Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (12 page)
As the years went by, the numbers decreased. But the agony if anything, intensified, as a letter from Lisbon dated 15 January 1796 written by the Bishop of Gloucester to the Bishop of Salisbury confirms:
‘I saw the whole process, and of the five persons condemned there were but four burnt. Heytor Dias and Maria Penteyra were burnt alive, the other two first strangled. The execution was very cruel. The woman was alive in the flames half an hour, and the man, above an hour.
The present king and his brothers were seated at a window so near as to be addressed for a considerable time, in very moving terms, by the man as he was burning. But though the favour he begged was only for a few more faggots, yet he was not able to obtain it. The fire was stoked only as much as it burnt away, to keep him in the same degree of heat. All his entreaties could not procure him a larger allowance of wood to shorten and dispatch him...’
Far from being a medieval barbarity, the Inquisition continued into the nineteenth century, the last victims being a Quaker schoolmaster, who was hanged in Spain, and a Jew, who was burned at the stake, both these taking place in 1826.
In France, Louis IX followed the example of Frederick II and in 1270 continued to sanction that particular penalty. The victim, having undergone the usual tortures, would be escorted to the execution site. There the stake had been erected, and around it alternate layers of straw and wood stacked to the height of a man. Care had been taken to leave a free space around the stake as a passage through which to lead the victim and, having been stripped of his clothes and made to don a shirt smeared with sulphur, he had to enter via a narrow opening and be tightly bound to the stake with ropes and chains.
The passage was then filled in with more straw and wood, some being thrown over the victim before the pile was ignited on all sides. Where some mercy was to be shown, the executioner, when preparing the woodpile, would position a long iron bar among the timbers, breast high, so that directly the fire was lighted, the bar could be pushed against the victim, crushing his chest and mortally wounding him before the flames devoured his body.
Sometimes, as a concession, the condemned man was first garrotted, his corpse then being carried into the centre of the pyre. Corpses were also burned where the guilt of people became known only after death and interment; the bodies were then exhumed and burned at the stake.
Another method, employed in the sixteenth century, was known as ‘estrapade’: the heretic had a chain secured about his waist and was attached to a crane-like structure that raised and lowered him repeatedly into the flames of the fire burning beneath.
As in the Spanish
auto de fe
, the King was usually present to watch the executions, the French executioner not commencing the entertainment until King Francis and his courtiers had arrived. It was reported that over 4,000 men, women and children were burned to death in the many religious persecutions that occurred during his reign.
The practice spread to the West Indies, a native being burned to death there in 1760 for taking part in a local disturbance. He was made to sit on the ground, where he was secured by chains to a stake driven deep into the earth. His feet were set on fire, but ‘he uttered not a word, and saw his legs reduced to ashes with the utmost firmness and composure; after which, one of his arms by some means getting loose, he snatched a brand from the fire that was consuming him, and flung it in the face of the executioner, but it availed him naught.’
More recently, in June 1974, the then president of Equatorial Guinea took an active part in several executions of those who opposed his regime, one being that of a dissident who was drenched in petrol and then burned alive.
BURNED INTERNALLY
‘[Edward II] was taken to Berkeley Castle at the instigation of Mortimer, where he was savagely tortured and put to death “by the insertion of a red-hot iron in his fundament”.’
Internal burning was a rare method of execution, rare possibly because, in the days when brutality was the norm, such a punishment provided little in the way of spectacle, unlike beheading or hanging. At Nuremberg in 1889 a number of artefacts displayed in the museum purported to be ‘iron ladles for use in pouring molten lead or boiling pitch down the throats of victims, thereby converting their bodies into burning cauldrons’.
The most notable case of being burned to death internally, albeit administered somewhat differently, occurred when Edward II was killed in that fashion. Despite favouring the company of young men, in particular Piers Gaveston, he married Isabella, daughter of King Philip IV of Spain. Gaveston was killed by the barons, and towards the end of his dissolute rule Edward switched his favours to Hugh le Despenser. By this time Queen Isabella had grown to despise her husband and had in fact formed an intimate relationship with Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, one of Edward’s opponents.
Together with her son, she sailed from France and landed with a small army of supporters on the coast of Suffolk on 24 September 1326. Seizing power, she had the Despensers executed and Edward, taken captive, had to abdicate. He was taken to Berkeley Castle at the instigation of Mortimer, where he was savagely tortured and put to death ‘by the insertion of a red-hot iron in his fundament’.
For Roger Mortimer retribution followed three years later when, in 1330, he was captured by Edward III and accused of causing dissension between Edward and Isabella, of usurping Royal power and of causing the death of Edward II. He was taken to Tyburn, where he was hanged, drawn and quartered.
‘The victims were trussed like chickens, sharp hooks being thrust through their back muscles so that, attached to chains, they could be swung over a roaring fire from a tripod.’
Practised by some African tribes earlier this century, this method of execution was a traditional rite inflicted upon those committing adultery. After judgment had been passed by the village elders, the doomed couple were stripped naked and tied to posts sunk deep in the ground, about 4 feet apart, facing each other. Water, but no food, was given to them, the water being heavily salted.
After 24 hours the man would be asked whether he wanted any food. Regardless of his reply, the executioner, wielding a panga, a long, wide-bladed knife, would slice off a portion of the woman’s breast and force it into the man’s mouth, his assistant staunching the gaping wound to prevent too much loss of blood. The action would then be repeated in reverse, the woman being fed with some of her lover’s flesh.
The procedure, watched by all the villagers, would continue, the executioner prolonging the ordeal by taking care not to sever arteries or cut vital organs with his panga, until one of the victims died. When that occurred, the corpse’s flesh would be fed to the other until he or she also expired.
An instance of rather different character took place in the 1930s in the village of Afik-Itu in Nigeria. The headman, Epe, had developed a taste for human flesh and, having complete authority in the village, condemned offenders to death with his appetite in mind.
The victims were trussed like chickens, sharp hooks being thrust through their back muscles so that, attached to chains, they could be swung over a roaring fire from a tripod. There they were roasted alive as if on a spit. When done to a turn, the bodies were cut down, to be eaten by Epe and others, the headman selecting the choicest morsels, the livers, for himself.
Although reports of the atrocities filtered through to the British authorities, punitive expeditions proved futile, and it was many years before Epe was tracked down and brought to justice.
CAULDRON
One of the many ways in which devout Christian believers were martyred was by means of the cauldron. The ‘heretic’, tied down securely on a bench, would have a cauldron or large metal bowl placed upside-down on his bare stomach. The bowl covered a number of dormice which, after a fire had been kindled on top of the bowl, would be driven into a frenzy by the increasing heat, and, after scuttling madly around, would eventually burrow their way out through the victim’s stomach and entrails.
Not mice but cats were used in Germany during the seventeenth-century persecution of the Protestants by the Catholic Church. A large cage was placed on the victim’s stomach and tied there with straps, a feral cat then being introduced into the cage and tormented by the executioner and his assistants using sharp-pointed sticks. Finally, the maddened animal clawed its way into the flesh and bowels of the victim.
A similar torture was also practised by certain tribes in Central Africa. The offender was stripped and staked out on the ground, and an inverted tin box firmly attached to his stomach, its contents being fearsome soldier ants. No application of heat was necessary, the hungry ants in due course eating their way through the victim’s abdomen in order to escape.
Stomach burner and rats