The Long Walk that Wasn't So Long.....

[BettyO]

I would imagine that the drumbeat cadence was played from the time they walked out of the prison door to the gallows approximately 33 feet distance, to the time that they mounted the 13 steps to the top of the scaffold - waiting for condemned, clergy and staff to emerge onto the platform. For the male prisoners, it would have more or less been a slow ascent, due to the fact that they were wearing leg irons with 18" chains. The drummers had therefore an appropriate length of time to play in my estimation.