G-Dubb, Dennis and myself are the three wise men of this board. Meaning we're all fucking doomed.
3/13 AND 3/14:
To be hanged, drawn and quartered was the penalty once ordained in England for treason. It is considered by many to be the epitome of cruel punishment, and was reserved for treason as this crime was deemed more heinous than murder and other capital offences. It was applied only to male criminals. Women found guilty of treason in England were sentenced to be burnt at the stake, a punishment abolished in 1790.
Until 1814, the full punishment for the crime of treason was to be hanged, drawn and quartered in that the condemned prisoner would be:
1. Dragged on a hurdle (a wooden frame) to the place of execution. (This is one possible meaning of drawn.)
2. Hanged by the neck for a short time or until almost dead. (hanged).
3. Disembowelled and emasculated and the genitalia and entrails burned before the condemned's eyes (This is another meaning of drawn.)
4. Beheaded and the body divided into four parts (quartered).
Typically, the resulting five parts (i.e. the four quarters of the body and the head) were gibbeted (put on public display) in different parts of the city, town, or, in famous cases, country, to deter would-be traitors who had not seen the execution. After 1814 the convict would be hanged until dead and the mutilation would be performed after death. Gibbeting was abolished in England in 1843. Drawing and quartering was abolished in 1870.
There is confusion among modern historians about whether "drawing" referred to the dragging to the place of execution or the disembowelling, but since two different words are used in the official documents detailing the trial of William Wallace ("detrahatur" for drawing as a method of transport, and "devaletur" for disembowelment), there is no doubt that the subjects of the punishment were disembowelled.
Judges delivering sentence at the Old Bailey also seemed to have had some confusion over the term "drawn," and some sentences are summarized as "Drawn, Hanged and Quartered." Nevertheless, the sentence was often recorded quite explicitly. For example, the record of the trial of Thomas Wallcot, John Rouse, William Hone and William Blake for offences against the king, on 12 July 1683 concludes as follows:
Then Sentence was passed, as followeth, viz. That they should return to the place from whence they came, from thence be drawn to the Common place of Execution upon Hurdles, and there to be Hanged by the Necks, then cut down alive, their Privy-Members cut off, and Bowels taken out to be burnt before their Faces, their Heads to be severed from their Bodies, and their Bodies divided into four parts, to be disposed of as the King should think fit.
The Oxford English Dictionary notes both meanings of drawn: "To draw out the viscera or intestines of ... a traitor or other criminal after hanging)" and "To drag (a criminal) at a horse's tail, or on a hurdle or the like, to the place of execution". It states that "In many cases of executions it is uncertain [which of these senses of drawn] is meant. The presumption is that where drawn is mentioned after hanged, the sense is [the second meaning]."
The condemned man would usually be sentenced to the short drop method of hanging, so that the neck would not break. The man was usually dragged alive to the quartering table, although in some cases men were brought to the table dead or unconscious. A splash of water was usually employed to wake the man if unconscious, then he was laid down on the table. A large cut was made in the gut after removing the genitalia, and the intestines would be spooled out on a device that resembled a dough roller. Each piece of organ would be burnt before the sufferer's eyes, and when he was completely disembowelled, his head would be cut off. The body would then be cut into four pieces, and the king would decide where they were to be displayed. Usually the head was sent to the Tower of London and, as in the case of William Wallace, the other four pieces were sent to different parts of the country.
H. Thomas Milhorn claims that hanging, drawing and quartering was first used against William Maurice, who was convicted of piracy in 1241. This would make Henry III the first practitioner.
The punishment was more famously and verifiably employed by King Edward I ("Longshanks") in his efforts to bring Wales, Scotland, and Ireland under English rule.
In 1283, it was inflicted on the Welsh prince Dafydd ap Gruffydd in Shrewsbury. Dafydd had been a hostage in the English court in his youth, growing up with Edward and for several years fought alongside Edward against his brother Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the Prince of Wales. Llywelyn had won recognition of the title, "Prince of Wales," from Edward's father King Henry III, and both Edward and his father had been imprisoned by Llywelyn's ally, Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester, in 1264.
Edward's enmity towards Llywelyn ran deep. When Dafydd returned to the side of his brother and attacked the English Hawarden Castle, Edward saw this as both a personal betrayal and a military setback and hence his punishment of Dafydd was specifically designed to be harsher than any previous form of capital punishment. The punishment was part of an overarching strategy to eliminate Welsh independence. Edward built an "iron ring" of castles in Wales and had Dafydd's young sons incarcerated for life in Bristol Castle and daughters sent to a nunnery in England, whilst having his own son, Edward II, assume the title Prince of Wales. Dafydd's head joined that of his brother Llywelyn (killed in a skirmish months earlier) on top of the Tower of London, where the skulls were still visible many years later. His quartered body parts were sent to four English towns for display.
Two decades later, on 23 August 1305, Sir William Wallace (the guy Mel Gibson played in Braveheart) was the next person to be hanged, drawn and quartered, which occurred as a result of Edward I's Scottish wars. This established the precedent as the ultimate penalty for treason against the English crown. Both Dafydd ap Gruffydd and William Wallace asserted at their trials that they were not traitors for having fought in defence of Wales and Scotland against foreign invaders. Wallace, unlike his Welsh counterpart, never fought for Edward before fighting against him.
An account is provided by the diary of Samuel Pepys for Saturday 13 October 1660, in which he describes his attendance at the execution of Major-General Thomas Harrison for regicide. The complete diary entry for the day, given below, illustrates the matter-of-fact way in which the execution is treated by Pepys:
"To my Lord's in the morning, where I met with Captain Cuttance, but my Lord not being up I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy. It is said, that he said that he was sure to come shortly at the right hand of Christ to judge them that now had judged him; and that his wife do expect his coming again. Thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at White Hall, and to see the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King at Charing Cross. From thence to my Lord's, and took Captain Cuttance and Mr. Sheply to the Sun Tavern, and did give them some oysters. After that I went by water home, where I was angry with my wife for her things lying about, and in my passion kicked the little fine basket, which I bought her in Holland, and broke it, which troubled me after I had done it. Within all the afternoon setting up shelves in my study. At night to bed."
French quartering:
In France, the traditional punishment for regicide (whether attempted or completed) under the ancien régime (known in French as écartèlement) is often described as "quartering", though it in fact has little to do with the English punishment. The process was as follows: the regicide offender would be first tortured with red-hot pincers, then the hand with which the crime was committed would be burnt, with sulphur, molten lead, wax, and boiling oil poured into the wounds. The quartering would be accomplished by the attachment of the condemned's limbs to horses, who would then tear them away from the body. Finally, the often still-living torso would be burnt.
3/14: SLOW SLICING
Slow slicing (simplified Chinese: 凌迟; traditional Chinese: 凌遲; pinyin: língchí, alternately transliterated Ling Chi or Leng T'che), also translated as the slow process, the lingering death, or death by/of a thousand cuts, is a form of execution used in China from roughly AD 900 to its abolition in 1905. The term língchí derives from a classical description of ascending a mountain slowly.
This method of execution became a fixture in the image of China among some Westerners. It appears in various romantic accounts of Chinese cruelty, such as Harold Lamb's 1930s biography of Genghis Khan.
Slow slicing was sometimes used for the torture and execution of a living person, or applied as an act of humiliation after death. It was meted out for offenses such as acts of treason, murder, or assault on one's parents. There are problems in obtaining accurate details of how the executions took place, but the executions consisted of cuts to the arms, legs, and chest, followed by decapitation or a stab to the heart.
Art historian James Elkins argues that extant photos of the execution make obvious that the "death by division" (as it was termed by German criminologist R. Heindl) involved some degree of dismemberment while the subject was living. However, Elkins also argues that, contrary to the apocryphal version of "death by a thousand cuts", the actual process could not have lasted long, the condemned could likely not have remained conscious and aware (if even living) after one or two severe wounds, and the entire process could not have included more than a "few dozen" wounds. Reliable eyewitnesses, like Meadows, describe an amazingly fast process, not longer than 15 to 20 minutes all in all. Available photographic sets that unfold the stasis of the event, allow to identify persons in the attendance, who all stay at the same place all along, which would not be the case if the event lingered on. Moreover, these photographs show a striking contrast between the stream of blood that soaks the left flank of the victim and the quasi-absence of blood on the right side, showing that the first or the second cut has reached the heart, hereby reducing the condemned's suffering.
According to apocryphal lore, língchí began when the torturer, wielding an extremely sharp knife, began by putting out the eyes, rendering the condemned incapable of seeing the remainder of the torture and, presumably, adding considerably to the psychological terror of the procedure. Successive rather minor cuts chopped off ears, nose, tongue, fingers, toes, and such before proceeding to grosser cuts that removed large collops of flesh from more sizable parts, e.g., thighs and shoulders. The entire process was said to last three days, and to total 3,600 cuts. The heavily carved bodies of the deceased were then put on a parade for a show in the public. Some victims were reportedly given doses of opium, but accounts differ as to whether the drug was said to amplify or alleviate suffering. There are discrepancies between descriptions and evaluations according to the authors' moral and religious background: Protestants tend to understate the physical ordeal of the condemned, while Catholics tended to exaggerate.
Some modern writers suggest that língchí -- as a genuine adjunct to execution -- was exaggerated in some retellings to become the more sensationalistic "death by a thousand cuts." This apparent confusion might be due to the novelty of slicing to Western observers, or attributed to mistranslation, cultural differences, racism or other factors. This idea is perhaps supported by at least one source: J. M. Roberts, in Twentieth Century: The History of the World, 1901 to 2000 (2000), writes "the traditional punishment of death by slicing ... became part of the western stereotype of Chinese backwardness as the 'death of a thousand cuts.'" Roberts then notes that slicing "was ordered, in fact, for K'ang Yu-Wei, a man termed the 'Rousseau of China', and a major advocate of intellectual and government reform in the 1890's."
Although officially outlawed by the Qing government in 1905, língchí became a widespread Western symbol of the Chinese penal system from the 1910s on. Three sets of photographs were shot by French soldiers in 1904-1905 were the basis for later mythification and gruesome fancies. The abolition was immediately enforced, and definitely: no língchí was ever performed in China after April 1905; the reported cases are all based on mistaken dating of the last executions.
Regarding the use of opium, as related in the introduction to Morrison's book, Sir Meyrick Hewlett insisted that "most Chinese people sentenced to death were given large quantities of opium before execution, and Morrison avers that a charitable person would be permitted to push opium into the mouth of someone dying in agony, thus hastening the moment of decease." At the very least, such tales were deemed credible to British officials in China and other Western observers.
One account reports that United States Marine Corps members stationed in and around Shanghai between 1927 and 1941 brought evidence of human rights abuses to the United States: "The prevalence of executions and torture is evidenced by the scrapbooks brought back from China by the Marines. There are photographs of firing squads, beheadings, disembowelments, rape and such torture as 'the death of a thousand cuts.'"
As the online Marine history notes, "Apparently these photographs were commercially available [in China], because there are exact duplicates in many scrapbooks with the name of a commercial studio stamped on the backs of the photographs." It is possible that photos from the 1910s were mistakenly associated with the ongoing atrocities of China in the 1920s, and the língchí photos were sold as curios.
Photographs from this same period, including lines of beheaded corpses, non-Chinese diplomats killed by gunfire, and a língchí victim, can be found in George Ryley Scott's A History of Torture.
In his novel The Journeyer, author Gary Jennings demonstrates the distinction between Western myth and Chinese reality by referring to the "Death of a Thousand" as a torture procedure he explains thus: One thousand pieces of paper are placed in a container, and a paper is drawn out by the Fondler (the torturer) to determine where the cut will be made. Having determined that there are 333 body parts, each of these parts is represented three times (for a total of 999 - the 1,000th paper represents immediate death). For example, the pinky finger - when the first paper is drawn denoting the pinkie finger, perhaps the digit will be removed to the first joint. The second time the pinky finger paper is drawn, another section to the next joint is amputated. The third time the pinky finger paper is drawn, the rest of the finger is amputated. Jennings also fictionalizes in the book that, in an extended form of the torture, the body parts and blood are fed to the condemned as his only nourishment.
In the novel Flashman and the Dragon by George MacDonald Fraser, reference is made to a prisoner being bound tightly in a thin wire mesh through which nubs of flesh protrude. These are then cut off by the torturer with a sharp razor. In order to kill the prisoner, the razor is run quickly over many nubs of flesh at once.
