to think this country used to be bloody barbaric?

[MycatsaPirate]

We have Gunpowder on tv at the moment and it's brutal!

Thank goodness we have evolved over the last several hundred years and no longer think public torture and murder is a good way of dealing with things.

I actually feel quite sick. The horrific ways they dreamt up to kill people are unbelievable.

I think the rationale is that you'll confess in the end. A bit like waterboarding etc too.

Thing is everyone has a pain threshold limit, and if you hit/hurt/press/waterboard that person hard enough they'd confess to anything to get you to stop.

Yes, we did. Virtually all countries used to be barbaric. Some still are.

@MyCatsAPirate I dont know if you've seen this but this is a picture that always goes viral on twitter around bonfire night time. Guido Fawkes signature before and after torture.

Similar things are happening in the world today. It's so fucking depressing.

This country? Every country was once incredibly barbaric.

Not quite the same, but just watched Selma - set in the 1960s and the friend and I both commented on how barbarically people were treated and that’s only 60 years ago.

I think the crushing was called "peine fort et dure"

OP I nearly went to the big screen launch and talk for this!!

Thank goodness I didn't. If it's mostly torture porn I'll give it a miss.

Not just the UK to be fair. Everywhere was pretty barbaric once.

Obviously hanging is awful but surely it kills you so you're not alive for the drawing and quartering part? Or am I wrong?

Yes, it’s barbaric but public CRUCIFICTION is happening in Syria as we discuss torture in the 1600s.

And in Saudi Arabia, too BacktoBack

A brutal based on fact film is "The Stoning of Soraya M". I watched it once and gave it away. I couldn't keep it in the house, it was so awful.

This is why civilisation matters.

I know this stuff happens today and worse. It's awful. I am in no way condoning ISIS or what is happening to those in Syria or other countries where it's 'normal' to hack someone to death.

I have heard the term 'hung, drawn and quartered' before, I presume most people have. Not entirely sure that was what happened to the lad on the TV tonight, I thought being quartered was when they attached hands and feet to four horses by ropes and then rode off in four directions. Maybe I'm wrong. But seeing the 'pressing' was a real eye opener and truly shocking. We hear these terms when we read things but never actually think about what they mean.

I like history, I love reading books on how things were and it's always good to learn more. I love that someone knew what 'pressing' was and why it was used. That's what I love on this forum. Someone always knows interesting stuff.

It's a sort of gruesome fascination with British history really.

wanttobeok The hanging is done differently. They don't drop them, they lift them by the neck so it doesn't break their neck, and then bring them back down before they die. Sick.

When I was about eight years old, for our end of year primary school trip we were taken to see the head of St Oliver Plunkett who had been hung drawn and quartered in the 1680s.

Jolly time for all of us.

Oliver's head

squoosh Can you imagine them doing that now? Imagine the thread on here? There would be shouts of outrage! That is a truly horrific photo. Is it actually him? Did they preserve it?

Oh yeah, it's his actual head! I must find out of school trips to see Oliver Plunkett's head are still a thing. It was the 1980s when I saw him.

want no, they weren't hung till they were dead for the drawing and quartering part. I could be remembering incorrectly but I'm sure that's where the alternative humane sentence of hung till dead comes from.

Good that we've grown more civilised. Pity other cultures haven't.

The drawn I believe, is when the horses 'drew' you a certain distance after they'd almost hung you, and then they quartered you.

As a sidenote, the phrase 'on the wagon' is meant to derive from when you were taken to be executed. They'd sometimes let you have one last drink on your way to your execution.

Thanks JonSnowswife

So what is the term they use for what happened to that lad tonight? Hung, then his insides cut open and his intestines? pulled out and then had his head cut off.

I'm not sure. That might be drawn too. I'm sure the quartered comes from when they quartered them and chucked them on the bonfire (which is why we still do it to guy Fawkes).

I have been down the hospital with my DM this afternoon though so I might be talking complete bollocks.

I thought drawn was the removal of the intestines and then your body was cut into quarters which was why we saw the axe swing several times. I also read that Kit Harrington is an actual descendant of Robert Catesby.

You are correct about peine fort et dure, Schadenfreude. Sometimes they didn’t even bother with the door and just piled rocks on the poor victim’s chest.

I thought that the ‘drawing’ meant the drawing out of the entrails (I am a bit too well informed about this because of fondness for medieval history). I might be wrong. But JonSnow’sWife is correct that people were often tied to a hurdle (like a fence panel, I think) and dragged behind a cart to their place of execution.

I thought hanging drawing and quartering involved being hung until you were almost dead, then disembowelment/ castration (not sure which but that was the drawing part) which would then be held up to the dying man's face, before having your head cut off and your body cut into quarters or pieces and sent to various parts of the city/kingdom to be displayed in places like London Bridge.