Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1883-11-28
pUNISHMENTs OF THE PAST.

Talk about the severity of the punish
ments nowadays! They are nothing to what
they were in the middle ages when there
were, according to the learned writer on
criminal cases, Josse DamEondcre, thirteen
different ways in which the eXecutioner
could inflict punishment. There were fire,
the sword, mechanical force, quartering, the
wheel, the fork, the gibbet, drawing, spiking,
cutting of the ears, dismembered, logging,
or beating and the pillory.
Torture by fire was horrible, and was
managed by the cxecutioners with Il malig-
nitv that was as comprehensive as ii was
pointcd. The victim to be burned was
dressed in Il shirt smeared with sulphur,
having been stripped Of all his other clothes.
A stake was driven into the spot where the
burning was 10 take place, and alternate
layers Of straw piled up to about the height
of a man. There was 4 narrow opening lead
inc TO the stake, to which the victim was
| led, and this passageway was filed up with
straw, SO that the victim, securely bound
to the stake by chains, was completely
surrounded by the combustibles. The
living were not always burned to death,
but frequently the party was first strangled,
and at other times Il large iron pike or bar
| was so arranged as to fall upon and kill him
before the burning began. The bodies OF
| those who died Il natural death were burn
| cd, and if, after Il persons burial, his guilt
was proved, his bones were disntcrrcd and
carried TO the stake for burning. Fire was
the punishment in cases of heresy or BIAS
phcmy.
Death by decapitation used to be per-
formed by either two-handed sword or an
axe. The victim was allowed to choose
whether he would have his eyes blindfolded
| or not and the skill of the eXecutioner was
usually SO great that the head came oil 1T Il
single blow. Not always, however, for
there are instances where the bungling
body chopper whacked away eleven times
ut the head of the unfortunate victim. The
party sometimes knelt, placing his head on
| the block, and at other times knclt IN an
upright position.
Ouaftering was probably the most hor-
rible death penalty ever concocted by the
| fiendish ingenuity of the judges. AS a sort
of salad for this punishment the victim un-
dcrwcnt preliminary tortures, such Us
having his right hand cut off and the
mutilated stump burnt in a pot Of sui
phur Then again his arms, thighs or
breast were lacerated with red-hot pincers
| and hot oil, pitch or molten lead poured in
to the wounds. After these preiminaries a
| rope was attached to each limb ofthc Grim
| inal, one being bound aronnd each leg from
| the foot to the knee, and around each arm
| from the wrist TO the elbow. These ropes
were then attached TO four bars, to each Of
| which stout horse was harnessed. The
horses first gave short jerks and when the
unfortunate man shouted in agony, feeling
| his limbs dislocatcd without being broken,
the four horses were all Of sudden whip
ped up and urged in different directions. If
| the tendons, muscles and lgaments still re-
sisted the power Of the horses, the execu-
toner cut the joints with hatchet This
performance sometimes lasted several hours
| and when the limbs were all pulled apart
thoy were collected and placed near the
trunk and burned. Sometimes the sentence
| read that the limbs should be rent to the
| four quarters of the kingdom, in which
case each was separately labeled and dis
patched
The torture of the wheel is thus desert
| bed The victim was first tied on his back
| to two josts, forming st Andrews cross,
| each of his limbs being stretched out Two
places were followed out under each limb
about foot apart in order that the joints
alone might touch the wood. The cNccu-
|
hollow with square iron bar shout inch
es broad and rounded at the handle, thus
breaking each limb in two places. To the
eight blows required for this the executioner
| generally added two or three on the chest,
which were called coups de grace, and which
ended this horrible torture. After death
the broken body was placed on wheel
| which revolved on Il pivot. Sometimes the
victim was strangled first, in which case it
was called garroting. The nobility of Spain
are thus executed The criminal sits on a
chair, his neck in an iron collar and his
head against beam. The eXecutioner
turns q screw, and the spinal column is dis.
located, and death is speedy.
The modern gallows is by no manner Of
means the ancient gibbet. Down to the
French revolution gibbets used to stand in
every French town and village. They were
generally composed ofpillars of stone, joined
at the summit by wooden traverses, to which
the bodies of maletactors hung until they
had crumbled to dust. Crows, carrion and
buzzards flew about and fed upon the corpses
and the stencil was horrible. AS many as
fifty-two were sometimes hanging at once.
Sometimes the remains hung in wicker
| baskets or iron caskets.
Flogging was administered in two ways
| -hrSt IN prison, by the nanuS OF tue JalloI
and second in public. In the latter case the
criminal was stripped to the waist and at
each cross road he received q certain num-
Der Of blows over his shoulders aad back
with cane or knotted rope. The latter
was composed of several ropes attached to a
handle, and at intervals of few inches on
the ropes were knots which were armed
with irod prongs.
The pillory was the punishment adopted
to make criminals Infamous.
Beside these punishments some criminals
were aayed alive, and some put into a sack
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