Hung, Drawn, and Quartered takes an informative, no-holds-barred look at the history of execution, from Ancient Rome to the modern day. It is divided into eleven broadly chronological chapters, each exploring a different form of execution and is packed with gory details, eyewitness accounts, and little-known facts.
Take a gruesome trip through time with this grisly compendium of death! From the best way to shrink a head to making a mummy in eight simple steps, and with fascinating facts about botched beheadings, greedy royals and the plague, Hung, Drawn and Quartered looks at the most gruesome facts from the past.
Graham Humphreys' career as a poster artist looms large over horror cinema. From designing the iconic Evil Dead poster to Nightmare on Elm Street and House of a Thousand Corpses, his work is familiar to everyone. It's easy to see why his work grabs the attention of horror fans and filmmakers alike as he continually and systematically sets the bar ever higher in his quest for sheer terror and pure entertainment. With more than 40 years experience he is one of the few contemporary illustrators using the traditional medium of gouache to paint his images. Includes previously unseen work: paintings, drawings, and color studies.
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.
Professor Bellamy places the theory of treason in its political setting and analyses the part it played in the development of legal and political thought in this period. He pays particular attention to the Statute of Treason of 1352, an act with a notable effect on later constitutional history and which, in the opinion of Edward Coke, had a legal importance second only to that of Magna Carta. He traces the English law of treason to Roman and Germanic origins, and discusses the development of royal attitudes towards rebellion, the judicial procedures used to try and condemn suspected traitors, and the interaction of the law of treason and constitutional ideas.
A brilliant work from the most influential philosopher since Sartre. In this indispensable work, a brilliant thinker suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.
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
Capital punishment has played its part as the ultimate judicial penalty in the UK for centuries. This unique book meticulously examines the ominous origins of this horrific tradition, and the arguments behind society's final punishment. Often a macabre, graphic exercise in physical mutilation, capital punishment was once a highly popular form of entertainment for the masses, as well as serving the death penalty to murderers - man, woman and child alike. Within the pages of this chilling book, these condemned victims and the methods in which they met their plight come to life once more. The death penalty is examined in its different guises through the centuries, from execution methods pre-1800 by hanging - both individual and multiple, hanging, drawing and quartering for the charge of high treason, to other sickening alternatives which included burning, boiling alive and use of the dreaded Halifax gibbet, precursor to the Guillotine. Witches fell to watery graves through violent drownings, whilst damned women were often pressed slowly to death. Execution methods after 1800 are also examined, with reference to specific cases. Criminals were made to pay for their crimes by hanging in the drop gallows or being slowly hung, drawn and quartered, whilst in later decades during World War 1 and 2 soldiers and spies were mercilessly shot to death in the Tower of London. Other chapters examine the infamous places of public execution such as Tyburn and Newgate, the details of the legal acts involved such as The Bloody Code and The Black Acts, and the grotesque procedure for the execution of youths. Grisly post mortem punishments are revealed, where hapless victims were left gibbeting before being brutally dissected or anatomised. The role of the hangman and his assistants is studied, with the gory training procedures detailed. Modern developments are also taken into account, with an analysis of the reduction of executions with the introduction of railways, a chapter on 20th century executions and reprieves, as well as descriptions of the last executions in the UK, and the final abolition of capital punishment. Perfect for social historians and those with an interest in the macabre, or for anyone eager to discover the darker side of justice.