Definition
An executioner; specifically, the officer appointed to carry out a sentence of death. The term encompasses the hangman and, historically, any official charged with administering capital punishment by whatever method a court's judgment prescribed.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "An executioner; a headsman or hangman." Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "An executioner; a headsman or hangman. [Obs.]" The legal and common meanings are effectively identical here, but the term warrants this note: both the 1913 Webster entry and Shakespeare's usage mark the word as obsolete even in general speech. In legal sources it persisted somewhat longer as a formal descriptor of a recognized office, but it never carried technical legal content beyond its plain meaning. Researchers encountering it in legal texts should treat it as a period label for the executing officer, not as a term of art with doctrinal freight.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a historical term with no modern legal life. Researchers are most likely to encounter it in older criminal law records, trial proceedings, and treatises dealing with capital punishment from the sixteenth through early nineteenth centuries. Its appearance in a legal document is a reliable dating signal: the term was largely gone from legal writing by the mid-nineteenth century, replaced by "executioner" or, in official contexts, the specific title of the office (e.g., "public hangman" or, later, the warden or designated officer). Because the word carries no jurisdictional variation or doctrinal meaning, the research value lies in recognizing it quickly and moving on. Note that Rapalje & Lawrence embed the definition mid-entry alongside unrelated terms (DEBATES, DEBAUCH), a formatting artifact of that dictionary's alphabetical compression that can create confusion when reading a photostat or transcription of the source.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three historical dictionary sources agree precisely: the deathsman is the executioner or hangman who carries out the extreme penalty of the law. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence reproduce essentially the same definition without variation, suggesting the term arrived in American legal dictionaries as a received English usage rather than a concept that developed independently in American practice. None of the historical sources elaborate on the office's legal status, qualifications, duties, or liability — confirming that the term functioned descriptively rather than as a term carrying specific legal doctrine. Webster's 1913 marks it obsolete, and the legal dictionaries' terse treatment implies the same trajectory in legal usage. No historical source distinguishes the deathsman from the headsman, suggesting the terms were interchangeable.