AHC: Get the Halifax Gibbet Adopted Across England

How could we get the Halifax Gibbet, a sort of proto-guillotine, adopted for capital punishment across England? I'm thinking that we need to have a revolution and have hanging be associated with the old regime.
 
Really what you'd need is for the Halifax Gibbet to be seen as the more humane alternative to hanging. This was what fueled most of the reforms around capital punishment methods in the 18th and 19th centuries. It shouldn't be too hard - simply have a series of high profile botches with the short-drop hanging process (as the more "humane" long-drop wasn't really adopted until the 1860s) that either weaken people's faith in its ability to work properly or have people see it as simply too horrible.

The problem is, after the 1790s Reign of Terror in France you'd have a hard time introducing the guillotine in Britain as it came to be a symbol of Revolutionary violence and excess. Thus, really, your POD needs to be before 1789.
 
Really what you'd need is for the Halifax Gibbet to be seen as the more humane alternative to hanging. This was what fueled most of the reforms around capital punishment methods in the 18th and 19th centuries. It shouldn't be too hard - simply have a series of high profile botches with the short-drop hanging process (as the more "humane" long-drop wasn't really adopted until the 1860s) that either weaken people's faith in its ability to work properly or have people see it as simply too horrible.

The problem is, after the 1790s Reign of Terror in France you'd have a hard time introducing the guillotine in Britain as it came to be a symbol of Revolutionary violence and excess. Thus, really, your POD needs to be before 1789.
ECW, somehow?
 
ECW, somehow?

Problem is, really, that's a bit too early for the sort of humane reform you need which was a product of the enlightenment.

What might work, though, is if you have a c17th or c18th regime somehow politically taint hangings. Judge Jeffreys might have done it - but OTL public sympathy was with James II and saw his punishment of the Monmouth Rebels as harsh in the extreme. You'd need it to be associated with an unpopular regime that then failed and was replaced by rebels seen as heroic.

Maybe a much more absolutist James II?

Problem is, OTL people at the time did not see hanging as particularly inhumane (in contrast think of the torturous death of Damiens that saw French reformers begin the thought process that would lead to the guillotine - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-François_Damiens#Torture_and_execution).
 
I think you need a situation when there are is a need to execute a lot of people very quickly. Most traditional methods including short drop hanging take a fair amount of time, or quickly exhaust the executioners. Perhaps if the Commonwealth Rump Parliament ordered the execution of all British Catholics who would not convert?
 
There's a mock up of the gibbett on (surprise suprise) Gibbett Street, also nearby is the Running Man pub. Legend was you were popped on the block and if you could run away before it fell you were a free man....I'm not trying it but Meadow can.
 
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