Archive for the ‘punishment’ Tag
I’ve had a relationship for more than fifty years with the criminal justice system in this country. Starting as a cop, then a private investigator, a corporate Loss Prevention specialist, and eventually working for the State of Maine in the Judicial Branch. I’m fascinated with all aspects of the profession which includes collecting odd bits of trivia which I’ll share with you today.
- The world’s first police detective was Eugene Françoise Vidocq. The Frenchman founded the plainclothes civil police unit, the Brigade de la se Surete, in 1812.
- C. Auguste Dupin was the world’s first fictional police detective. Edgar Allen Poe used Eugene François Vidocq as a model for his character C. Auguste Dupin in the 1841 short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which is considered to be the world’s first detective story.
- The act of hanging, drawing, and quartering was not abolished in England until 1870.
- Sheraton Hope and Ormond Sacker were the original names of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous crime-fighting duo, Sherlock Homes and Dr. John Watson. They first appeared in a novel called “A Tangled Skein.” Doyle ultimately changed the novel’s title to “A Study in Scarlet” when it was officially published in 1887.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has sold more books than J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien combined.
- One in four convicts ultimately exonerated by DNA evidence confessed or pled guilty to crimes they did not commit.
- Until 1998 it was a valid defense against rape or sexual battery in Mississippi to claim that the female victim was not chaste in character.
- From the 11th to the 18th centuries criminals were executed in southeast Asia by being crushed by an elephant.
- A real-life member of Scotland Yard, Inspector Charles Frederick Field, was friends with author Charles Dickens and introduced Dickens to many of London’s criminal haunts. Dickens later featured the inspector in his 1851 short story “On Duty with Inspector Field.”
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Being a former police officer, I still maintain interest in all things criminal, crime related, and punishment. I’m also a big fan of almost any book, fiction or nonfiction, about investigations concerning any crime you can think of. That makes today Crime and Punishment Trivia Day and I’ll pass along a few tidbits you may find interesting.
Let’s go back in history a few hundred years to examine methods of punishment for murderers, rapists, and traitors. From what I can see they were a little harsher with punishment than we seem to be these days.
- First on the list is the wheel. Criminals were lashed to a wagon wheel and their limbs bludgeoned or broken by brute force. Ugly but effective.
- Next, we have boiling. The criminals were immersed in boiling water, oil, or hot tar and fried to death. Yuck! Soups on.
- Another favorite was flaying. That involves the removal of a person’s skin which could keep the criminal alive for a day or two until he died from shock. I’d say this is really cruel and really unusual punishment.
- This is a Chinese favorite called “The Death of a Thousand Cuts”. It is where the criminal was lashed to a frame and over a period of days pieces of their body were severed and removed with a knife. Had to be the Mongolians who started this trend.
- This crowd-pleaser is called disembowelment. The criminal’s abdomen was opened while alive with a knife, and his organs were individually removed, particularly the bowels. No comment on this disgusting method since I had it done to me but with an anesthesia.
- Impalement involves driving a pointed stake through the victim’s body from the rectum up through the breast and shoulder. Ouch!!!!!
- Stoning is when a large group of people were gathered together to throw stones at the criminal. The point here is that no single person is responsible for the death, it’s a group act. What a Sharia loving group.
- Decapitation is the removal of the victims’ head by knife, sword, ax, or guillotine. One way to keep ahead of the criminals.
- Burning at the stake involves exposing the criminal to direct flames or heat until death occurs. Barbecues had to start somewhere.
- Hanging, drawn, and quartering requires criminals to be dragged behind a horse to a platform where they were then hanged, removed just before the moment of death, and then castrated, disemboweled, beheaded, and quartered. That’s like killing the criminal three times over.
- And last but not least an unusual punishment popular in Southeast Asia from the 11th – 18th centuries. The criminal is tied up, placed under the foot of an elephant, and then crushed. No more circus visits for me, I’ll have nightmares.
I think all of the criminals living in this country should count their blessings and except Life Imprisonment Without Chance of Parole as being mighty generous and merciful. It’s hard to imagine how many of these methods were used often and without hesitation. It’s also hard to imagine how they had any crime rate whatsoever when the criminals knew these kinds of punishments were being handed out. But to quote an expert, “Stupid is as Stupid Does”.
THANKS GO OUT TO FORREST GUMP FOR THE QUOTE
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