After a while the executioner, usually a near relative of the victim, steps forward, and placing his right foot against the back of the condemned, quickly strangles him with a walrus thong.
"From Paris to New York by Land"
Harry de Windt
The subject is particularly fond of gold, which metal eventually strangles the heart and renders its action ineffective and unreliable.
"An Ocean Tramp"
William McFee
Sometimes it stings the clergy, and coils round them, and almost strangles them, for it knows the Church is its greatest enemy, and it is furious against it.
"The Attache or, Sam Slick in England, Complete"
Thomas Chandler Haliburton