Amazing cruelty
In the post discussing humane v. clean application of capital punishment, the Geek mentions living heads as a result of the use of the Guillotine. That lead me to a wiki wander in which I read up on all sorts of methods of execution through out the ages. Things like breaking wheels, flaying, boiling, brazen bull, impaling, quartering, necklacing, and sawing. The latter of which is particularly disturbing in that the condemned will survive until the saw reaches the head. Amazing that the species survived given our particularly cruel treatment of one another. And, seriously, who are the sick fuckers who came up with these unbelievably hideous methods? I hope they’re rotting in Hell.
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:32 am
Some of them (that came up with the methods) were priests. Christian and otherwise.
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:32 am
My personal favorites include burning alive and feet first thru a wood chipper.
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:33 am
I always had a soft spot for Santa Anna, the Alamo one, for stopping the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico where people were beng burned alive.
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:34 am
As far as who came up with the brazen bull, I don’t remember his name but he was rewarded by being the first victim of his own invention.
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:37 am
My ancestors had this thing about roasting someone on a spit over a bed of coals like a side of beef. When they wanted to be kind, they inserted the spit into the body for a quicker death. When they wanted not to be kind, they tied the prisoner on it.
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:42 am
If I may carry the lethal injection discussion over here, an anesthiosologist could put you to sleep from which you never woke up with a face mask in four seconds. Anybody who has had surgery with general anesthesia knows what I mean.
The problem is that medical professionals are not permitted to participate in executions. So the lethal injection procedure is done by somebody who went to junior college for two trimesters to learn how to find a vein and insert a needle.
June 23rd, 2010 at 11:12 am
For most criminals, the faster and cleaner the execution, the better. Beheading supposedly leaves the head conscious for up to a minute, which is slow. Electrocution takes a tenth of a second and is generally clean. And so on and so forth.
But the one I think takes the cake was the Medean and Persian “punishment of the boats.” The offender was lashed into a boat, liberally smeared with honey, and his eyelids were cut off. Another boat with a hole bored in the side was sealed to that one. Over a few days, honey seeking insects did away with the offender.
It is notable that most of those who received this punishment were political prisoners. While I disapprove of the technique, I can think of several politicians who fully deserve the punishment.
Stranger
Stranger
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:50 pm
I always thought that the practice of “half-hung, drawn, and quartered” was the worst.
…maybe because of the movie Braveheart.
June 23rd, 2010 at 3:24 pm
For the record, I kind of want to throw up after my wiki roaming.
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Before there was the invention of Systematic Religions with “Priests” and the like (Egypt, 3500 BC), there were neolithic Earth Mother and Nature worshipers (building stone piles and burial mounds) coming up with similar ideas on what to do with outsiders and enemies. Typically they were Animists – like those who continue to populate a large portion of New Guinea and for whom cannibalism is still a living memory and Christianity is yet a big question-mark.
But crafty devices for killing and torture like most human-horrors are typically an administrative function, a creation of the idle Bureaucrac not a specifically “Priestly” function – unless your religion was directed towards inhumane cruelty – and there were such, and still are especially if you consider Communism a religion.