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.

You can watch people being executed in the US today, never mind 400 years ago

It seems barbaric to go and watch someone die, but what about when it's your husband or father or son. You know the time, date and place that they will die - would the compulsion to be there with them override the horror?

A few years ago I went to a chateau built into a cliff in France. At the end there was a display on torture. I couldn’t figure how half the machines were used, but they gave helpful explanations and illustrations. It was ghastly.
This was it.

cheeseweb.eu/2015/07/cliff-chateau-maison-forte-de-reignac-dordogne-france/

You know the time, date and place that they will die - would the compulsion to be there with them override the horror?

I think it does, with family members and friends and spouses/partners. Not the same I know but our young uncle died from cancer very rapidly after being diagnosed. The compulsion to be there as a family meant he passed surrounded by nothing but love and not people who didn't want to be there because they were scared of death.

It's the ones packing a picnic to go and watch Tom from London be executed whilst tucking into cheese sarnies and sausage rolls which I can't get past.

I just started watching this on catch up, but I've now turned it off again. The woman's death was horrific, but then when they brought the young priest up I couldn't go on. Far too graphic.

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.

Lurked is right - they were partially strangled, taken down alive and their stomachs cut open and the entrails removed (this is the "drawn" bit) and burned in front of them, They were alive during all of this - it takes a long and agonising time to die from a stomach wound. Then they were hacked into four pieces, or torn apart by horses,

It was only used on men; women accused of treason would be burnt at the stake, as would heretics. I think one of the reasons it was used only on men was because part of the quartering involved castration - no where near as much fun to watch if it's a woman being done!

Pretzels - a primary reason that women were not hanged was that it was considered obscene and an affront to public decency because people (i.e. men) were able to look up their skirts and view their "private parts". Far better to burn them and then nobody gets offended. On the rare occasions women were hanged, their dresses would be tightly fastened around their ankles.

An interesting perspective on what is morally acceptable, I think.

Just realised that Slim has commented on this already - sorry, I should have read the thread,

Reading and watching history like this illustrates that Game of Thrones is more realistic of real life in pre-modern times (minus the dragons and magic of course) than I wanted to believe it is!

Watched this too (through my fingers) - I was up all night thinking of that poor woman. Nice touch placing a rock underneath her back.

I went to a school called St Margaret Clitherow School - they told us how she died and what she did etc, but I must admit it didn't sound quite as bad as it was shown last night..

Puppy "I went to a school called St Margaret Clitherow School - they told us how she died and what she did etc, but I must admit it didn't sound quite as bad as it was shown last night.."

not something you can really think about it till you see it, probably. Glad I didn't see Gunpowder last night as the only pressing death I saw was in Whitechapel - I began to wonder if the whole show had crossed a line there....it didn't but certainly I would have liked that scene to be a bit shorter....!

I have "Gunpowder, Treason and Plot" with Robert Carlyle still to watch. I hope that's not similar but I think it's much older so won't be trying out do GoT or whatever.

a primary reason that women were not hanged was that it was considered obscene and an affront to public decency because people (i.e. men) were able to look up their skirts and view their "private parts". Far better to burn them and then nobody gets offended.

Shows how bonkers our history is doesn't it? Fine to hang a desperate hungry 10yo who stole a loaf of bread but no at this ^^ they draw the line.

Absolutely JonSnow - one must preserve decorum,

I don’t normally consider myself particularly squeamish but I couldn’t watch last night. I got to the bit where they stripped the woman and laid her down then had to leave the room. I thought they were going to hang, draw and quarter her rather than crush her (didn’t know they did that) but even so, I’m glad I left.

I think it was awful to watch, but also necessary. We don't hear enough, if anything, about the persecution of Catholics in this country, and we are not taught in schools about the torments they faced. We just learn about Hitler every year and how persecuting a religious group is terrible and wrong, as is murdering them, while completely ignoring we did a not dissimilar thing. We get the Elizabeth I Armada speech but not the act demanding people attend Anglican services or face penalties. Even now, history books and classroom worksheets are biased against Catholics - "oh, they wanted to keep everything in Latin, boooo, and they thought the bread was the flesh, boooo, and they wanted to be led by a Pope in Rome, booooooooo...." and how the Reformation was really quite good, forget the fact that millions had their faith ripped from them.

If he was shown wanting to blow up Parliament because he didn't much like a few quid fine for not attending an Anglican church, it would have seemed like an overreaction. Instead, we can sympathise.

I think it was awful to watch, but also necessary. We don't hear enough, if anything, about the persecution of Catholics in this country, and we are not taught in schools about the torments they faced.

The Reformation was pretty brutal for both Catholics and Protestants, depending on if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Catholics generally had a worse time in Britain (though not in Mary Tudor's reign), whilst Protestants did in France.

that this country has a lot to answer for!

Does anywhere not have a past filled with violence and cruelty? England was nothing special in this regard.

Obliettes were another fairly unpleasant sanction- there’s one at Warwick Castle- person dropped into hole in the ground, iron grid over the top and literally forgotten (hence name). A similar device was used whereby criminal was put into a locked cage and strung up in a tree somewhere to slowly die.
If one considers how many countries still have the death penalty, how many times we see vile torture and gratuitous violence we can perhaps see the UK isn’t too awful by comparison.

Crumbs - I ws just thinking about oubliettes, too (I worry sometimes about how much horror lurks in my mind).

People of all ages just chucked in and left - sitting there amongst the decaying bodies of the people who'd died in there before you . . . if you were lucky you would have a long drop and die quickly.

If we put half the effort and imagination (and money) into looking after each other as we put into causing suffering and death, the world would be a much better place.

I remember being told the gory details of pressing, and hanging/drawing/quartering at school in what would now be year 8. I remember the bit about a pouch or small barrel of gunpowder being used to shorten the torment of those burned at the stake, too. This was after being shown the liberation of the Nazi death camps in year 7, as mentioned in the Hunger Games thread.

We must have been made of sterner stuff in the 60s, I don't remember being anyone being traumatised by any of this.

I found Gunpowder hard to engage with, not because of the grisly bits, but I couldn't get my head round the former vicar from Walford being such a baddie. And I know how it ends.

Edward I had William Wallace hanged, drawn and quartered. The first person he did this to - the first one in history - was Dafydd of Wales. Life was pretty barbaric, especially in the middle ages. I am glad we decided to give Gunpowder a body-swerve!

The first episode was compelling viewing. It's probably for the best if snowflakes don't watch it though.........

This is why I generally dislike religion and what it stands for. Some of the most heinous acts in history have been done in the name of one god of another.

Reading and watching history like this illustrates that Game of Thrones is more realistic of real life in pre-modern times (minus the dragons and magic of course) than I wanted to believe it is!

Yes. I remember the first time I watched GoT. I watched it out of boredom and was immediately hooked. I hadn't been warned about the blood and gore. Think I sat in shock for a good five minutes when Khal Drogo yanked that man's tongue out.

The bit I'm surprised about is that Margaret Clitherow was pressed while it was known she was pregnant. On reflection I realise that I only have more in depth knowledge of criminal/death penalty cases from more recent history and 'pleading the belly', now I'm off to have a Google and see how far back I can go. With the church being so influential I'm genuinely wrong footed at the acceptance of the death of an unborn child, however I have had the same feeling with the views and dealings with infants at the time before so what do I know?
Perhaps being in a Catholic mother was enough.
Sadly I have yet to be surprised at the depths of depravity we can sink to. I feel an affinity with Sir Terry Pratchett's description of humans 'where the falling angel meets the rising ape', we can be capable of astounding grace and goodness and unspeakable evil, occasionally the same person can do both in a lifetime. We are an interesting species.

bridgetoc

Yeah....so compelling.

You would have to be a snowflake to have had any feelings at all about was portrayed, definitely.

This thread got me thinking about why on earth the London Dungeons are still a tourist attraction. Surely they are an embarrassment and something that shouldn’t be celebrated or used as entertainment?