List of executioners in Themiclesia

The following list of executioners in Themiclesia enumerates all individuals known through corvée rolls and other records to have performed executioner service in Themiclesian cities (mainly Kien-k'ang) since 1080 and up to the abolition of capital punishment 1853. The records at Kien-k'ang are the most complete as the city's archives were the best maintained throughout history, though the oldest such record is not at Kien-k'ang. By cross-reference to other records, it is possible to learn where these individuals lived, what their professions were, how many days they remained in service, whether they incurred any fines, and whether they were the principal, substitute, or hirling in the corvée; relating to their performance, it is also possible, albeit in rarer cases, to deduct how many executions they performed.

This research was first systematically done by James Miller in 1980 in his book A Concordance of Death: Exhaustive List of Executioners in Themiclesia and Their Biographic Portraits, which was adapted from his 1977 doctoral dissertation. His motivation for writing on this subject is, according to himself, that researchers are in a far better position to learn about this marginalized subject in Themiclesian context than in most others, while nobody has yet exploited this readily-available body of information. Several other authors have added to the list on account of newly-discovered records or otherwise.

General observations

The Code of 1080, overhauling the corvée labour system in all cities under royal government, established much more specific types of service and their respective performance guidelines and standards, for the eradication of misgovernment and corruption, according to its preambles. The type of executioner was established amongst the 331 types of "ordinary services" (恆), which means they were to be accounted for in the annual corvée assizes.

The corvée assize was a method by which a city determined how to perform the labour work required in the upcoming year: first, the professional soldiers and prisoners were counted, and anything which could be performed by them within statutory bounds were first defrayed upon them; if there was outstanding work, then the adult men and women were summoned, and work was defrayed upon them; then on the elderly and adolescents. For more specialized forms of labour, a similar system was in use for designated sections of the population that had a specific skill. If all the local labour could not cover the required work, then requisitions were sent to the central government or the viceroy overseeing the province. The labour assize itself was generally concerned with the quantity of labourers available, seeking to ensure that all the expected work could be covered by persons accounted for, while the specific tasks were assigned only somewhat later and in processes that differed from city to city.

Executioner duty was within the pool of general work, which category also included clearing forests, keeping fires, tending gates, pounding roads, etc. It was assigned to adult men only, which is to say men from age 20 through 56. Miller could not give a certain reason why but suggests that it is within the vein of "far from home and alone", which are often reserved for adult men. He points to the explicit rule that delivering letters to government offices was permitted on both adult men and women, but whenever the destination was beyond the city and the distance exceeded single day's journey on foot, it was permitted on men only. As execution areas may be remote (depending on custom), it would make sense under this assumption; he points out that executions in very central places, though common in Kien-k'ang, was the exception rather than the rule, and it is only because of the importance of the city the situation appears more common than it was.

Stadler's earlier work in 1956 states that there is little correlation between the physical strenuousness of the work and the gender that was deemed appropriate—both men and women engaged in such backbreaking work as pounding roads, which required a very large and heavy hammer be repeatedly brought down to compact the earthen road to make it less likely to subside in rain, as well as simply "conveying grains". Miller rejects the idea that the religious pollution the duty created was the cause for the gendered assignment. While there are no corvée duties that explicitly created pollution for women, they were otherwise exactly as susceptible to pollution as men in religious terms and undergo the same process to remove it. That is, religious impurity was no more or less an issue in women or men, and in 1080 this would meant a range of prohibited activities but nothing that could not be overcome. The duty of a prison midwife, which was assigned to women, could also create pollution if the infant turned out to be stillborn, and this does not prevent its assignment to women.

Kien-k'ang

Executioner	Assize	Executions	Other information
Mli-ta, peasant	Winter 1333	17
'Yup, fisher	Winter 1334	6
Ter, copyist	Winter 1335	537	12 days in service; victims include 17 barons and about 20 children, mostly from the Conspiracy that year
Krin, peasant	Winter 1336	4
Mik, peasant	Special assize, 17 Jan. 1336	1	Victim is the arsonist Rwa-sti
Pang Styit, merchant	Winter 1854	34	Last executioner in Themiclesia, owner of Hing-kem-stang, a candy store; victims include Grey Hare, the 19-year-old mobster and murderer