A Handbook on Hanging: Being a short Introduction to the fine art of Execution, and containing much useful information on Neck-Breaking,Throttling, Strangling, Asphyxiation, Decapitation and Electrocution; as well as Data and Wrinkles for Hangmen, an account of the late Mr. Berry's method of Killing and his working list of Drops, to which is added a Hangmen's Ready Reckoner, and certain other items of interest
Boston: Hale, Cushman & Flint, 1929.
First American edition. 129, [1] pp. Bound in publisher's black cloth with spine label, patterned endpapers. Fine in a bright, clean dust jacket with a small closed tear near the foot and a little rub spot to the spine, else Fine. An attractive copy. A cult classic of satire, an anti-capital punishment missive masquerading as an enthusiastic endorsement of hanging. New York Review Books writes of it, "With barbed insouciance, Charles Duff writes not only of hanging but of electrocution, decapitations, and gassings; of innocent men executed and of executions botched; of the bloodlust of mobs and the shabby excuses of the great. This coruscating and, in contemporary America, very relevant polemic makes clear that whatever else capital punishment may be said to be—justice, vengeance, a deterrent—it is certainly killing."
. Item #140945765
Price: $1,250.00