[vannrox]

Horrific but interesting.

[cyborg]

wow

[ElkGroveDan]

In the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, death sentences were passed for everything from theft and burglary to treason and murder.

Ah! The good old days!

[Terpfen]

"Horrific but interesting."

The 17th-century equivalent of a train wreck, indeed.

[68skylark]

The author seems to relish giving us every detail -- I could have done with a few less.

[scan59]

God forbid you get tangled up in the legal system in those days.

[DBrow]

Mostly men in their 20's, hmmm.

That means the same demographic committed most crimes, like today.

It also suggests that the appeals process was briefer than today, even assuming conviction at 17 or so.

[mewzilla]

May I ask a dumb question? Unless these poor sods were interred with rap sheets, how do they know the men were criminals?

[Servant of the 9]

Death on the gallows generally occurred by slow strangulation; it would have taken up to a half an hour for a person to die. (Instant death through hanging, by the use of a drop through a trapdoor that broke the condemned person's neck, was only gradually introduced in the late eighteenth century.)

It used to be customary for a man who was going to be hanged to try to get his associates to attend and pull on his legs to end things quickly.

So9

[Doctor Stochastic]

In the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, death sentences were passed for everything from theft and burglary to treason and murder.

Thus motivating the idea of leaving no witness to even a small crime. Most of these death sentences for "petty" crimes were repealed in the 1800s under the prodding of Scotland Yard (as it was then known.)

[Doctor Stochastic]

In the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, death sentences were passed for everything from theft and burglary to treason and murder.

Thus motivating the idea of leaving no witness to even a small crime. Most of these death sentences for "petty" crimes were repealed in the 1800s under the prodding of Scotland Yard (as it was then called.)

[Elsie]

The victims, all of whom are thought to have been hanged, seem to have been denied a Christian burial. They were interred in unconsecrated ground, and some 20 percent of them were buried face down or on their sides. Most were not buried in a traditional Christian east-west alignment, thus depriving them of the opportunity to rise from the dead facing Jerusalem on the Day of Judgment.

 

Hey guys!

 

If your outfit can learn their names, then someone can be baptized for them.  It seems obvious to me that  the data in this article indicates they were not believers.

 

What BETTER way to give them hope??

[expatpat]

......the way in which the bodies of executed criminals were treated in postmedieval England

Hey, they're probably talking about my ancestors!

[Docbarleypop]

Naw, those were just the guys that didnt get out of my way at the rugby match I played in last september!

[colorado tanker]

Wow. This must have gotten Britain in deep doodoo with the UN and Amnesty International.

[blam]

GGG

[Oatka]

Rough justice indeed. I wonder if there would be any value in collecting survivable DNA and building a database - for what I don't know.

I understand that until the railroads were built, people stayed pretty close to home, which probably meant some inbreeding or at least a very narrow gene pool.

[farmfriend]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
List for articles regarding early civilizations , life of all forms, - dinosaurs - etc.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this ping list.

[dighton]

It is interesting.

One small mistake. In England, the long drop was introduced in the late nineteenth century (1800s), not eighteenth.

William Marwood + long drop

[Fedora]

This will sound strange, but it sounds to me like some of these burials were associated with medieval beliefs about ghosts and vampires. It's not discussed much, but towards the tail end of the Witch Hunt, there was also a widespread Vampire Hunt in Europe, which lasted as late as the 18th century in some areas. In light of that, note this detail:

> the neck of another individual had been carefully cut through the seventh vertebra

Which is one way certain traditions advocated laying a vampire to final rest.

To shed some light on ancient beliefs about such things, here's something I was reading recently in a book about Celtish archaeology (Daithi O Hogain, The Sacred Isle: Belief and Religion in Pre-Christian Ireland, Chapter 2, 45ff)--note the parallels with the above:

". . .there was a general belief that buried treasure was guarded by spirits of animals. . .It was commonly believed that buried treasure was guarded by a human spirit, and indeed several stories are told of a person having been deliberately put to death upon the burial of a trove, so that his ghost would act as guardian. . .hostages could be treated with great cruelty in early Ireland. . .

". . .The notion that the head or bones of a dead person continued to have some kind of power is illustrated by a very special type of motif. . .Eoghan Beal. ..ordered that a red javelin be placed in his hand, and that he be standing upright and facing northwards against the Ulstermen, 'for they will not go to battle against Connacht while my grave faces them and while I myself are arranged in that manner'. His northern foes are reported to have later set aside this impediment by exhuming his body and burying him in another place, with his face downwards. . .Inherent in this tradition was the idea that the spiritual part of the individual survived death, and that in this way the dead person could still be a force to be reckoned with. . .That special properties were believed by the Iron Age Celts to reside in buried heads is clear from the archaeological record. There was a common custom in Celtic Britain to behead bodies before interring them, and many skulls have ben found under the foundations of buildings of the period. The discovery of some decapitated bodies, and of human skulls unaccompanied by other bones, in burial sites in Ireland indicates that such practices were known here also. There is also strong confirmation of a related rite in accounts of the Continental Celts. . ."