2-3-4 Challenge Book Discussions #1 discussion
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Who Buries the Dead
Who Buries the Dead
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Jonetta
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Oct 22, 2016 02:16PM
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Good question, though I suppose most manners of execution can be considered pretty grisly (hanging, electrocution, stoning, etc.) Maybe they thought it was a quick death? Although it sounds like it took more than one whack for some of those poor souls. Yikes!
I have no answer to this question. I might guess it had to do with royal executions -- one knew the offender was truly dead if the head rolled.
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Still a pretty beastly practice.
And can you just imagine the stench when passing all those heads on pikes? Ugh.
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I was actually thinking about this in the book and wondering when exactly they stopped using beheading as a means of execution in England. It turns out the last beheading was in 1747 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_F...
Interesting that the law was still in the books until the 1970s.
Veronica wrote: "Interesting that the law was still in the books until the 1970s."Yes, I noticed that. Strange...
I'm just finishing the chapter that details all the beheadings--kind of difficult reading.What I remember reading about the history of executions is that the public nature of execution and the extreme violence (drawing and quartering--yeeks!) is that it was symbolic of the power of the monarch--sort of a stand in for martial power. So it was kind of like law-breaking was not about breaking so abstract set of rules, but rather doing something that was a personal attack on the Monarch (and on God), and therefore, just as in a battle your body might be brutalized for having stood out against the Ruler, so by breaking the law, your body was similarly vulnerable. That's why there weren't really "prisons" but dungeons which housed prisoners of all types. The Enlightenment changed a lot of that and introduced the idea of the possibility of reform. Strangely, I think the guillotine was first introduced as a more humane method of punishing people of capital crimes because it was supposed to be instantaneous.
Another weird thing I'm remembering after reading the author's note is that the remains of many of the French Kings were removed from their original burial site after the revolution and were replaced with the remains of people associated with new Enlightenment ideas--like Voltaire.
I didn't know that. That is odd, lol.
