Meet Frantz Schmidt: executioner, torturer and, most unusually for his times, diarist. Following in his father’s footsteps, Frantz entered the executioner’s

From 1573 to 1617, Master Franz Schmidt was the executioner for the towns of Bamberg and Nuremberg. During that span, he personally executed more than 350 peopl

During a career lasting nearly half a century, Meister Frantz Schmidt (1554-1634) personally put to death 392 individuals and tortured, flogged, or disfigured h

James Berry's book, 'My Experiences as an Executioner,' delves into the dark and morbid world of capital punishment through the eyes of a seasoned executioner.

A history of public executions in France from the medieval spectacle of suffering to the invention of the Revolutionary guillotine, up to the last public execut