The day before he was to be hanged, he swapped his identity with another French prisoner who had died of typhus.

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So Francis sought out the wolf and gave the animal a stern lecture, telling him he deserved to be hanged for his crimes.

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Protected by his famous home-made bulletproof armour, Ned himself survived the shoot-out, only to be hanged at Melbourne jail a few months later.

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Qasab originally denied the charges against him but last July, in a dramatic outburst in court, he admitted his role and asked to be hanged.

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"We want the culprits to be hanged, " the victim's father said.

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The last person to be hanged at Hull Prison was Ethel Major in 1934, who was convicted of killing her husband Arthur by poisoning his corned beef with strychnine.

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During Mr Bani-Sadr's impeachment the next year, he stood on the parliament balcony and, as the crowd roared for the president to be hanged, put his chubby fingers puckishly round his own neck.

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But others, such as the right to go about the city with a drawn sword, the right to be hanged by a silken rope, the right to drive sheep over London Bridge, the right to be drunk and disorderly in the City, the right to be married in St Paul's Cathedral and buried with the City, may always have been in the realms of folklore.

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