Olde London Punishments by David Brandon

rope. The theory was that the victim would be dead by the time the flames were licking around her body. However, in the case of Catherine Hayes, who was executed at Tyburn in 1726 for killing her husband, the wood flared up so quickly that the executioner had to remove himself before strangulation was complete. The crowd was then treated to the sight of Catherine’s prolonged and excruciating death agonies. The executioner had little option but to pile on more faggots hoping that the conflagration would be intense enough to shorten her sufferings.
    Death by Boiling
    Perhaps fortunately, the authorities did not often have recourse to this diabolical form of execution. Seemingly the first person to suffer this fate was one Richard Rose in 1531. He was a cook who was found guilty of high treason for poisoning the family and household of the Bishop of Rochester. Seventeen people suffered severely and two actually died. Rose was placed in an iron cauldron of water over a fire which was then brought to the boil. He took two hours to die in full public view at Smithfield. It was assumed that the poisoning was deliberate. Modern scientific techniques might instead have detected poor hygiene standards or even a dose of salmonella.
    The horror of death by this singularly unpleasant, but fortunately rare, method was perhaps slightly lessened in later years when the victim was placed in water that was already at boiling point. Would that actually be any better?
    Gibbeting
    The English were not known to be particularly fastidious when it came to the methods of punishment and execution they employed. However, it does seem that unlike their counterparts in some European countries, they did not very often gibbet people alive. Instead, they usually employed gibbeting as a kind of aggravated punishment with the added bonus that it was believed to be a deterrent to wrongdoing on the part of those whose glance fell on the gruesome remains of some miscreant swaying to and fro in an iron cage caught up by the wind. Certain types of offender – highwaymen and pirates in particular – had their bodies daubed in tar or some other preservative substance after death, whereupon they were placed in chains inside a hanging iron cage and displayed in some conspicuous place such as a crossroads or, in the case of the pirates, a prominent spot near a river frequented by large numbers of passing ships.
    The fleshy parts of the gibbeted cadaver and such items as the eyes soon disappeared thanks to the attentions of birds, especially of the crow family, and rats, which were not averse to making their way up the wooden supports into the cage where the corpse provided, literally, easy meat. Such corpses soon became little more than a collection of bones, which often collapsed and often fell out of the cage to gladden the hearts of passing dogs.
    The Judas Cradle
    Just because no one in English officialdom has ever admitted that this diabolical procedure has been used, we cannot therefore assume that it has not. England had all manner of close links with governments in Western Europe in medieval times and word got about. The Judas Cradle was such a simple, economical and effective means for extracting information that it somewhat stretches the bounds of credibility to think that this device never lurked in the darkest and dingiest dungeon of the Tower of London.
    The victim had his hands tied behind his back and was secured in an iron waist ring. He was then hoisted up by a system of winches and pulleys only to be lowered onto the sharp point of a pyramid surmounting a sturdy tripod. The victim was placed in such a way that his or her weight rested on the apex of the pyramid positioned in the anus, in the vagina, under the scrotum or the coccyx. The torturer responded to the requirements of the interrogator by varying the pressure being applied and could rock the victim or make him fall repeatedly on the point.
    The Cat O’ Nine Tails
    This instrument was used