Talk:Charles Thomas Wooldridge

Neck stretched by eleven inches

The article text says that Wooldridge's neck was stretched by eleven inches. I do not believe this is true. I am researching "Hanging in Britain 1874-1964" and therefore have seen many prison book entries. The so-called LPC4-sheets where every detail for the execution is written down always have two entries for "length of drop". One, before execution, and the second, after hanging an hour. I have never seen these two measurements differ by more than 2.5 inches. Therefore I have entered "citation needed". If there will be no substantiation, those 11 inches must be regarded as a myth.--Kauko56 (talk) 16:55, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Meanwhile I found out that the "eleven inches" seem to stem from the following book: Stokes, Anthony, Pit of Shame: The Real Ballad of Reading Gaol, p. 75, but there is no source given for the statement. The author is described as a Senior Prison Officer serving at HM Prison Reading, so it is reasonable to assume that he had access to official sources, but he does not cite them.--Kauko56 (talk) 06:46, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe it either. Could it be due to a misunderstanding of the original source? Maybe -just maybe, I am no expert- those eleven inches were not added to Wooldridge's neck lenght, but (accidentally) to the rope, or the rope disposition. What I mean is that maybe they took an 11 inches longer rope (or cut it out from a longer rope mismeasuring the rope-to-be, making it eleven inches longer that it should have been), resulting in a higher drop, or fall, and, therefore, in Wooldridge's neck, effectively, stretching. But no more. Just stretching. And then, when data began to travel from person to person, somebody would have misplaced those eleven infamous inches, from the rope... to the neck, creating the final, though inaccurate, story. That's my guess; no research, just common knowledge of the art of gossip. Apart from that, I completely agree: citation needed, for sure. AurensArlong (talk) 19:50, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi AurensArlong, the LPC4 form sheet in the execution book of Reading has survived and clearly shows the "drop as determined before execution" to be 6 ft 8 inches, and the drop as measured after execution (from floor level of the scaffold to the heels of the suspended culprit) to be 7 ft 7 inches. The rope was of a standard length; it was adjusted to the needs of the individual case not by lengthening or shortening (let alone cutting) the rope itself but by lowering or raising the suspension point. The Home Office had devised a clever machinery and a very detailed "how-to" memorandum for this. It is very clear that the official sources - not the "gossip" - state a difference of 11 inches. There's another case (F.W.Fenton, 4 April 1894, Birmingham, executione: Billington) where the surviving LPC4 sheet document states a difference between the "before" and "after" values of SIXTEEN inches. I cannot explain it, I can just state that "thus speaketh the source" - and that I find it unbelievable until a doctor tells me more about the stretchability of human skin.Kauko56 (talk) 10:22, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

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