Did you know that in the Middle Ages, when someone was executed

@Mamapolo2016 "Shoot straight you bastards and don't make a mess of it !"
(Executed by firing squad).
~~ Harry Harbord "Breaker" Morant, Australian poet & national hero, d. 1902

@Mamapolo2016 There are tales of axemen chasing the victim around wacking at them. No body escaped, but some died in terror, pain, and exhaustion. Nasty time to live and even nastier to be accused of crime.

See there? A little remuneration might encourage accuracy and deftness. But you'd have to arrange to have a friend pay them AFTER the execution.

@sunrisehawk It's been almost six hundred years, but just reading about King Henry VIII's court scared me to death. If you ever saw "It's a Good Life" Twilight Zone episode where the spoiled little boy had mental powers that allowed him to do some really unique things, like turn someone inside out, and everybody had to be careful every moment:
that's what Henry's court was like. Heads ROLLED. Most of them rolled because he couldn't father a healthy son as heir to the throne.

@sunrisehawk That apparently happened with one of the Plantagenet women (the rivals to Henry's family, but it apparently happened because at the last moment she decided she wasn't going to make it easy for them, and tried to get away. A half-dozen or so swings of the axe, most of them connecting, but not enough to be fatal. The last one was, though.