10 Ancient Methods of Death Penalty That Chill the Blood

Although the death penalty is used much less today, it was once a daily routine. Often, convicted criminals were subjected to severe torture to demonstrate to everyone what awaited them for breaking the law. All over the world, every country has had its own creative ways of carrying out the death penalty.

In most cases, the idea was to let the criminal suffer for as long as possible, and often the remains were often displayed to further humiliate the person executed. Here are examples of some of the most cruel and horrific methods of capital punishment in ancient times.

1. Linchi (slow cutting)

Lingchi was a brutal method of execution in China that was practiced until 1905. It consisted in cutting off many small pieces of flesh from the victim until she died from loss of blood. The executioners needed to cut off as many pieces of meat as possible without killing the victim. This method was also known as "death by a thousand cuts".

Lynching originated in the 10th century and was only outlawed at the beginning of the 20th century. Since it was only practiced just over 100 years ago, it is one of the few execution methods on this list that has been captured on film. The execution process depended on several factors, such as the skill and mercy of the executioner, as well as the seriousness of the crime committed.

According to some surviving Ming Dynasty records, as many as 3,000 pieces could be cut from a victim before he died, while other reports claim that the entire process took less than 15 minutes. Opium was sometimes given to convicts, but it is unclear whether this was done to make them suffer more or less (this could keep them conscious for a longer time). Lynching was one of the main forms of the "Five Punishments" - a scale of punishments depending on severity. The victim might not even be killed, but “simply” cut off his nose, legs, or castrated.

2. Sawing

In medieval times in Europe, victims were sawed in half for crimes such as witchcraft, adultery, murder, blasphemy and theft. The Roman Empire preferred to lay a person horizontally to be sawed, while the Chinese were more creative, hanging their victims upside down and sawing them from the groin. This method was more effective in causing victims to suffer more as there was better blood flow to the brain, prolonging consciousness.

According to historical documents of the Czech Hussite reformist movement, at that time the victims' arms and legs were first sawed off, cauterizing the wounds with a torch, and only after that the condemned man was sawed in half. As for ancient Rome, Caligula was known to enjoy dining while watching people execute people in a similar manner, enjoying their suffering.

3. Execution by elephants

Also known as "gunga rao", this form of punishment was mainly used in Asia and India, although some evidence of this method exists in the Western world (but in very rare cases). Execution by elephants has been a popular form of capital punishment in India since the Middle Ages. The victims were often enemy soldiers or civilians who committed crimes such as theft, tax evasion, and rebellion.

Despite the abundance of animals that could be used for execution, elephants were used because they could be trained to torture and kill criminals. For example, an elephant could be commanded to crush the limbs of a victim. Another example of execution by elephants was told by the French traveler Francois Bernier. He saw an elephant trained to "slice" criminals with blades mounted on its tusks.

4. Hanging, drawing and quartering

According to English law, this was a punishment for a man who was found guilty of treason (women were burned at the stake). Until 1870, those found guilty of treason were tied to a horse-drawn sleigh or sled and dragged to the place of execution. There the criminal was hanged, but they did it gradually, and not by knocking the chair out from under his feet (so as not to break his neck). Moments before death, the rope was cut and the person was laid on the table. There the executioner cut off his genitals and disembowelled his entrails, burning them.

At the end, the victim was beheaded and the body was cut into four parts. Often the head and parts of the body were doused with boiling water (so that they would not rot so quickly) and hung on the gates of the city as a warning. This sadistic method of execution was first invented in 1241 to punish William Maurice, who was convicted of piracy. The Treason Act of 1814 made the method of execution “simpler.” Now the criminal was simply hanged (as usual, with a broken neck) and posthumously beheaded.

5. Gibbetting

In Scotland, this form of capital punishment was primarily reserved for convicted murderers. Under the Murder Act 1752, the bodies of executed murderers were either dismembered or hung in chains. Gibbeting virtually disappeared in the late 1770s, although there were laws providing for this punishment until 1834.

One of the reasons why the popularity of this type of death penalty began to decline is the fact that the bodies of the criminal were displayed only at the places of their execution, and could not serve as a general “scarecrow”. The best description of this method of capital punishment is the story of Alexander Gillan. He was a farmer's servant who was convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl named Elspeth Lamb in 1810. She was tending her father's cattle when the accused attacked her and beat her to death.

The judge wanted to impose a death sentence that would be considered exemplary for such a crime, so he decided that Gillan would be executed in the same place where his victim was found, with his body hung in chains to serve as a reminder of the retribution for the murder.

6. Walling up

This form of punishment involved placing the convicted criminal in a confined space with no exits. Sometimes it would be a lifelong prison sentence, and other times the victims would be doomed to death from starvation and dehydration. In the photo that was first published in the issue National Geographic 1922, this execution was clearly shown: a Mongolian woman was locked in a wooden box in the desert.

Photographer Albert Kahn witnessed a woman asking for food, but was forced to leave it in the box because it would be a huge violation for an anthropologist to interfere with another culture's criminal justice system. According to Kahn, the woman was convicted of adultery. But the victims did not always die of hunger.

According to a newspaper report from 1914, in China, criminals were locked in heavy iron coffins in which they could not sit upright or lie stretched out. For only a few minutes a day they could see sunlight when food was thrown into their coffin through a small hole.

7. Poena cullei

Also known as the "sack execution", this type of execution was reserved for those found guilty of killing relatives. The victim was sewn into a leather bag along with a live snake, monkey, rooster and dog, and then drowned in a pond. Interestingly, initially (at least this is stated in the oldest document in which poena cullei was mentioned) only a snake was sewn into the bag with the criminal. Before drowning, people sentenced to “execution in a sack” were first beaten with sticks painted the color of blood, and only then drowned. Eventually, poena cullei was replaced by burning alive.

8. Skafism

This was an ancient Persian method of torture reserved for those who had committed serious crimes such as murder or treason. The criminal was stripped naked and tied tightly in a hollowed out tree trunk or between two boats, after which he was force-fed milk and honey. This punishment usually took place in a swamp or in the sun. Not only were people force-fed this mixture, but the victim’s body was also smeared with it. This attracted all kinds of insects, as well as rats.

Victims of scaphism also suffered from severe diarrhea (remember what they were fed), which left them weak and dehydrated. However, they did not die from diarrhea-induced dehydration because they were constantly fed large amounts of milk and honey.

This meant that criminals could survive for days or even weeks in a little hell of their own feces, milk, honey and insects that ate the flesh and laid maggots in it. Eventually, the larvae ate the body from the inside.

9. Wheeling

Also known as the “Catherine Wheel” because its origins were associated with Saint Catherine of Alexandria, this brutal torture device was used during medieval times in Europe.

It was popular in France and Germany, and in some cases was still used even after the Middle Ages. People who were convicted of aggravated murder were tied to a cart wheel and then had their arms and legs broken with a hammer or club. After this, the wheel was raised and the criminal was put on public display.

10. Garrote

Execution by garrote was first introduced in 1812 as an alternative to hanging. At least 736 people were executed in this manner in Spain during the 19th century. Typically, this method of capital punishment was reserved for those found guilty of crimes such as murder, banditry, or major acts of terrorism. The prisoner was seated with his back to the counter, and a loop of rope was tightened around his neck, which the executioner then tightened from behind with a stick.

There was also a Chinese version of this execution method using a bowstring. Over time, several improvements have been made. The rope was replaced with a metal hoop, which was driven by a screw and a lever mechanism. In the Catalan garrote, a star-shaped blade was added to the screw, which, when "screwed in", entered the prisoner's neck and crushed the spine, effectively preventing the prisoner from suffocating.

Although the victim usually lost consciousness quickly and died within minutes, this was never a guaranteed outcome. This led to the conclusion that such a method of execution was never faster or more humane than hanging.

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The case of Maria Motuznaya, the girl who they want to imprison for memes on VK, seems to be coming to an end (not even a year has passed!).

05/08/2018, early in the morning, around 8 am, 6 people broke into my apartment: an investigator, three detectives and two witnesses. They shoved a piece of paper with a search warrant in my face. Woke up, I saw only two lines there: the ID of my old VK page and the wording: humiliation of the Negroid race. Naturally, I decided it was a joke. But when they took my phone and started searching me, I turned pale. They took my computer and phone, ransacked my closets and took me to a remote location. Then I didn’t yet know that I was being taken to the so-called department “E”. Having sat me down at the table, the conversation began with the phrase “Well, admit it.”

Today another court hearing in Maria’s case took place in Barnaul. The recently “deceased” Husky came to support her.

As a result, Maria Motuznaya’s case was returned to the prosecutor’s office - most likely, this will all end there.

“In general, Masha’s case shows that the only shield in Russia in 2018 is publicity and the public defense of one’s rights,” they write about Maria on Twitter.

By the way, not so long ago Supreme Court proposed that publications on social networks with signs of inciting hatred or enmity should not be considered a crime if they do not pose any danger to society. It is quite possible that this proposal also affected Motuznaya’s case.

A creepy photo selection that captures one of the pages of the process of Europeanization of our country. Attention: The photo below is not for the impressionable or faint of heart.

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We have a lot of fools who consider themselves “almost Europeans” and when choosing between “Bright High-Born Civilized Europe” and “fucking Russian”, of course, they admire the first and despise and hate the second.
This tradition is old, it has been going on for three hundred years. But I will write about this later.
For now I just want to post simple thematic photographic material.
I warn you in advance that it is not very pleasing to the eye.
Many people will not like it at all.
But like a bitter medicine, it is needed.

After surfing the Internet for about an hour, I picked up photos of gallows with our citizens and female citizens, with which cultural Europeans from the paramilitary forces of the Third Reich decorated our land.

The culture and civilization of Europeans is simply amazing from the photographs. Because the Kulturtragers really enjoyed being photographed with joyful faces against the backdrop of the gallows. Well, it’s fun to film with a woman against the backdrop of a gallows. Culture. The Germans took such photos very willingly in 1941 and 1942. Then the fashion faded away (it’s not the fashion to hang everyone, but the fashion to take pictures with a happy smile), because it turned out that stupid scoops do not understand the beauty of such photos and, having found one on the next Fritz, most likely will not take him to distant Siberia, but they'll finish right there. Naturally, well-educated Europeans did not want to die like this. So they continued to hang them. And they stopped taking photographs.

It’s for that scum who really likes to argue that in war everyone is the same - like the Soviets were terrible and ferocious just like the fragrant Europeans - I’m making this publication. With a request to answer for your words, presenting a photo of happy scoops against the background of hanged Germans and German Frau and Mädchen, or to shut up your stinking haylo and not lie.

Also, this publication can work as visual material in a conversation with our home-grown Hitlerophiles.

I especially note that I have presented here the material collected in half an hour, without in any way disturbing, for example, the materials of the state commission for the investigation of Nazi atrocities on the territory of the USSR. This is a small grain of sand in the total volume of villainy and genocide. Also, I didn’t put anything here except gallows - no mass shootings, no mockery, no rape, no robbery and other delights of Europeanization.

A textbook example - it’s fun to film in front of a nurse hanged for helping wounded Red Army soldiers.

As is easy to see, enlightened Europeans were alien to sexism and therefore women and girls were constantly hanged. I can’t write anything about these dead. Alas, our fucking journalists were lazy rubbish even then - only Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was covered in the press. At the same time, her partner, who was hanged several kilometers further, did not receive any press.

Separately, I note that even the company commander, and in some cases even a lower rank, could hang any civilian. No trial. For those interested, see the directive on special jurisdiction in the occupied territory, according to which any German could do anything here without fear of punishment. (Well, it’s true that you couldn’t kill your own Germans, and you couldn’t rape and rob German officers’ wives, as we see in the example of SS Brigadefuehrer Kaminsky, whom the Germans shot precisely for such exploits of his heroes.)

As you can see, it was fashionable to act next to a hanged woman. It was also fashionable and fun, in European fashion, to mock a corpse. By the way, such Aryan fun as cutting off women's breasts did not work in this case - it does not work on a frozen corpse. And so - then it happened very often. Another thing is that against the backdrop of tens of thousands of deaths, this was no longer very impressive, which is why our people didn’t talk about it too much. Who knew that so many homegrown bastards would appear at the beginning of the 21st century.

It was also fashionable to hang girls on monuments. The first two photos show a hanged teacher in Voronezh.

But nothing stopped us from improvising. Trees and hastily knocked together structures, or anything adapted, were quite suitable.

(this is the only Soviet photograph in the collection. Volokolamsk was liberated - and we saw
such. Stationary gallows for permanent hangings. So we held a rally - right from
tank)

But quite solid buildings were often made, especially for executions - for example, in the first photo there is a stationary gallows in Volokolamsk. What is especially piquant is that filming the gallows was prohibited by the German command. Nevertheless - judging by the last three photographs - the Germans did not care about the bans. The poster is already hanging. Which is not possible - but to hell with it. With a poster. But nevertheless, German discipline took place - therefore, not everyone removed the gallows, only the scoundrels. Just think about it. If it weren't forbidden to take photographs, how many photos would we have now?

For example, in these photographs you can see how many people are taking photographs. But more often they hung them on whatever came to hand - for example, it was popular to hang them on balconies. Kharkov, Sumsk and everywhere else.

And in the best traditions of the Great German and Austrian armies. They became famous for gallows for civilians back in the First World War. If readers are interested, I can easily dig up a dozen photos from the First World War on the Internet. However, many have read Schweik, it is well written about this.

Finally, I want to show the sickening vileness of our unfinished Hitlerophiles and Reich defenders. They really love, when talking about the snow-whiteness and fluffiness of innocently accused Wehrmacht and SS soldiers, to cite this photo as an example:

Which is a photo montage. In fact, the background is the SS men swaggering over the devout Jew. A Jew whose sidelocks are cut off is an object of ridicule. Because of this, our assholes are screaming about fakes. Nevertheless, the photo hung of a Soviet nurse is not a fake, which can be seen if you look at it separately from the background.

And I just wonder how brainwashed these monkeys from among my - alas - compatriots are, that they associate themselves as fucking untermens, whom the Germans didn’t even care about and successfully liquidated until 1942, when it turned out that they weren’t strong enough enough and we have to attract collaborators with purebred Aryans.

You idiots - yes, the citizens of the Reich would have condemned you to prison for such impudent behavior. With a hole in the back of the head.