Today in History

So the title of this entry reminds me of when people post topics of antiquity that happened on the exact day some time ago. This is not one of those times. It is however something similar in that today in history, I picked up a book and read words from it. Those words enlightened me on two practices of execution for acts of treason that were enacted into law to illustrate to people what gruesome things would happen to your body if you committed such a crime worthy of torture.

The first one is terrible. Well I guess that they are all truly terrible, but this first one must have really got your blood boiling.

Okay so Henry the VIII (that's too many damn roman numeral letters to enumerate if you ask me) put into law in 1531 the legal practice of boiling a subject to death. This immediately made me think of that analogy used about a frog in hot water (it's too dumb to jump out of the water if you place it in cold water and slowly heat it up until the water is boiling). Well that's exactly what Henry did to people. He put them in a pot placed above some logs, and made a fire. Ironically, the first person to ever be executed using this technique was a chef by the name of Richard Roose. He was the chef of some bishop and convicted of trying to poison said bishop with a meat sauce containing hemlock and the "deadly nightshade". Now I haven't done any research on how and why this "nightshade" is deadly but what I do know is that tomatoes are part of the nightshade family. I'm thinking it was more than a tomato though that earned the quotes around "deadly".

So the chef, and anyone else who was committed to this type of torture, sat in the water for a grueling two plus hours while it heated enough to be lethal. As someone who takes "cool" tempered showers, the thought of sitting in a pot suspended above an open flame for two damn long hours hits a nerve of disgust. HA HA, you liked that slip of personal connection there didn't you? I sure did.

People would gather 'round these events to watch the person in the pot grow steadily more uncomfortable. I wonder if the victim was forced to sit with the water up to his/her neck. The book doesn't elaborate on that part, but I'd imagine that if it was a short pot and the individual was only in water up to their chest, that eventually they might see bits of flesh boil up around them before the pain was intolerable and sent the body into shock.

Don't worry though, this was only in law until Henry the VI outlawed it in 1547. For those keeping track, yes that is the older Henry outlawing it after the younger Henry passed away. Why so many Henries? Ah never mind, no one really cares why.

Okay so I know I made it sound like there would be more examples. Quite frankly I just don't want to type any longer, so I am going to stop....right....now.