Question
Does beheading or decapitation hurt?
And, if so, for how long is the severed head aware of its plight?
Answer
Yes, beheading hurts. How much depends on the executioner's skill, or lack of it.
When Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed at Fotheringay Castle in 1587, a clumsy headsman gave her three strokes without quite managing to sever her head.
The headsman then had to saw though the skin and gristle with his sheath knife before the job could be regarded as complete.
The profound, protracted groan Mary gave when the axe first hit left the horrified witnesses in no doubt that her pain was excruciating.
How long is the interval of consciousness after the head is cut off or decapitated?
In France, in the days of the guillotine, some of the condemned were asked to blink their eyes if they were still conscious after the knife fell.
Reportedly, their heads blinked for up to 30 seconds after decapitation.
How much of this was voluntary and how much due to reflex nerve action is speculation. Most nations with science sophisticated enough to determine this question have long since abandoned decapitation as a legal tool.
Dale McIntyre, University of Cambridge
Answer
Antoine Lavoisier, the French chemist who lived between 1743 and 1794, was caught up in the revolution and faced beheading.
He asked friends to observe closely as he would continue blinking as long as possible after being killed.
He was reported to have blinked for 15 seconds after decapitation.
A. Gryant, Sydney
Answer
A particularly detailed report comes from Dr Beaurieux who, under perfect circumstances, experimented with the head of the murderer Languille, guillotined at 5.30 am on 28 June, 1905.
(From A History of the Guillotine by Alister Kershaw. His source is Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, 1905):
Here, then, is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation.
The eyelids and lips of the guillotined man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about five or six seconds. I waited for several seconds. The spasmodic movements ceased.
The face relaxed, the lids half closed on the eyeballs, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible, exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to see every day in the exercise of our profession, or as in those just dead.
It was then that I called in a strong, sharp voice: 'Languille!'
I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions.
Next Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves.
After several seconds, the eyelids closed again, slowly and evenly, and the head took on the same appearance as it had had before I called out.
It was at that point that I called out again and, once more, without any spasm, slowly, the eyelids lifted and undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than the first time.
Then there was a further closing of the eyelids, but now less complete.
I attempted the effect of a third call; there was no further movement and the eyes took on the glazed look which they have in the dead.
"I have just recounted to you with rigorous exactness what I was able to observe.
The whole thing had lasted twenty-five to thirty seconds."