Maunufacturing Death

June 2, 2006 6:33 AM

David Lucas will be forced next month to quit manufacturing gallows. He's a farmer in the UK and sells his single gallows for $22,000 USD, which isn't bad for a little side business. He also has a multiple apparatus that goes for $185,000 USD. His customers include Zimbabwe and Libya. Other death manufacturers include Abbott Pharmaceuticals, Organon Pharmaceuticals, Roxane Laboratories and Leutcher Associates, Inc. of Massachusetts, who make gas chambers and electric chairs. Yeah, that Fred Leuchter.
posted by sluglicker (40 comments total)

In principle I have no problem with David Lucas and his idea to but gallows in every market town in the country.

But I would say you could hang any parent of any child who constantly behaves like a twat and the parents dont care - despite having angry local residents knocking at their doors telling them just what twats their kids are </rant>

But I do have a problem with him selling to Mugabe.
posted by 13twelve at 6:44 AM on June 2, 2006

The Times yesterday seemed to be saying it was a hoax, and he hadn't actually sold any.
posted by lloyder at 6:48 AM on June 2, 2006

This is interesting a European friend told me that the death penalty is seen as incredibly backwards, barbaric and are generally baffled that we use capital punishment. I didn't know that there was actually debate, as he made it sound as a universal truth. Maybe he just meant no debate amongst intellectuals.
posted by geoff. at 6:50 AM on June 2, 2006

This is interesting a European friend told me that the death penalty is seen as incredibly backwards, barbaric and are generally baffled that we use capital punishment. I didn't know that there was actually debate, as he made it sound as a universal truth. Maybe he just meant no debate amongst intellectuals.
posted by geoff. at 6:50 AM on June 2, 2006

Lukas: "I went to a market where there were hundreds of people and no-one condemned me."

Ya know, this happens to me just about every day.
posted by dobbs at 6:54 AM on June 2, 2006

I have to feel that you don't really need to send overseas for a $22,000 machine to hang somebody.
posted by sonofsamiam at 6:55 AM on June 2, 2006

Gallows don't kill people, rope kills people.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:57 AM on June 2, 2006

What's that, gallows humor?
posted by pracowity at 7:01 AM on June 2, 2006

sonofsamiam: Sure, go with the cheap local knockoffs, but don't go crawling back to Lucas whining about squeaky trapdoors and loose snapback response.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 7:02 AM on June 2, 2006

Mr. Lucas: "The only way to cut serious crime in this country, to get law and order, is to have capital punishment. The Government has tried everything else and it hasn't worked."

Capital punishment... works? Was the crime rate zero back in the day when capital punishment was common?

I remember a story (Stanislaw Lem?) about an inventor who presents a guillotine to the king, and the king says "Good, let's try it on you."
posted by Termite at 7:06 AM on June 2, 2006

He would have gone belly up sooner or later anyway, what with all the cheap asian mass produced gallows flooding the global markets.
posted by uncle harold at 7:08 AM on June 2, 2006

Is there any further information about what other products companies producing the chemicals used in lethal injection produce?

Interesting post, but it seems a bit skimpy on useful information.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 7:10 AM on June 2, 2006

But I would say you could hang any parent of any child who constantly behaves like a twat and the parents dont care - despite having angry local residents knocking at their doors telling them just what twats their kids are

And I suppose you're going to hang the child as well? or perhaps have them running around the streets as homeless? The teen prostitute market is dangerously understaffed, or so I've heard.
posted by delmoi at 7:32 AM on June 2, 2006

Why on earth would anyone import gallows. Even at their most sophisticated - with trap doors and similar schenanigins, they are still simple carpentry - rather easily knocked up in even the poorest country - which is sort of the point.

Me thinks Amnesty International has been hoodwinked into giving publicity to a pro-hanging fantasist...
posted by prentiz at 7:41 AM on June 2, 2006

I don't see anything in the link about the guy being "forced next month to quit manufacturing gallows." What am I missing?
posted by languagehat at 7:44 AM on June 2, 2006

Termite -
That's why there are no murders in Texas, Louisiana, Florida and 35 other states anymore. That and the fact that capital punishment brings the victims back to life...
posted by horsemuth at 8:05 AM on June 2, 2006

Interesting post, but it seems a bit skimpy on useful information.

Agreed. I heard about Lucas and wondered why someone would try making money on an execution machine. My thoughts turned to the makers of gas chambers and lethal injection apparatus. Who manufactures this stuff? What companies? I spent a few hours researching this and came up with only this skeleton (sorry about the pun and the scant info). There isn't much readily available. Contracts between U.S. states and suppliers would seem to be a good source, but was unproductive for me. Any contributions would be welcome.
posted by sluglicker at 8:09 AM on June 2, 2006

For more on Leuchter I'd recommend Errol Morris's fascinating documentary Mr. Death
posted by jrb223 at 8:14 AM on June 2, 2006

Thanks to this post, I've now got this song stuck in my head. (It's OK, though, since I like the song.)
posted by TedW at 8:19 AM on June 2, 2006

As was mentioned in The Competition Wallah, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, first published in 1866 and republished by Indus, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. 1992, of Allan Octavian Hume.

men prayed – first that they may be tried by Hume*, and next if found guilty, they might be hanged by him.

(he invented a patent drop for their benefit), later performing more munificent duties.
*I'm not so sure that they'd want to be tried by Lucas though.
posted by tellurian at 8:21 AM on June 2, 2006

Who manufactures this stuff?

People with no souls.
posted by slatternus at 8:30 AM on June 2, 2006

Wow. So the next time you see a mom schlepping around with her cute little Similac diaper bag*, remember, the same company also makes lethal injections, well, lethal.

*also pretty controversial
posted by Biblio at 8:42 AM on June 2, 2006

"more and more states are opting for Leutcher's $100,000 "execution trailer," which comes complete with a lethal injection machine, a steel holding cell for an inmate and separate areas for witnesses, a chaplain, prison workers and medical personnel..."

Camo'd for stealth even in urban areas, 0-60 in 20 seconds, DOHC, biggest Hemi east of Pecos, and a driver who can outwit, outmaneuver, and outrun any bleeding-heart protester who dares stand in the way of justice.
posted by hal9k at 8:44 AM on June 2, 2006

Based on an early 19th century hanging in Toronto, the cost then in today's money is about $6000 CAD. Just for supplies. David Lucas is the Starbucks of the gallows.
posted by Ohdemah at 8:53 AM on June 2, 2006

I don't see anything in the link about the guy being "forced next month to quit manufacturing gallows." What am I missing?

languagehat: more context in this article from The Guardian – apparently it's those damn suits in Brussels clamping down on an Englishman's right to sell hand-crafted instruments of death to African dictators. Don't know what the world's coming to when a chap can't even make some money back from the old colonies ...
posted by Len at 8:57 AM on June 2, 2006

I don't see anything in the link about the guy being "forced next month to quit manufacturing gallows." What am I missing?

EU Council Regulation (EC) No. 1236/2005 goes into force in the UK. It bans the sale of all torture and capital punishment equipment.
posted by atrazine at 9:01 AM on June 2, 2006

I wonder if that regulation also applies to the drugs used in lethal injection.
posted by TedW at 9:13 AM on June 2, 2006

The headline and picture of that guy with the gallow behind him really makes me think I was looking at the Onion. Boy has the Onion become irrelevant or what? You just can't make up headlines anymore that are stranger than the reality that this world has become...
posted by any major dude at 9:24 AM on June 2, 2006

EU Council Regulation (EC) No. 1236/2005 goes into force in the UK. It bans the sale of all torture and capital punishment equipment.

What about torture equipment sold for consensual, recreational use? I'm serious.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:04 AM on June 2, 2006

no noose is good noose.
posted by snofoam at 10:05 AM on June 2, 2006

Every tree is a gallows.

Amnesty International hates trees !!
posted by a3matrix at 10:12 AM on June 2, 2006

I didn't know that there was actually debate, as he made it sound as a universal truth. Maybe he just meant no debate amongst intellectuals.

Yes you did. You're just being snarky and condescending.

It wasn't until 1999 that England legally abolished capital punishment. France abolished it in 1981. So, it takes, what, around 25 years or so to establish a universal truth?

(I favor the life without parole option, for the record.)
posted by Cyrano at 10:24 AM on June 2, 2006

I led my horse, and, stumbling on, at length
Came to a bottom, where in former times
A murderer had been hung in iron chains.
The gibbet-mast had mouldered down, the bones
And iron case were gone; but on the turf,
Hard by, soon after that fell deed was wrought,
Some unknown hand had carved the murderer's name.
The monumental letters were inscribed
In times long past; but still, from year to year
By superstition of the neighbourhood,
The grass is cleared away, and to this hour
The characters are fresh and visible:
A casual glance had shown them, and I fled,
Faltering and faint, and ignorant of the road:
Then, reascending the bare common, saw
A naked pool that lay beneath the hills,
The beacon on the summit, and, more near,
A girl, who bore a pitcher on her head,
And seemed with difficult steps to force her way
Against the blowing wind.
posted by bardic at 11:19 AM on June 2, 2006

It wasn't until 1999 that England legally abolished capital punishment.

Technically, yes, but the last person to be executed in the UK was in 1964. From 1965 it was illegal save for treason, it was simply the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights in 1999 which finally got rid of it. So it's been over 30 years, really - long enough for it to have passed out of public debate.

Mr. Lucas: "The only way to cut serious crime in this country, to get law and order, is to have capital punishment. The Government has tried everything else and it hasn't worked."

Ahem. Everything else, apart from properly investing in prevention...
posted by greycap at 12:12 PM on June 2, 2006

Nice Wordsworth quote, bardic. A brief discussion:

One of the high points of all Romantic poetry is in Book XI of The Prelude, (1805 version) in which Wordsworth claims that when he was 'not six years old' he came upon the name of a murderer, cut in the turf near a mouldered gibbet. A little while after he encountered:

A girl who bore a pitcher on her head,
And seemed with difficult steps to force her way
Against the blowing wind. It was, in truth,
An ordinary sight; but I should need
Colours and words that are unknown to man,
To paint the visionary dreariness... (XI. 306-Il)

What is moving and mysterious about this moment, and the record of it, is that it is revelatory, but we cannot be precisely sure what it reveals. It demands to be attended to, but we cannot quite understand why, and neither could Wordsworth, especially when he was on the moor. This seems to me very typical of what could be called the secular epiphany: it defies definition and interpretation; it invites scrutiny, yet remains elusive.

posted by languagehat at 12:49 PM on June 2, 2006

So it's been over 30 years, really - long enough for it to have passed out of public debate.

That I mostly agree with (I'm 33, yet I regularly get into debates about things I'm either too young to remember or wasn't even alive for, so I can't totally buy into a "use before" date on some issues.)

But "Universal truth," not so much.
posted by Cyrano at 2:37 PM on June 2, 2006

With a beard like that he could kill on site! It would be cooler if he braided the ropes out of his own beard. That would be a statement
posted by cdcello at 2:44 PM on June 2, 2006

It's a hoax.
posted by wanderingmind at 4:56 PM on June 2, 2006

In the history of the death penalty there has only been one recidivist that is a pretty good record.
posted by Megafly at 5:41 PM on June 2, 2006

Is Fred Leuchter still selling equipment for executions? I kind of thought his business went under after all that holocaust denial idiocy.
posted by pjdoland at 6:20 AM on June 3, 2006