Word: headsman
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Francisco's Chinatown. Then the Chinese Minister at Washington, Dr. C. C. Wu, announced Vice Consul Kao's suspension. The Kuomintang of America, branch of the potent political organization behind the Nanking government, demanded their recall to China for trial. The impression spread that certain death, from a headsman's sword cleaving into the back of her bent neck, awaited Mrs. Kao if she were deported. Although Minister Wu, taking pains to announce that decapitation was not China's penalty for opium smuggling,* requested deportation, in the absence of an extradition treaty between the U. S. and China it seemed...
...your last number appeared an article on decapitation in China. When I was in China, the technique of beheading was explained to me as follows: Under the Empire, the headsman was a professional man, who used his great beheading sword in one hand, holding the handle as one would a dagger with the back of the blade extending back parallel to his forearm. Beheading was done by a single slice with the long blade instead of a chop. For a consideration from the condemned or his friends the headsman would leave a small piece of skin remaining so that...
...Nanking last week, the progressive Nationalist Government passed a decree forbidding decapitation as a method of punishment. The abolishment of decapitation, however, does not even remotely imply the abolishment of capital punishment in China. It is merely the long, bright, classic sword of the headsman that has been abolished-an antiquated relic deemed unworthy of modern, mechanistic Nationalist China. A Chinese execution is always something of a local holiday. The victim is allowed to drink his fill of rice wine until blissfully intoxicated. At the execution grounds, he kneels down, head thrust forward. Under the old regime...
...Henry VIII. Finally, few would have been so hardy as to gaze upon the strong, burly figure of Secretary of State for India the Earl of Birkenhead and then remark that if he would only carry an ax instead of a Malacca cane he would make a capital headsman...
...King Henry VIII who strolled about, ready to buss shy maids, was, of course, Chancellor Churchill. The scowling headsman, shouldering a "bloody" ax was the Earl of Birkenhead. Of the two simpering "little boys" in Eton jackets, turned down collars, pink bow ties and white socks, one was Prince George, 24, the other Edward of Wales...