# Different types of used executions?



## Purple Inukshuk (Jun 22, 2014)

Hello! I'm asking about executions, the more original types, mostly used in the olden days. 

I've heard the usual ones before; hanging, guillotine, firing squad... But are there more interesting ways of giving the death penalty? It can be from the British to the Japanese, has anyone got some information on the ways of execution?


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## Greimour (Jun 22, 2014)

William Wallace was Hung, Drawn and Quartered... I will come back with more in a minute... but wanted to be the first to share that one. As I am part Scottish and his tale (the film and the real version) makes him one of my heroes 


Ling Chi (Death by a Thousand cuts stemmed from this but really after slow cuts on various area, they would then be stabbed in heart or be beheaded...) - China

Brazen Bull (Athens?) You may have seen this in a film recently... Perseus was it? I forget.
Basically, a brass bull that can be opened and you put a man inside then light a fire under it with him locked in. Pretty sure that's the brazen bull, maybe I should've looked it up.

Flaying was common in many European countries... 

** Other methods are gruesome, not sure if you want those so I won't share here... look up scaphism for an example **

Others include Boiling, Burning, Pressing (or Crushing), Disembowelment (one the birtish know well, seek origin for "Have your guts for Garters" phrase),  The Wheel - and finally - Impalement.

I think I have reached close to all the ones I know of.


~Kev.

Edit - just remembered another... 'Stoning' ... can't forget that one. Referenced for over two-thousand years and yet, I remembered that one last


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## Purple Inukshuk (Jun 22, 2014)

Hmm, interesting ones there! I usually don't forget the tale of Rasputin who got shot, poisoned, shot again, drowned, dragged by horse, drowned again, just in case he wasn't dead haha.

yeah I shouldn't forget those methods either! I remember the most nightmarish one I remember was

(this is pretty gruesome)

they would put you in a wooden tub with a cover that traps you in the tub except your head so you can breathe, they feed you and eventually you have to defecate in the tub that eventually gets a bit flooded, then comes the worms that slowly eat you alive. It make me shiver every time.

I've heard of the Brazen Bull but not Ling Chi, that sounds interesting! Thank you for your info!


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## Reject (Jun 22, 2014)

France had the "Republican Marriage" - Sounds Romantic?

A man and woman were bound tightly to each other before being thrown into a river to drown.


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## Greimour (Jun 22, 2014)

Purple Inukshuk said:


> they would put you in a wooden tub with a cover that traps you in the tub except your head so you can breathe, they feed you and eventually you have to defecate in the tub that eventually gets a bit flooded, then comes the worms that slowly eat you alive. It make me shiver every time.



Hahaha... now you have said that, look up Scaphism! LOLZ (extremely similar, practically the same... only usually the head is not exposed as it can result in dieng too quickly.)

Reject, I have never heard of that one. That's pretty c'r'ool 

I wonder how many methods I could dig up with some research - skipping obvious ones like Lethal Injection, Poisoning and Gassing... there is probably a name given to the method where you are dragged by a horse.


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## Reject (Jun 22, 2014)

There is pressing, where for example large rocks were placed on the accused body, until they confessed to whatever crime they were accused of.  They would then stop being pressed and be executed in which ever manner was in favour at the time.  Of course if you were innocent (Or indeed guilty for that matter) and wouldn't confess you would die from being "pressed!"


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## Purple Inukshuk (Jun 22, 2014)

Interesting ones, Reject. I've never heard of Republican Marriage hahah.

Ive been to California once and there was that Medieval Times restaurant with live action jousting and such while you eat without utensils. There was a museum filled of torture and execution tools I wouldn't have ever imagined. Like the breast remover, sawing person in half from groin to head, even an instrument like that guitar that bards would play that was bound tightly to your neck so you had to play like a fool until you die from suffocation. It was quite educational haha.


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## Reject (Jun 22, 2014)

Living close to York, we are steeped in both Roman and Viking history.  Bloodthirsty buggers they were!


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## kilroy214 (Jun 22, 2014)

The native american Apaches would sharpen green wood and pierce a man through his ankle area then hoist him up in a tree by the piercings and then light a fire under his dangling head, eventually torching his scalp and face and literally boiling the brain inside the skull until it  liquified and percolated out of the (now) dead man's nose.


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## Purple Inukshuk (Jun 22, 2014)

That's wicked right there, I remember now the method used in China to make someone fess up information they tied them over fast growing bamboo that will penetrate them in a couple days time or something. I think I saw that on an episode of Mythbusters.


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## garza (Jun 29, 2014)

Probably the most efficient and humane method is the shot to the back of the neck. It's been used in Russia since the introduction of firearms. Death is near instantaneous and painless because the central nervous system shuts down before anything else happens.


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## Morkonan (Jun 29, 2014)

Purple Inukshuk said:


> ...But are there more interesting ways of giving the death penalty?...



Death by Ooga Booga? (It's an old joke...)

The most interesting death sentence will be the one that you invent. Is there something about your Setting that is interesting? Deadly beasts? Terrible plants? Magics, technology, social conventions? Something like that?

Combine natural human fears in order to come up with something horrendous. For instance, we have a natural aversion to being eaten by wild animals... We have social aversions to public humiliation and such. We fear for the safety of our families, children, loved ones, etc.. We tend to dislike pain, too. Start combining "negative" things together and be sure to include what you can of the unique attributes in your Setting to come up with the most interesting death sentences.

Let's take the terrible death that Wesley is faced with in "The Princess Bride" - http://www.virginmedia.com/movies/features/tricks-traps-and-torture.php?page=6

It sucks years of life from him, resulting in the most intense pain a mortal can experience. The device makes use of aspects of the Setting, including the somewhat outrageous (and very funny) bits. The result of this combination? Pretty nasty death, but a humorous scene.. as it should be, for this movie is a comedy.


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## aj47 (Jul 2, 2014)

When I mentioned this thread to my son, he said the Norse people did something called the "blood eagle" which I'm not googling because it's too gory for my taste. The important part is they die of suffocation, not the wounds.


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## Greimour (Jul 2, 2014)

Didn't know blood eagle caused suffocation. Though I can't imagine living long enough to experience the pain of salt - sure they pull the lungs out your back, but I didn't know they damaged the lungs or removed them... I imagined they just moved them out of the way - because next comes the salt. If they scream during the execution or make noise - they dont get to go Valahalla... but if they fully remove the lungs - by time they add salt - no longer able to scream regardless. 

I'd scream before they broke the first rib, I definitely wouldn't be going Valhalla. Id rather die in battle with a sword in hand. Much easier ticket to Odin's Halls.


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## kilroy214 (Jul 3, 2014)

Colombian Neck-tie. Nuff said.


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## Elvenswordsman (Jul 3, 2014)

Easy enough to Google. The ones that disturbed me the most have to do with saw horses, where you sit on top of something with a jagged edge until you're split apart by your own weight. Or the one where they saw you in half while you hang upside down, because the blood to your head helps you live through it until you've literally been split in half.

Executions are bad business, imo.

Also, cement shoes.


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## Pidgeon84 (Jul 3, 2014)

Oh man, this thread is right up my alley. 

The inquisition had this thing. I was just a block of wood in the shape of a triangle. They would hang over it and the block would go between legs (point up) and they would rest your wait on the block. So your own weight would slowly just split you in half. And even as... Stuff started to fall out you would still be alive lol.


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## Pidgeon84 (Jul 3, 2014)

There was the The Pear, not sure if that's what is was called. But it's this pear shaped device they used on witches and homosexual. They would put it in an orifice, vaginal for women, anus for men, and it had a crank so it would spread wider and wider until it eventually... Well you can imagine lol


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## Nickleby (Jul 3, 2014)

How about the classics--crucifixion with all its variations, poena cullei, precipitation, the seesaw, live burial, snake pits....


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## Pidgeon84 (Jul 3, 2014)

Nickleby said:


> How about the classics--crucifixion with all its variations, poena cullei, precipitation, the seesaw, live burial, snake pits....



Don't forget limbs tied to horses.


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## aj47 (Jul 4, 2014)

What's this for anyway?  Are you looking for one method or several?


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## CyberWar (Jul 23, 2014)

Damn, it's only my second post on this forum, and already I've found the one thread about (painful) methods of execution... That's saying something, lol...

In old Russia, criminals condemned to death sometimes had large meat hooks pushed under their ribs, from which they were then suspended either on a gibbet or on city walls until they expired.

In that same Russia, counterfeiters were executed by pouring molten metal down their throats, using the same metal that the condemned had used for their counterfeited coins.

Persians would sometimes sew a condemned man into the carcass of a suitably large animal (a large sheep, for example) and tie him to a post, where he would then be slowly devoured alive by carrion birds along with the carcass as they came to feast, attracted by the stench of rotting flesh.

One form occasionally practiced in old Germany and Eastern Europe involved burying one or several men into the ground neck deep and then plowing their heads off with an agricultural plow. 

A particularly nasty death was reserved those who plundered beehives in medieval Livonia. Back in those days, beekeepers mostly just hollowed out standing trees rather than constructed the box-like hives known in modern times. Since wax was a precious commodity and was often used to pay tithes to the Church that used it to make candles, stealing it was considered an offense deserving of death, much like stealing horses was a capital crime in many nations of old. So a man caught stealing from the beehive tree would be hanged by his own intestines from that tree, or alternatively, had a length of his innards pulled out and nailed to the tree before being driven around it with a whip, forcing the man to eviscerate himself.

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In any case, if you seek a method of execution for a work of fiction that's not strictly based in historical facts, you might as well make up your own. Even if you aim for historical accuracy, historically the kings and lords of old were at much greater liberty to exercise their imagination when punishing their subjects than they are today, and would on occasion make up their own unique nasty punishments not otherwise enshrined in legal codes.


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