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The history of beheading |
 | | Beheading with a sword or axe goes back a very long way in history, because like hanging, it was a cheap and practical method of execution in early times when a sword or an axe was always readily available. |
 | | Beheading was used in Britain up to 1747 (see below) and was the standard method in Norway (abolished 1905), Sweden (up to 1903), Denmark and Holland (abolished 1870), and was used for some classes of prisoner in France (up until the introduction of the guillotine in 1792) and in Germany up to 1938. |
 | | Those beheaded in private on Tower Green were Lord Hastings in 1483, Anne Boleyn on the 19th of May 1536, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury on the 28th of May 1541, Catherine Howard on the 13th of February 1542. |
| www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk /behead.html (3014 words) |
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