Date Added
NOV 2002

Generally described as death due to compression of the neck (commonly by a ligature) un which the constricting force is the weight of the body itself. The proximate cause of death is asphyxia.

The pattern of the groove cut into the neck by suspension from a ligature will depend on whether the noose is fixed or running. In the case of a fixed noose, the side nearest the suspending cord will be pulled upwards by the weight of the body, forming an inverted 'V' shape (because the head will tend to loll away from the suspending cord, there may be a patch of unmarked skin at the apex of the V). In the case of a running noose, the weight of the body causes the noose to tighten into an almost horizontal position.

When the victim is fully suspended with feet clear off the ground, the body weight will cause compression of the neck and completely close the blood vessels - most importantly the carotid arteries - and also the air passages. The result is cerebral anoxia followed by loss of consciousness and death may be expected to result within a few minutes. Such pressure as the weight of the body exerts will furrow deeply into the skin of the neck, the pattern of the groove depending on whether a fixed or running noose has been used.


However, initial damage to the neck will be comparatively slight - the sternomastoid muscles may be ruptured, the thyroid may be damaged and the fragile hyoid bone is often broken as in cases of manual strangulation. Where a body has suffered a drop of some feet before the ligature tightens there may be dislocation of the spine at the atlanto-axial joint.

Hanging can as easily, though less rapidly, be achieved if a greater part of the body weight is supported by the ground - for example, suspension from a door handle, bed head, or wall hook, where the victim is in a crouching position. If the ligature is not tight, death will ensure mainly from the effects of coma produced by pressure closing off the cerebral circulation, as little constrictive force as 4.5kg is required to cause eventual death. The subject may exhibit the characteristics of asphyxia - swollen, purplish face and considerable petechial haemorrhaging.

The face is usually pale, the pupils of the eyes dilated. The lips and tongue (which may protrude slightly between the teeth) may be cyanosed - a blue discolouration of the skin caused by deoxygenated blood - and considerable petechial haemorrhaging will be found under the conjunctivae.


The phenomenon of penile erection has been greatly exaggerated by popular mythology. Nevertheless, slight degrees of engorgement - with or without the presence of semen - can be observed in cases of death by hanging, as with other forms of death. It is thought that the effect is due to hypostasis, or perhaps rigor mortis.


In hanging, as in death by other means, the sphincters lose control, resulting in vacation of the bowel and bladder.


A great deal of information may be derived from the pattern and position of the furrows made by the ligature. In cases of suicide, the ligature mark will generally follow the line of the lower jaw before going upwards behind the ear - though clearly this will be modified by whether a fixed or running noose has been used. Particular attention should be paid to the areas around the ligature marks, where injuries not consistent with hanging may indicate that an apparent suicide has been fatally attacked before suspension.


The internal post mortem appearances are those for asphyxia, the brain shows considerable congestion, and petechial haemorrhages may be found in the trachea and larynx and on the epiglottis. The hyoid bone may be fractured, the sternomastoid muscles damaged, and the thyroid cartilage broken. 

Although hanging can result from all three, it is suicide which amounts for the greatest percentage of deaths. Certain signs will point to suicide at the scene of the incident, such as finding note. Suicides tend to hang themselves with some part of the body touching the ground - in many cases this is a purely practical consideration in that most domestic ceilings are not high enough to allow any alternative, and there are rarely any means of suspension. In cases where suicide has allowed himself a 'drop', the overturned chair or step ladder will be close by.


The discovery of wounds on a subjects body that seem unconnected with the hanging will obviously arouse suspicions of the investigating officers and the pathologist, however, it is not unknown for a suicide to make other attempts by various means before succeeding at hanging.


Accidental hanging has been recorded, though its incidence is rare, there are usually other contributing factors such  as drunkenness or frail old age. In short, it is not easy to become accidentally hanged.


Due to the relative difficulty of the procedure, there are a few instances of homicidal hanging, and then the act is usually carried out by more than one person. More common, and in many ways more interesting to the criminologist, are cases where homicide is made to look like suicidal hanging.


One scenes of crime investigator recalls the case of a man who telephoned the police after his wife, so he claimed, had hanged herself at home. He described finding his wife suspended from a rope, which she had first tied to a door handle and then passed over the top of the door to the other side before putting her head in the noose. He had cut her down, tried in vain to revive her, and then called the police. To somebody unaccustomed to judging heights and distances this would seem a reasonable explanation of the scenario. However, to the experienced officer it was quite obvious that the rope was simply too short to have covered the distance required. Thus an 'obvious' case of suicide  became a matter of murder.


In the celebrated case of Norman Thorne, the Sussex chicken farmer, he claimed to have found his fiancée swinging from a roof beam in the hut in which he lived. Thorne told the police that he had cut poor Elsie Cameron down and tried to revive her, when it was obvious she was dead he panicked, dismembered her body, and interred the neatly parcelled pieces beneath the chicken runs. Norman Thorne's insistence that Elsie Cameron  had been the instrument of her own death was undermined when it was pointed out by detectives that not only were there no rope marks on the beam in question - which might reasonably be expected if a heavy weight had been suspended from it - but it was quite clear that the thick layer of dust on the top surface of the beam had not been disturbed in a very long time. Nor Sir Bernard Spilsbury was prepared to say, was there any evidence on the victims neck to suggest she had hanged herself, but judging from the extensive bruising, there was very good reason to suppose that Elsie Cameron had been battered to death. Norman Thorne was executed at Wandsworth Prison on 22 April 1925.

Hanging, as an instrument of judicial execution, entered England by way of the Anglo-Saxons, who had inherited the method from their German ancestors. It became the established punishment for a great many crimes when Henry II instituted trial by jury and the assize courts in the twelfth century. By the middle ages, the power to try, sentence and hang felons was vested in every town, abbey, and manorial lord. Hangings until the present century were extremely crude affairs - carried out publicly and often proceeded and succeeded by additional barbaric torture. Elaborations like hanging, drawing and quartering became popular spectator events.


But even at best, a simple hanging was little better than slow strangulation - sometimes lingering on for hours, indeed, it was considered a great act of kindness on the part of the executioner to allow some relative or well wisher to pull on the victim's legs to hasten death.


With the last public hanging in 1868, and the confinement of such practices to the execution shed of prisons, a more enlightened and humane procedure was developed to dispatch the prisoner with the greatest speed and least pain. The act of hanging became a science based on the accurate relationship of weight and distance, and the hangman became its craftsman.


By means of an accurate assessment of the 'drop' required and the crucial position of the thick leather washer behind the prisoner's ear, it was in most cases a quick - if not instantaneous - death.


Unlike other more private methods of hanging, the procedure of judicial execution is designed to cause death by dislocation of the upper cervical vertebrae, thus causing severance of the spinal cord close to the junction with the brain.

An entry on hanging would be incomplete without reference to the phenomenon of self-induced asphyxia for the purpose of sexual gratification. It is by no means rare, and is an almost exclusively male activity.


The manner in which asphyxia is induced varies, but it typically strangulation by ligature. There is some evidence that the restriction of oxygen to the brain can, in some instances, effect orgasm. It also causes loss of consciousness and, if the supply is not restored in time, asphyxia results. Acts of sexual asphyxia can also be distinguished by the general appearance of the scene of the incident: the presence of pornographic literature close to the body, evidence of masturbation, mirrors positioned so that the subject can watch himself hang. In addition, the subject may be in some stage of nakedness, wearing women's clothing, leather, rubber, etc. To percent marking of the body, there is sometimes soft padding - a handkerchief, for example - between the neck and ligature.