What was the point of hanging in “hanging, drawing, and quartering”?
Upvote:0
It was a higher form of punishment (high treason) for men
- a higher crime (treason) is punished more severely than a lower crime (murder)
To be hanged, drawn and quartered was, from 1352, a statutory penalty in England for men convicted of high treason, although the ritual was first recorded during the reign of King Henry III (1216–1272). The convicted traitor was fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn by horse to the place of execution, where he was then hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered (chopped into four pieces).
In the cases of Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham:
Both Culpeper and Dereham were found guilty and sentenced to death. They were both to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Both men pleaded for mercy; Culpeper, presumably because of his former closeness to the King, received a commuted sentence of simple beheading. Dereham received no such mercy.
For reasons of decency, women accused of the same crime were punished differently:
The traditional punishment for women found guilty of treason was to be burned at the stake, where they did not need to be publicly displayed naked, whereas men were hanged, drawn and quartered.
The general order was:
- Hanged, drawn and quartered
- Hanging
- Beheading
...
- Wipping
- Branding
- Pillory
- Stocks
and many more.
Until the 19th century, the humiliation and suffering was part of the punishment and was often done in public for this purpose.
During the 19th century, this envolved to a punishment to avoid reoccurrence and not done publicly.
At present (in most countries) the main goal is correction.
Sources:
Upvote:1
In this context, "hanging" was the "torture," rather than the "killing."
It normally takes about 30 minutes to kill someone by the "old" (strangulation) method of hanging. A person is only "half dead" after 23 minutes, most of the killing takes place in the last seven minutes. So if you cut someone down after 23-24 minutes, you've provided that amount of torture without actually killing them.
"Drawing" was the killing process. Not so much the castration (which was implied), but the removal of the intestines, which would upset the body's digestive process.
"Quartering" (usually) takes place after death, and is a deterrent to others. Of course, you could quarter someone while they were still alive, but that would actually shorten the killing process and probably defeat the purpose. Following "drawing," death would normally take hours.
Upvote:2
It was common place to have various degrees of death penalty with different levels of pain, duration of death, and publicity with "gore-p**n". He should suffer more than others convicted to death for lesser crimes. The larger duration for the execution, besides increasing his pain, also allows more "gore-p**n", to attract more viewers, where publicity hopefully serves as deterrence to similar crimes.
Quartering aimed to allow the body to be shown in different places (e.g., all the entrances to the city, or in various relevant places). The publicity is part of the deterrent. It is also important to avoid urban legends e.g. gossip that the rebel leader would be still alive. See here:
Sometimes the sentence was, that the body should be hung to the gibbet, and that the limbs should be displayed on the gates of the town, or sent to four principal towns in the extremities of the kingdom.
Portugal also used quartering. See in the case of Tiradentes:
Sua cabeça foi erguida em um poste em Vila Rica, (...); os demais restos mortais foram distribuídos ao longo do Caminho Novo: Santana de Cebolas, Varginha do Lourenço, Barbacena e Queluz, lugares onde fizera seus discursos revolucionários.
Translating: His head was put on the top of a post in Vila Rica, the other remains were distributed towards the New Road (followed by 4 city names), places where he did his revolutionary speeches.
Many execution methods had the risk of premature death. Not having premature deaths was the mark of a good executioner. In the same way, if it was supposed to be quick, the executioner had to make it quick.
I infer that, if the sequence of tortures shown in the other answer was kept in the law for centuries, more or less intact, it means they trusted a reasonably skilled executioner to perform it successfully. No king wants to see the execution of traitors publicly botched. I guess that an executioner who had hanged some fellows (if hanging was more common than drawing and quartering), would know when to release the ropes to avoid premature death
Upvote:2
The a 'hanging' part was to cause partial asphyxiation (rather than neck breaking) which was supposed to heighten the victims senses i.e. to make the 'drawing' part more painful.
The 'drawing' or removal of intestines was supposed to be painful and kill relatively slowly as a deterrent for other would-be traitors.
If the victim wasn't dead yet then the 'quartering' would finish them off pretty quickly, this would allow the body parts to be dispersed widely, increasing the number of people who could say they'd witnesses the execution, and reducing the chance of any rumors of survival. For those with religious views, it would also prevent bodily resurrection and prevent the victim from entering the afterlife.
More post
- 📝 Why did the United States Army force Nez Perce to give up their own land?
- 📝 Computer business in 1969
- 📝 What is the source for Diogenes' quote in Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy?
- 📝 Why are there 37 numbers on European roulette wheels?
- 📝 Was anyone in Spanish or Mexican California tried for h*m*sexuality?
- 📝 Did the Celts really go into battle naked?
- 📝 Military tactics specifically aimed against cavalry horses
- 📝 Why did the US, Britain, France, Denmark and Sweden vote against the UN resolution that condemned Nazism and SS glorification?
- 📝 Why did emperors of India and China have so many mistresses?
- 📝 Does any evidence exist that suggests Hitler’s primary reason for declaring war on America was an attempt to draw Japan into his war with Russia?
- 📝 Historically, have African nations had a higher proportion of coups than nations on other continents?
- 📝 Where the did the concept of "smear campaigns" originate?
- 📝 Was Japan really part of the Axis?
- 📝 WW1: What would happen if an aerial bomb was dropped from too high an altitude?
- 📝 Were Jefferson and Madison Jacksonians?
- 📝 German influence if the Nazis had won
- 📝 Which Catholic priests were given diplomatic missions?
- 📝 Inflation rates in Spain and Portugal during the 16th century
- 📝 What uniform is General Redvers Henry Buller VC GCB GCMG wearing in this colored photo?
- 📝 Why is there is a pan-slavic movement?
- 📝 Why wasn't Akkadian translated into other more common languages?
- 📝 When did the Hebrews stop speaking Hebrew and start speaking Aramaic?
- 📝 How did pumps work during the Age of Sail?
- 📝 What was the "high Commissioner of the Police in Scotland" in 1777?
- 📝 Identifying a ship in Sydney Harbour
- 📝 Did Shackleton's crew all "miss out" on WW1?
- 📝 When was first security screen door instaled in Seoul metro
- 📝 Was slave labor used in rebuilding the White House?
- 📝 Who said "Nature that framed us of four elements ... doth teach us all to have aspiring minds."?
- 📝 Why did the assasination of Franz Ferdinand trigger WW1?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What was the point of hanging in “hanging, drawing, and quartering”?
- 📝 At what point was the Byzantine Empire's decline irreversible?
- 📝 What was the point of horse armour?
- 📝 What is the evidence to claim that political order in ancient Rome was sufficiently different under "kingdom", "republic" and "empire"?
- 📝 What was the average height of Roman men and women?
- 📝 What was the shortest time between a historical event occuring and a museum opening dedicated to said event?
- 📝 What was the most recent country to be conquered and disappear?
- 📝 What was the Mantineian form of government and what praise did it receive?
- 📝 What was used instead of toilet paper in the US and the UK prior to 1900?
- 📝 At what point were the most current and former US Presidents alive?
- 📝 What was the life expectancy of an ancient Roman child and adult?
- 📝 What was the role of Indian princes and aristocratic landowners under British colonial rule?
- 📝 What did European people of the 5th century AD eat during spring and what was the availability?
- 📝 Was the Iraqi Mukhabarat modelled on the German Reichssicherheitshauptamt, and in what ways?
- 📝 In the British empire, what was the difference between a Governor General and a Viceroy?
- 📝 What did the Baltic Fleet do in Reval in 1904 and when was it there?
- 📝 When and what was the maximum extent of Nationalist China?
- 📝 Who was 'Viscount Yi' and what did he do to survive in the court of a madman?
- 📝 What was the error in 1790, if any, of the lat. and long. of Greenwich Observatory of 1783?
- 📝 What was the border regime between Poland and Czechoslovakia like during the 1970s and 1980s?
- 📝 What was the role of a 'Tidy Man' and what might their duties have been?
- 📝 What was the social and cultural role of a "country squire" in Victorian/Edwardian England?
- 📝 What was the relationship between Indian caste system and martial skills?
- 📝 What was the point of the Babylonian captivity?
- 📝 What was the first instance of native Americans using gunpowder weapons in battle and did they ever make their own powder?
- 📝 What was the ratio of French to English speakers in Upper Canada before and after the American Revolution?
- 📝 What was the motivation for the Church of England to begin recording births, marriages and deaths in 1538?
- 📝 How difficult was Muraviev's amassing of troops for the forcing of the Treaty of Aigun, and what effects on development did it have?
- 📝 What was the first confirmed use of black powder to blow stuff up in war (in China and in Europe)?
- 📝 What was the League of Sublime and Perfect Masters?