The aim of the book was to show how those who have heard the sentence of doom pronounced lived through the hours until the time of execution - how they reacted to the certain knowledge of approaching death - what they thought and said and did. The case histories cover 2 centuries, revealing all the tense drama and implicit terror which surrounds the grim act of hanging. Includes amongst others : Gerald Chapman, the Haymarket Anarchists, Garfield's assassin, the Lincoln conspirators, slave-trader Nathaniel Gordon (1862), John Brown, the Cato Street Conspirators, Mrs. Elizabeth Branch and her daughter (1740) and W. Jordan, who tried to escape in 1733 by having an operation performed on his windpipe!