2021-04-08 at 8:01 PM UTC
What's really strange about this jail is they didn't hang you in the courtyard, as most jails of the day did. Instead, they made a permanent opening just below the steeple of the roof overlooking the courtyard, and then they had this wooden plank, much like the plank pirates used to off their victims, which they would protrude and secure in place, then they rolled up this weighted arm of sorts, like a crane's arm, and that's where the noose was secured from. So the prisoner never left the jail to get executed, it was all done in-house, so to say. The inmate to be executed would be bound and walked out onto the plank, whereupon the arm would be rolled up and placed directly over the prisoner's head. The plank was then withdrawn, the prisoner would drop 10 feet or so, the neck broken, the body pulled back through the opening. Theoretically, the condemned could have leaped from the plank down into the courtyard just as the noose was being placed around his neck, but not a one of them tried it. If they had tried, it would have been a 45-50 foot drop, which would have been difficult to survive, and then they would have had to then make it up and over the 20-foot stone walls which surround the jail yard.
2021-04-08 at 8:07 PM UTC
This is where the opening was they hung prisoners from. Covered over now.
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