THE EXECUTIONER'S MOAT (Interesting Discoveries in the dirt)!

Archaeological Institute of America ^ | Volume 57 Number 2, March/April 2004 | DAVID KEYS

[vannrox]

Horrific but interesting.

[cyborg]

wow

[ElkGroveDan]

In the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, death sentences were passed for everything from theft and burglary to treason and murder.

Ah! The good old days!

[Terpfen]

"Horrific but interesting."

The 17th-century equivalent of a train wreck, indeed.

[68skylark]

The author seems to relish giving us every detail -- I could have done with a few less.

[scan59]

God forbid you get tangled up in the legal system in those days.

[DBrow]

Mostly men in their 20's, hmmm.

That means the same demographic committed most crimes, like today.

It also suggests that the appeals process was briefer than today, even assuming conviction at 17 or so.

[mewzilla]

May I ask a dumb question? Unless these poor sods were interred with rap sheets, how do they know the men were criminals?

[Servant of the 9]

Death on the gallows generally occurred by slow strangulation; it would have taken up to a half an hour for a person to die. (Instant death through hanging, by the use of a drop through a trapdoor that broke the condemned person's neck, was only gradually introduced in the late eighteenth century.)

It used to be customary for a man who was going to be hanged to try to get his associates to attend and pull on his legs to end things quickly.

So9

[Doctor Stochastic]

In the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, death sentences were passed for everything from theft and burglary to treason and murder.

Thus motivating the idea of leaving no witness to even a small crime. Most of these death sentences for "petty" crimes were repealed in the 1800s under the prodding of Scotland Yard (as it was then known.)

[Doctor Stochastic]

In the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, death sentences were passed for everything from theft and burglary to treason and murder.

Thus motivating the idea of leaving no witness to even a small crime. Most of these death sentences for "petty" crimes were repealed in the 1800s under the prodding of Scotland Yard (as it was then called.)

[scan59]

Thus motivating the idea of leaving no witness to even a small crime.

I've heard this is one of the dangers of California's three-strikes-you're-out-for-life laws.

[Elsie]

The victims, all of whom are thought to have been hanged, seem to have been denied a Christian burial. They were interred in unconsecrated ground, and some 20 percent of them were buried face down or on their sides. Most were not buried in a traditional Christian east-west alignment, thus depriving them of the opportunity to rise from the dead facing Jerusalem on the Day of Judgment.

 

Hey guys!

 

If your outfit can learn their names, then someone can be baptized for them.  It seems obvious to me that  the data in this article indicates they were not believers.

 

What BETTER way to give them hope??

[expatpat]

......the way in which the bodies of executed criminals were treated in postmedieval England

Hey, they're probably talking about my ancestors!

[Elsie]

See post two back...

[Elsie]

ancestors or ancestors RELATIVES!?

[Focault's Pendulum]

Unless these poor sods were interred with rap sheets, how do they know the men were criminals?

Their progeny flourished, and now we have to listen to this crap on radio.

[Docbarleypop]

Naw, those were just the guys that didnt get out of my way at the rugby match I played in last september!

[Hollywoodghost]

If you ever get to London, visit the London Dungeon it talks about crime and swift punishment in old England. Maybe we should use this sort of rule--hang or flog criminals and let them go--save momey on prisons. Or we could send them someplace--the English used Georgia--we could use---say Haiti?

[colorado tanker]

Wow. This must have gotten Britain in deep doodoo with the UN and Amnesty International.