Execution: A History of Capital Punishment in Britain

Execution: A History of Capital Punishment in Britain
ISBN-10
0752466623
ISBN-13
9780752466620
Series
Execution
Category
History
Pages
160
Language
English
Published
2011-12-31
Publisher
The History Press
Author
Simon Webb

Description

Judicial hanging is regarded by many as being the quintessentially British execution. However, many other methods of capital punishment have been used in this country; ranging from burning, beheading and shooting to crushing and boiling to death. This book explores these types of execution in detail. Readers may be surprised to learn that a means of mechanical decapitation, the Halifax Gibbet, was being used in England five hundred years before the guillotine was invented. Boiling to death was a prescribed means of execution in this country during the Tudor period. From the public death by starvation of those gibbeted alive, to the burning of women for petit treason, this book examines some of the most gruesome passages of British history.

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