It has been, and still is, a matter of opinion whether, if you wish to kill your undesirable,is it better to let him die quietly in a concentration camp, flay him until he dies, hurl him over a precipice, burn, drown, or suffocate him; or entomb him alive and leave him to perish slowly in the silence of his grave; or asphyxiate him agonizingly in a lethal chamber, or press him to death or cut off his head; or produce a sort of coma by means of an electric current that grills him in parts and then, in the name of autopsy, permit the doctors to finish him off- as they do in certain of the United States of North America; or break his neck in strangulation by hanging as the English do.
Charles Duff - A Handbook on Hanging
