs used to execute ‘a cocktail’. And of course the last drink evolved into the last meal in modern times. But we see remnants of the last drink in 18th and 19th century England. On the death walk from Newgate Prison to the Tyburn Gallows (the Tyburn Procession), the condemned would be taken to local pubs The Bowl Inn or The Magpie and Stump for one last go. I can’t imagine the atmosphere was light and cheery, but they had one for the road of death, or to use our rendition of the idiom: ‘one for the road.’
Today we drink the Dead Man’s Dark Ale, inspired by the alcohols those unfortunates might have had in their last refreshment on earth – sans myrrh or opiates, of course, but I don’t know what you do at home.
The Dead Man’s Dark Ale
Ingredients:
– ½ oz gin
– 1 oz brandy
– I dark ale (stout or porter)
– A dash of honey
– nutmeg
Instructions
We are combining the liquors and alcohol many of the condemned would have received. Reports vary on what the prisoners would get at the pubs on the walk from Newgate to the gallows, but one is the Dead Man’s Ale. This would have been a dark ale. And once distilled alcohols were available, they may have gotten something stronger than beer or wine. So, we’re going to start by pouring 10 oz of dark ale into a mug and then stirring in the gin and brandy. Drop a little honey or sugar to offset the bitterness and then sprinkle with nutmeg if you’re feeling especially bitter. Stir and quaff. Drink one for the road and drink to the bitter end.
