The History of Gibbeting

The History of Gibbeting PDF

Author: Samantha Priestley

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2020-03-30

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 152675519X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An eye-opening guide to the public execution practice of hanging criminals in body-shaped cages as a crime deterrent or religious punishment. The history of gibbeting is the story of one of Britain’s most brutal forms of punishments, the hanging of criminals in a body shaped metal cage as a warning and as a form of justice. From the folklore of live gibbetings to the eerie historical documenting of this weird post-execution tradition, The History of Gibbeting examines how and why we dealt with murderers and other serious criminals in this way. The book uses case studies through history and takes a look at how the introduction of the Murder Act shaped our relationship with gibbeting for years to come, and how we as a society demanded the most shocking post-mortem treatment of criminals. Whether gibbeting was ever a successful deterrent, it is still a fascination today and gibbet cages remain on display in museums all over the country. “I have to say that I was not aware that gibbeting involved metal cages, nor how society clamored for post-mortems on gibbeted victims. Absolutely fascinating, but not for the faint-hearted!” —Books Monthly

The History of Gibbeting

The History of Gibbeting PDF

Author: Samantha Priestley

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2020-03-30

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1526755211

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The history of gibbeting is the story of one of Britain’s most brutal forms of punishments, the hanging of criminals in a body shaped metal cage as a warning and as a form of justice. From the folklore of live gibbetings to the eerie historical documenting of this weird post-execution tradition, The History of Gibbeting examines how and why we dealt with murderers and other serious criminals in this way. The book uses case studies through history and takes a look at how the introduction of the Murder Act shaped our relationship with gibbeting for years to come, and how we as a society demanded the most shocking post-mortem treatment of criminals. Whether gibbeting was ever a successful deterrent, it is still a fascination today and gibbet cages remain on display in museums all over the country.

Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse

Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse PDF

Author: Sarah Tarlow

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-05-17

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 3319779087

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This open access book is the culmination of many years of research on what happened to the bodies of executed criminals in the past. Focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it looks at the consequences of the 1752 Murder Act. These criminal bodies had a crucial role in the history of medicine, and the history of crime, and great symbolic resonance in literature and popular culture. Starting with a consideration of the criminal corpse in the medieval and early modern periods, chapters go on to review the histories of criminal justice, of medical history and of gibbeting under the Murder Act, and ends with some discussion of the afterlives of the corpse, in literature, folklore and in contemporary medical ethics. Using sophisticated insights from cultural history, archaeology, literature, philosophy and ethics as well as medical and crime history, this book is a uniquely interdisciplinary take on a fascinating historical phenomenon.

The Golden and Ghoulish Age of the Gibbet in Britain

The Golden and Ghoulish Age of the Gibbet in Britain PDF

Author: Sarah Tarlow

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-12-29

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1137600896

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence. This book is the first academic study of the post-mortem practice of gibbeting (‘hanging in chains’), since the nineteenth century. Gibbeting involved placing the executed body of a malefactor in an iron cage and suspending it from a tall post. A body might remain in the gibbet for many decades, while it gradually fell to pieces. Hanging in chains was a very different sort of post-mortem punishment from anatomical dissection, although the two were equal alternatives in the eyes of the law. Where dissection obliterated and de-individualised the body, hanging in chains made it monumental and rooted it in the landscape, adding to personal notoriety. Focusing particularly on the period 1752-1832, this book provides a summary of the historical evidence, the factual history of gibbetting which explores the locations of gibbets, the material technologies involved in hanging in chains, and the actual process from erection to eventual collapse. It also considers the meanings, effects and legacy of this gruesome practice.

Execution

Execution PDF

Author: Simon Webb

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2011-12-31

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 0752466623

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Judicial hanging is regarded by many as being the quintessentially British execution. However, many other methods of capital punishment have been used in this country; ranging from burning, beheading and shooting to crushing and boiling to death. Execution: A History of Capital Punishment in Britain explores these types of execution in detail. Readers may be surprised to learn that a means of mechanical decapitation, the Halifax Gibbet, was being used in England five hundred years before the guillotine was invented. Boiling to death was a prescribed means of execution in this country during the Tudor period. From the public death by starvation of those gibbeted alive, to the burning of women for petit treason, this book examines some of the most gruesome passages of British history. This carefully researched, well-illustrated and enthralling text will appeal to those interested in the history of British executions.

Port Towns and Urban Cultures

Port Towns and Urban Cultures PDF

Author: Brad Beaven

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-05-04

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1137483164

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Despite the port’s prominence in maritime history, its cultural significance has long been neglected in favour of its role within economic and imperial networks. Defined by their intersection of maritime and urban space, port towns were sites of complex cultural exchanges. This book, the product of international scholarship, offers innovative and challenging perspectives on the cultural histories of ports, ranging from eighteenth-century Africa to twentieth-century Australasia and Europe. The essays in this important collection explore two key themes; the nature and character of ‘sailortown’ culture and port-town life, and the representations of port towns that were forged both within and beyond urban-maritime communities. The book’s exploration of port town identities and cultures, and its use of a rich array of methodological approaches and cultural artefacts, will make it of great interest to both urban and maritime historians. It also represents a major contribution to the emerging, interdisciplinary field of coastal studies.

Executing Magic in the Modern Era

Executing Magic in the Modern Era PDF

Author: Owen Davies

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-07-19

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 3319595199

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license This book explores the magical and medical history of executions from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century by looking at the afterlife potency of criminal corpses, the healing activities of the executioner, and the magic of the gallows site. The use of corpses in medicine and magic has been recorded back into antiquity. The lacerated bodies of Roman gladiators were used as a source of curative blood, for instance. In early modern Europe, a great trade opened up in ancient Egyptian mummies and the fat of executed criminals, plundered as medicinal cure-alls. However, this is the first book to consider the demand for the blood of the executed, the desire for human fat, the resort to the hanged man’s hand, and the trade in hanging rope in the modern era. It ends by look at the spiritual afterlife of dead criminals.

Capital Punishment and the Criminal Corpse in Scotland, 1740-1834

Capital Punishment and the Criminal Corpse in Scotland, 1740-1834 PDF

Author: Rachel E Bennett

Publisher:

Published: 2020-10-08

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9781013270277

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book provides the most in-depth study of capital punishment in Scotland between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth century to date. Based upon an extensive gathering and analysis of previously untapped resources, it takes the reader on a journey from the courtrooms of Scotland to the theatre of the gallows. It introduces them to several of the malefactors who faced the hangman's noose and explores the traditional hallmarks of the spectacle of the scaffold. It demonstrates that the period between 1740 and 1834 was one of discussion, debate and fundamental change in the use of the death sentence and how it was staged in practice. In addition, the study provides an innovative investigation of the post-mortem punishment of the criminal corpse. It offers the reader an insight into the scene at the foot of the gibbets from which criminal bodies were displayed, and around the dissection tables of Scotland's main universities where criminal bodies were used as cadavers for anatomical demonstration. In doing so it reveals an intermediate stage in the long-term disappearance of public bodily punishment. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Hanging in Chains

Hanging in Chains PDF

Author: Albert Hartshorne

Publisher:

Published: 1891

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"First edition of this scarce book, and an uncommonly upbeat work on capital punishment. Hartshorne's Hanging In Chains provides us with a brief history of execution in England and Europe and then covers in great detail the practice of gibbetting, the hanging of a person in chains as either a means of execution or torture and the display of piracy and wrongdoing to the general public. The work has significant material on pirates and piracy."--Description from Buddenbrooks, bookseller.

Big Book of Pain

Big Book of Pain PDF

Author: Mark P. Donnelly

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2012-01-31

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 0752482793

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

For millennia, mankind has devised ingenious and diabolical means of inflicting pain on fellow human beings. This deplorable but seemingly universal trait has eaten away at mankind’s very claim to civilisation. Despite how repugnant the practice of torture appears to us today, for at least 3,000 years it formed part of most legal codes throughout Europe and the Far East. The Big Book of Pain is an exploration of the systematic use throughout the ages of various means of punishment, torture, coercion and torment. It takes the reader into the Ancient Roman Coliseum, the medieval dungeon, the Inquisitional interrogation, the auto-da-fe, the witch-trial, and the worst of prisons. It is a shocking and compelling study of the shameful methods and motives of the torturer and the executioner, and of the heinous duty they have performed through the ages.