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Funny, but it used to be customary to tip the executioner so he'd ensure a quick and mostly painless death. No tip meant blunt axe or sword or insufficient drop height leading to death by suffocation instead of neck snapping. Maybe for the electric chair it means a dry sponge? The Green Mile comes to mind.
Interesting, but the article does say that it happened with the guillotine.
When the guillotine was first introduced, some condemned criminals would pay executioners to sharpen the blade, ensuring a quick and relatively merciful end. Prisoners sentenced to beheading in certain eras in England would also pay their executioners, requesting execution in a single blow. In both of these senses, the payment was more like a bribe than a specific fee for services rendered, as it were.
Right, to be clear I wasn't saying it didn't happen, just that it wasn't customary. I don't think it's fair to say that the practice was as widespread as the comment implies.
Idk, your source doesn't seem to indicate that the practice was rare, either. Seems like, among the criminals that could afford it, it was a pretty regular occurrence. I guess "customary" has a cultural connotation to it, but i wouldn't go so far as to call it a "myth" given how close @SpiderShoeCult@sopuli.xyz's comment was to reality.
Blunt axe, sword, and insufficient drop height leading to death by suffocation instead of neck snapping all have absolutely nothing to do with guillotines and instead have to do with beheading/death by axe/sword and hanging. The article very explicitly says that this kind of tipping did not happen (or was extremely rare).
You are correct that the article talks about people tipping the guillotine operator, in the specific context of "certain eras in England", which implies it was neither widespread nor applicable to anything outside of that very specific context.