In the Tenth Century A.D., hanging became the usual method of execution in Britain. In the following century, William the Conqueror would not allow persons to be hanged or otherwise executed for any crime, except in times of war. This trend would not last, for in the Sixteenth Century, under the reign of Henry VIII, as many as 72,000 people are estimated to have been executed. Some common methods of execution at that time were boiling, burning at the stake, hanging, beheading, and drawing and quartering. Executions were carried out for such capital offenses as marrying a Jew, not confessing to a crime, and treason (Bedau 3).

Headman's Axe was a form of execution that was quite popular in Germany and England during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, where decapitation was thought to be the most humane form of capital punishment. An executioner, usually hooded, would chop off the person's head with an axe or sword. The last beheading took place in 1747, and the axe used is on display at the Tower of London ("Beheading" 50).

Although some states abolished the death penalty in the mid-Nineteenth Century, it was actually the first half of the Twentieth Century that marked the beginning of the "Progressive Period" of reform in the United States. From 1907 to 1917, six states completely outlawed the death penalty and three limited it to the rarely committed crimes of treason and first-degree murder of a law enforcement official. However, this reform was short-lived. There was a frenzied atmosphere in the U.S., as citizens began to panic about the threat of revolution in the wake of the Russian Revolution. In addition, the U.S. had just entered World War I and there were intense class conflicts as socialists mounted the first serious challenge to capitalism. As a result, five of the six abolitionist states reinstated their death penalty by 1920 (Bender and Leone 24).

A trend also began to develop in which life imprisonment was a suitable alternative punishment to death.

Soon after, witch trials began to decline in parts of Europe, and in England, the death penalty for witches was abolished. The last legal execution by burning at the stake came with the end of the Spanish Inquisition in 1834.

During the Civil War, opposition to the death penalty waned, as more attention was given to the anti-slavery movement. After the war, new developments in the means of executions emerged. The electric chair was introduced at the end of the century. New York built the first electric chair in 1888, and in 1890 executed William Kemmler. Soon, other states adopted this execution method (Bedau 8).

Today, with a greater interest in humanitarianism, capital punishment has become less gruesome than the beheadings and torture that were commonplace centuries before. Lethal injection, electrocution, and lethal gas have become the preferred methods of execution in the United States, mostly because these methods appear to be less offensive to the public, and more humane for the prisoner.

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Approximate Word count = 2820
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)